In part 5, Ruby and Saaz entered the ‘The Cathedral’ and encountered what seemed like memories of lost relatives. In this sixth part of the seven part series, Ruby and Saaz’s triggered memories seem to be telling them something.
Mission III: Venus – Part 6: Warning
“We are detecting elevated heart rates and other stress bio-signs”, said one of the spider-bots. “Please confirm there are no indications of suit failure.”
“No…no”, replied Saaz. “We are just overwhelmed by our location. It’s an emotional response, that’s all.”
The spider-bot did not reply but Ruby thought if the device could be sceptical, it would be now. She wondered how far their bio-signs would have to differ from the normal range before the spider-bots would take action regardless of their spoken comments.
The deep feeling of avoidable loss swept over Ruby again. They were nearing the location where Ruby imagined her father was standing. It was him but also was not, as could happen in a dream. He was taller, thinner and the position of his limbs, in fact even the number of his limbs, seemed somehow vague. But it was him and he stood proud and even a little aloof.
“Why father?”, Ruby asked mentally. “Why did you do it? Why was it so necessary? Why could you not be satisfied with what you had already?”
Ruby was surprised by her thoughts. They were not exactly the questions she would have asked her father but they easily rode the waves of her present feelings.
Her father seemed to stand even taller and look even more aloof. This version of her father certainly seemed much more arrogant then she remembered her father ever being, but he pulled hard on her feelings.
“Because it was progress… because it would have benefitted everybody…”, he replied.
“But…”, answered Ruby, “…it was unnecessary and there was so much risk.”
“Nonsense!”, bellowed the entity which seemed to be drifting rapidly away from being anything really like Ruby’s real father. “We had thought of everything… we had considered everything… nothing can go wrong!”.
In a dream-like way, Ruby imagined the father-entity looking on to a wide lush jungle landscape, which was suddenly wracked by multiple powerful flashes of light, followed by multiple giant mushroom clouds.
The lush landscape was now pock-marked by huge dark craters. The father-entity seemed to smile in satisfaction, then his expression changed to one of terror as further black smoke started to issue from each crater, followed by a flood of angry molten lava as if the ground was furiously retaliating.
“Oh….”, Ruby heard. A real sound, not imagined. In the rear view section of her face plate screens, Ruby saw Saaz stumble and fall.
The spider-bots sprang forward immediately, each one grabbing one of the women. Ruby was held tightly to the underside of the robot by two of its legs, while with the other legs it bounded at great speed out of the Cathedral and back to the rotorcraft. Ruby felt herself being placed firmly back in her seat and then saw Saaz also being placed in her own seat a second later. Then she felt a strong force pressing her down, as the rotorcraft took off and accelerated skywards.
“Are you OK”, Ruby asked Saaz, as the g-forces subsided.
“I think so”, replied Saaz. “I was sort of day dreaming about my sister, sort of confronting her about her accident and why she had let it happen. But she was shouting at me, about trusting her more, and letting her help everybody. Then there were these images of nuclear explosions and volcanos. It was overwhelming. I think I passed out.”