This ongoing work in progress is entirely a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are entirely fictional and any resemblance to people, living or dead is coincidental.
No part of the work may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.
Copyright Ion Fyr 2022
ionfyr.net
Nila. 23rd century. Somewhere low over the Atlantic Ocean.
After the car was beyond line-of-sight comms with Londbridge’s traffic control systems, punctuated with a faint beep from the car’s panel, everything became quiet. The screens outside showed a light grey sky over a darker grey throbbing ocean.
To the faint but rapid patter of light raindrops on the forward and upper surfaces of the car, Nila drifted off into sleep.
…
The car chimed in the distance, getting louder as Nila awoke and wiped the sleep from her eyes and brushed her matted hair from her face.
Ahead, ten klicks out and approaching rapidly was a small green and grey speck in a blue-grey sea, the sun glinting off high-glaciers (even in late summer) from a low sun, hanging in the southern sky.
Though she had programmed the car to head for the coordinates she had been given by the entity–was she even sure it was human…AI–the car’s map, glowing on the central panel on the dash, was entirely blank. The forward view of the outside, however, definitely showed an island ahead, green against the grey ocean with several craggy peaks rising up, the dead husk of a long extinct volcano.
Nila refreshed the map-screen and yet still nothing but waves. She checked the data again, and it showed the same contours as everywhere else within hundreds of kilometers. Despite the lack of island, the latitude and longitude were scrolling rapidly to the preset coordinates; even if the destination weren’t in the vehicle’s database, the car would arrive shortly to the location where it should exist.
Out of curiosity, and after slowing the car considerably, Nila squirmed and straightened her right leg. Her extended fingers found the hollow cylinder there, a fat ring of wear-polished brass and gold, out of place against the plastic and steel of the car.
Magic rings were rather uncommon on Terra in these days of the 23rd century. This is not to say there weren’t others out there, but if there were Nila had only seen the five she and her friends had come across, and that wasn’t even this century.
She and her friend Pool, while traveling to Siberia in the 19th century had come across, and by “come across” we mean stole, five gold rings, larger in diameter than a typical human finger, certainly larger than her own slender digits, that, it turned out, were a kind of alien technology. Through experimentation, it was discovered that each of the rings had a specific set of functions, and Nila, out of place in the wrong century could activate these functions the same way she could interact with external wireless drives, through her implants and willful commands.
The rings because of their size were mounted on two long rings–two on one, three on the other–that fit Nila’s index fingers. She had the three-ring one now. The other was in safe-keeping elsewhere due to its impractical and more dangerous nature. Her Hunnish friend had dubbed the long-ring holders “nyereg”, meaning “saddle”.
She slipped it on her finger.
View-map -local
Before her, visually overlapping the interior of the car, imprinted on her vision rather than real space, appeared a map of the locality. A point identified the car, and more importantly, a topographical simulation of the island lay in the center of the representation.
It always amazed her how the strange alien tech managed to bring in details that it shouldn’t even be aware of, things that in Terra’s most modern devices would require a great deal of complexity. They had never dissected one of the rings for fear that it would be an irreversible endeavor, so how the things worked was essentially unknown to them. Even some of the functions were barely known.
Add-tags -map-view
One such detail that Nila just couldn’t quite wrap her mind around, was how the damned thing knew the identity code of Luc’s car. The real one as well as the spoofed on. She knew that if she zoomed in enough, she’d be able to see herself sitting inside.
The island had a number of moving dots, all looking like anthromorphs, none like living humans. There was a building complex located in a narrow valley between mountains, situated amidst what looked like ruins, artificial structures built and rebuilt over previous, and out of previous incarnations.
Nila had been focusing on the minute details of her ring-derived map, her face showing concentration and straining to see and analyze what lay ahead (all of it splayed across her visual cortex). She zoomed the image in and scrolled around, looking at the island from different directions and from above, looking at the structure from different angles. So caught up in the small details and indeed the level of detail the ring-map provided, she did not initially notice the name given to the island.
Floating in space, and in her own Brethmanic standard dialect (Nila theorized that it would be portrayed in any user’s native language), was the name of the island.
Pool’s Island.
The dissonance of the coincidence took a bit to settle. Pool’s Island. What!?
The likelihood that this island–an island that did not show up on standard vehicle maps–would share a name with her friend was pretty damn small.
At this point Nila did not know of her friend’s activities, and to speak of current activities when time travel could be involved was both difficult and confusing. Her understanding was that Constable Blackwood Aristophanes Pool was in the 19th century, but she did not know what he was doing then, or when this island acquired its name.
She dropped the velocity of the car to zero. It hung 50 meters over the wave tops, unmoving except for compensating for the push of the wind and rain.
She couldn’t risk connecting to the Net from the car, even if she were within wireless range. Light-node relays did not exist on the open ocean and she was many kilometers from the nearest transit routes (which roughly matched intercontinental cables).
Nila turned, ring still on her finger and map still hanging in her brain and reached through the waves behind her, pulling her rucksack from the depths. It passed through the holographic seascape into clearer view.
Inside, she pushed the stubby steel barrel of her bullpup out of the way, and felt around underneath, beneath her bunched up change of clothes. Then she felt around the side of the pack, rough plasticized canvas against her knuckles until her fingers found the internal side pocket.
It was slender. A black and shiny faceted finger-sized object. One of her external drives, the one she remembered, or thought she remembered saving some encyclopedia to.
Access-drive -local | Search-contents -EncyclopediaBrethmanica -*Pool’sIsland
In a confusing flurry, streaming files and folders flooded her vision, superimposed on the map of the island which still hung in space.
NO FILES FOUND. MOST LIKELY RELATED ITEM: ON THE SUBJECT OF OCEANIC LEVIATHANS IN THE NORTHERN ATLANTIC, B.A.POOL, 58 PAGES, PUBLISHED BY ARTEMIS HOUSE, LONDBRIDGE, 1887 (OLD CALENDAR)
Well, fuck, she thought. Pool was here. But why?
She turned off the external drive and dimmed the map, but left it up.
The car accelerated through the wind and grey rain toward the island, toward whatever that building was.
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Ion Fyr 