Phase Q/Knee Deep

In a suburban home, walls crumble. The kids scream, the dog barks, and the woman flees. Her husband left a long time ago.

Probably off in some effort camp. She doesn’t expect to see him again. Thinking now only of her own life and the future of the kids, she stumbles outside, pulling her children. In the glaring sunlight, an extremely bright light descends from the sky. The purple beam glows more brightly than the sun itself.

Vwoooom.

The woman feels a vague circular suction, spiraling around her and the kids. She grabs on to her children, dropping her weight down as far as she can, trying her best to hold back against the levitating force. To no avail.

Zvreooooom.

The beam lifts up the whole family. Inside the Zonnyx device. In a cool metallic room. Yet clearly not ordinary metal, as the surfaces all emit a soft glow and repel any objects to an inch away.

“What are you doing here?” An ambient voice asks confusingly, in a somewhat incoherent accent that sounds vaguely Scandinavian.

“Uh, um,” the woman stutters.

“We’re trying to get away from the scum!” screams one of the infants.

“Well you’re not doing a very good job,” says the voice, surprisingly matter-of-factly.

A lightning-quick beam scans their DNA contents and neural connections. The data get uploaded to an abstract network of encodings. And the family vaporizes.

Back in the makeshift flowlab, Zank eyes the levels carefully. Lupak paces behind, madly. And Valbeena sits in a comfy chair, stroking her chin.

“What about a mental strike from Div A?” asks Lupak.

“Not likely,” says Zank. “We’d already have known by now.”

“We could try to waylay it,” offers Valbeena.

“Node L already tried a defuser, it didn’t slow the thing down at all.”

“Oh, sound,” mutters Lupak darkly.

Meanwhile, back at command HQ, senior officers monitor the reports.

“No dice,” says the General, looking bemusedly at a readout. “None of our rounds hit it, no rockets pierce its hide, even our experimental weapons aren’t working at all.”

“Well,” says the President. “Have we tried, you know… taking things up to a different stage?”

“We currently operate under Global ROE. No nukes allowed.” He sighs.

“I am the president, you know. We can change the rules.”

“Let’s consider that,” says the General.

Mrs. President looks aghast, as the numbers come reeling in. She has learned what some of the colored lines mean, including her favorites, the yellow casualties line and the red fatalities line.

“This has got to stop!” she cries.

As the president soothes her, the military officers commence a lengthy sequence of pacing movements, which appear to an uninformed observer to have little meaning.

In the buzzing, distributed mind of the Zonnyxes, thoughts zip around efficiently. Most of the thoughts are rather simple, along the lines of “x geometry has moved to y coordinates,” or “z supply is in w status.” Occasionally a more subtle message passes, such as “clear out the materialspace of other living organisms.”

The thoughts zip out along the network, and take form in the actions of hard light.

• Transport to the city.
• Transport to the country.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.