Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

and I need time to decode it properly, or the data will be destroyed. That may buy us some time.”

“Be safe in there…”

The words faded away as Gus focused on the cube. He turned it to the yellow side. After unlocking the directory, he knew this was the appropriate plane to access the insectoid research. He had never delved this side, which didn’t bode well. It could be anything in there. He could feel the skin on his face tighten as he fell into the plane.

Hot wind and a burning sun beat down on him from above. Shielding his eyes from the glare and sand whipping around, he found himself atop a small dune. A sandstone path led forward to a large temple of some sort. It sat like a squat trapezoid, pillars, statues, and obelisks stood aside a wedge-shaped opening in the middle.

Gus stumbled down to the path and hurried along it to get out of the merciless heat. As he walked along the path, he could swear he saw something in his peripheral vision. Crawling under the sand, burrowing there, but it was hard to tell with the sand whipping around. Anytime he turned to look, all he saw was the sand carried by the wind over the dunes.

As he approached the temple, gold scroll-work traced around the entrance. Hieroglyphic characters were arranged vertically down both sides of the angular doorway. The shade inside must have dropped the ambient temperature by at least ten degrees. Gus rubbed his eyes, already raw with squinting amid the scouring sand.

Brushing it away as best he could, he felt the cool stone walls. They were pristine, not like the old timeworn Egyptian structures in the real world. These looked like they were finished yesterday, blocks still having sharp edges. Others were smooth and seamless, though he could see differently arranged bricks.

Bright frescoes lined the central corridor, disappearing into the darkness as the corridor extended away from the doorway. An earthen clay bowl filled with a pungent liquid sat just inside the doorway. Next to it was a gravy-boat-looking dish with a small wick made out of some twisted fibers. Gus touched the liquid and rubbed it through his fingers; it was slippery like oil, and it smelled waxy, like crayons. Gus dipped the vessel and scooped up some of the oil, holding on to the wick so it wouldn’t fall out.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anything available to light the wick, so he was back at square one. He remembered how fortunate he was when he first got powers that fire was never a challenge thanks to his early abilities. He would probably never have made it without them. Gus racked his brain on how he could light the wick and wondered if he could find some glass that he could focus like a magnifying glass or lens. The sun was certainly bright and hot enough that it wouldn’t take much to focus.

Gus checked and realized for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his normal clothes, that this was a virtual environment and he was wearing a tawny flax tunic that hung on him like a shapeless bag. He had no pockets to search. A cursory search both in the entryway and outside the temple revealed nothing but sand.

He sat in the shade with his feet sunning outside the doorway and exhaled in a burst.

Hells bells, now what? If only I had my abilities here.

Gus checked to see if he could bring up his internal stats. Maybe his perception would allow him to see in the tomblike temple.

With a thought, he found he actually could bring up his stats, though the normal display he saw around the periphery of his vision was absent. With a more concentrated focus than usual, he could temporarily bring up some information, but it faded like an afterimage if his attention wavered. His stats were the same as they had been outside of the cube.

Gus got to his feet and walked down the long hallway, waiting for his enhanced senses to kick in as the light waned the further down the tunnel he progressed. Unlike reality, he didn’t have any form of night-vision, at all—which seemed like an odd paradox, since this resembled a VR game.

Do I have any abilities? he thought distractedly as he cracked his knuckles.

Some brief words flashed in front of him before disappearing:

Inherent abilities available in yellow zone.

“What’s an inherent ability?” Gus asked no one in particular. Having an internal personality like Nick made it so talking to himself all the time didn’t seem so strange, as his rhetorical questions would usually get answered. Here in the cube, Nick couldn’t be accessed.

Gus wondered if it could be a type of ability and tried to think of what best fit the description of ‘inherent.’ It was one of those words that he was sure he knew, but when he had to define it, he had no clear idea.

Screw it. Let’s just do this with trial and error. Gus stomped back to the entryway, reed sandals slapping noisily on the flat stones. He picked up the lamp he had laid there and racked his brain to remember his abilities without the aid of his display as a crutch.

Might as well start at the beginning. He picked up the wick between two fingers and tried to recall the sensation when he used Wreck-It-Gus to create fire. He fully expected it not to work, but he could feel the flow of MP and the wick quickly began to glow.

He had to push much harder to get the effect, but it worked. The dry wick fizzled and smoked as he gave his ability a rest. Using his fingers, he plunged the whole wick under the oil and wrung it out before trying again.

This time the wick produced a familiar, steady flame. The scent was unappealing, but it was light.

As he descended the decline, more frescos became visible in the flickering light of the lamp. Gus turned to look