Chapter Thirteen

The Gateway Tree.

Happiness was filling every pore, or rather chink, between the dog's mirrored skin. His whole body was a mass of broken mirrors. Even in his mouth where all the shards had transformed his teeth and tongue into something even more dangerous. But it didn't bother him.

He didn't know what had happened but that didn't matter to him in the least at that moment. He was free. Free at last after so many decades and centuries. Whether by some miracle, or trick of which he did not know how it worked, nothing else mattered to him.

He was running down a long road and felt the wind against his body. His breathing was labored with excitement, but the air felt strange. His mouth felt a little different than it did on a regular basis. It was hard to describe.

And what had happened to the world? He was pretty sure there was something strange about its size. He had always seen humans and other things as always being above him. But this time it was not so. He could see how under his steps things looked small, or about the same size. The vehicles that were dodging him on the road were almost half his size in height.

He felt that with each of his footsteps the ground shook and heard the sound of glass crunching under his footsteps.

Suddenly he began to feel a new itching sensation in his body and stopped in time to watch as hundreds of thousands of crystals attached themselves to his back. He was sure that, when he had shaken himself in the building, he had left something behind. Although he did not expect that, whatever it was, it would come back to him.

The black block in its mouth was emitting sparks and a voice chattered incessantly. [You are violating the 46th code of conduct against Artificial Intelligences and damaging government property. Please desist from this behavior.]

The dog dropped the cube from his mouth and sat down in the middle of the street to look at it. The block lifted up and began to float almost instantly as it made metallic sounds and began to transform. It was the actual appearance of the parking lot's security robots. The square parts of the block hid a cylinder that was the main body. The outer square parts functioned as the limbs. Although the dog must have bitten something when it held it in its mouth, because the robot was missing one of its arms. In that place it could only be seen that part of the square surface had not completely transformed and was emitting electric blue sparks.

The robot pointed its arm at the dog while saying. [Please remain calm, you are being detained.]

The dog again took a few steps towards the robot with the intention of playing.

[Please stop. Cease your behavior.]

There was no canine response and the robot pointed to the side, near the dog, as a warning signal.

The robot's mental response speed was fast enough to know, in a thousandth of a second, what was happening, when it felt all its parts flying through the air. It had fired close to the animal, but not close enough to harm it. But somehow, even before his riot projectile shot out of his fist, it was his own body that was flying apart.

[Sending analysis,] was the last thought he had as his Type One consciousness left the metal shell, that had served him so long as a body, and joined the swarm that served as a nucleo-colony, along with other artificial intelligences of the SIGN Agency.

The dog approached and sniffed the remains of the metal, nanocarbon and synthetic fluids scattered on the conductive asphalt of the road. He didn't know what had happened, but his talking toy exploded.

He looked up and saw a vehicle approaching a hundred yards in his direction, but then the vehicle stopped, turned around and started back the way it had come.

This is fun, thought the dog, as he started to run after the vehicle, which picked up speed.

In just a couple of minutes the dog realized he had a lot to choose from. The vehicle joined another stretch of road, with more vehicles on it, and chaos ensued. The occupants of the vehicles were forced to take manual control of their cars trying to dodge the dog's merry prances down the road. There were semi-spinning, spinning, cars crashing into each other, while urban stress sensors were triggered at traffic control headquarters. Given the safety measures in the vehicles no one was hurt, but that didn't take away the mess the animal was leaving behind with its innocent games.

All the Neurowires began to emit alerts for help and calls to the police who seemed to be unable to believe the reports that were coming in.

[There's a glass animal on the road! Halp!]

[Something just made me crash into another vehicle and I don't have any more manual license points!]

[I want to report some kind of huge animal on Niddrie Main Road!]

Two of the police officers on call at the central building looked at each other with concern. It was the Scottish Police building, on the corner of Niddrie Main Road and Craigmillar, and they were on the seventh floor. At that very moment the sounds of breaking glass and clashing metal and all kinds of expletives from the people in the streets began to reach their ears. They approached the windows just as the dog was passing in front of them and heading down Peffemill Road.

"What the hell is that?" asked one of the policemen.

At the foot of the street the patrol cars were soon occupied and the sirens were turned on as they set off in pursuit of the animal, followed by several riot drones. The police had special protocols in case of creatures which required the activation of a special forces unit.

Special forces were in another location at the time. Since it was Saturday, most of the team was in custody of the subway entrances of the city, in case there was any disorder in one of the night pubs located there. It was not a bad location as they could make sure that the huge dog did not reach the vicinity of some of the entrances. Luckily, the dog wasn't yet in the new part of the city.

In those seconds that were crucial to the chase, everyone realized something else. The three vehicles that had been in pursuit of the animal suddenly lost sight of it. It had completely disappeared from the road and farther away the vehicles were circulating normally. The animal's mirrored fur was a good camouflage at night as it could hide, but it had happened too fast.

"Where did it go?"

"Could it have strayed into one of the surrounding streets?"

The policemen slowed down and saw how in the enclosed area to the west, which hundreds of years ago had been a golf practice area, the fence was flattened.

"That can't be good," said one of the constables, looking at his partner. "He just entered Prestonfield Park. It's in the tree grounds," he said, and looked worriedly at the huge glow that like a beacon illuminated that part of the city.

Holyrood Park had become a must-see for anyone visiting Edinburgh, even though the area near the tree was off-limits to people. In turn, Prestonfield Park was a very busy place during the day and sometimes during the evenings for the younger ones as well. But that night was Saturday, and there was no one around.

The place was much more lush than it had been in times past and over time the vegetation had advanced so much that the city council decided to annex the adjoining land of Duddingston Loch and the Prestonfield club as part of the land concerning the Gateway Tree as well.

The dog crossed the park, shooing away some of the local ducks and being chased by the autonomous security drones in that part of the park. He waded into the lake in the middle of the site for a midnight dip. Water, his first and only drink in so long. But that was not his final destination. Since his run, along the route he had been seeing that golden glow peeking out from between the skyscrapers. The vision had been changing as he approached the place and the buildings disappeared.

The animal knew what it was. The old man in the store had once placed a souvenir near the mirror that was exactly a copy of what he saw. He shook himself once again, this time throwing water from the lake and shrapnel from his crystal skin, and made his way to the tree.

He reached a white marble slab, illuminated all around and sniffed the place not understanding the words in the center of the stone.

[Welcome to the Gateway Tree. Dedicated to the memory of all the heroes who made it possible for our world to continue. May their sacrifice and the splendor of their deeds never be forgotten.]

The animal looked up once more and saw the huge tree a few hundred yards away.

It was the Gateway Tree on Arthur's Seat Hill.

He walked a few meters, to jump the low security fence that separated him from the last section of the tree, when a hologram of the information system activated and a screen showed him images of a war he remembered hearing about long ago through the crystal barrier that was is home.

[Welcome to the Gateway Tree,] said the voice of the holographic presenter. [Arrived during the Great War against the fractus, the seeds of the gate are what made possible, in large part, the recovery of the planet after the war. Since the trees that grow from the seeds produce much more oxygen than normal plants, and wherever the trees break through, it is a symbol that the vegetation will grow in an unusual way again. Thanks to this, many forests had been restored.]

The dog raised one of his paws timidly and stepped through the hologram, while the presenter continued her speech in a theatrical manner.

[The trees develop rapidly and grow gigantic, with trunks so thick, that they make the giant sequoias pale. Their crowns are enormous and their flowers produce a natural perpetual bioluminescence, of a chemical nature similar to that of fireflies. They come in all shapes and sizes, although the most common type is the cherry tree. It is not a cherry tree per se, but its shape is quite reminiscent of a cherry tree, albeit with golden blossoms. This is especially the type of tree on Arthur's Seat Hill. Although people know it as the Arthur's Seat Tree, the fact is that the location is between Arthur's Seat Hill and its neighbor Crow Hill.

[The seed was brought in only four years after the war ended and this place was designated for its planting. In the early years it was small and its radiance was not visible from afar. Thirty years later it reached a height of over a hundred meters and with its huge canopy shines at night like a beacon of hope.]

Finally he got bored of playing with the hologram and jumped the low fence that separated him from his destination. It didn't take him long to climb the gentle slope of the hill and arrive at the foot of the giant tree.

Security was not nonexistent at this point. Although it seemed so to anyone who approached, there was a team that was in charge of monitoring the security of the park and the tree. Security was located several meters underground in special facilities that ran through the entire park with subway tunnels.

The security control center was a hive of aeons and humans who didn't know how to interpret what they were seeing. In their long lives of guarding the site, the most dangerous thing they could remember were some young men who had tried to paint the tree trunk with drones.

The Aeon quickly reported the incident to the police and dispatched two armed drones to try to scare off the dog. At the same time the two armed police surveillance drones were almost reaching it. The animal meanwhile was too enraptured staring at the treetop. It was a truly sublime sight. But now something else was catching his attention.

Several meters underground. There were thick lines that snaked and moved as if they had some sort of consciousness of their own. The animal wondered what that could be. It was the second time he had seen something similar. The first time he had seen it was the day before, near the end of Sil Moore's underwater practice. He could remember how for a split second those same lines had appeared on the ground several meters below the room.

He had no idea what they might be, but in his innocence, he wondered if by digging he could reach them. The people below the tunnels were alerted to these lines, even though they could not see them.

A buzzing sound caught his attention. He was being surrounded by the two police drones, equipped with riot sound systems just like the two drones in the park. The AI in charge of controlling the system of both was not sure that an ultrasound attack would work against the animal, as it had never shown up in their records, but at least it could give Nevermore's team time to arrive on the scene. They were only a couple of minutes late.

Unfortunately the measure to deter, or tranquilize the animal, served no purpose other than to destroy the drones. The moment the four of them fired their sonic cannons at the dog, they were instantly out of commission. A detonation was heard and pieces of circuitry, nanocarbon and metal were thrown everywhere. The animal had not even moved, but pieces of both drones fell to the grass. Only the three security drones, which were not equipped with any attack countermeasures, were left.

The dog sniffed at the wreckage, but found it uninteresting, and it was too small to do anything fun with it. He looked at the city from the spot. The huge skyscrapers of the city hid a lot of details from the distance but, even so, the animal filled with his eyes the vision of that world that had always been on the other side of the glass. He remembered his brothers and the little girl he had played with so much? Were they still out there somewhere in one of those twinkling lights of the city?

He snorted and turned his gaze to the south. From where he stood, the tree offered enough light that he could recognize the path down the hill, on the opposite side from where he had come. Farther on, he could see the figure silhouetted against the lights of the town of Salisbury Craigs, and the lights of the road on which some vehicles were traveling at that moment.

Despite his enormous weight of several tons at the time, the dog moved with incredible dexterity on the terrain. He made great leaps and reached the final crags of Salisbury Craigs only seconds later.

With great leaps the animal began to descend the hill and started a new run towards the road, hoping to see more things that would catch his attention. The first night out of his prison was just beginning.

***

Thor and Claris were entering Queen's Drive, on the road around Holyrood Park.

It was a rather small car, with the appearance of a black egg on wheels, but with a powerful engine, although given Thor's special circumstances, it was a fully armored car. Customizing it had cost him a fortune, but it wasn't as if money was a problem for him. After all, Thor, a wealthy fey, considered himself lucky, both socially and financially. Besides, what he really liked was his job as a special agent in the SID.

"Where are these guys?" Thor snorted. Through his Neurowire he was trying to find some sign of the others but, for some reason, his tracker was jumping location at every turn. Although maybe that was because they were only a few hundred meters from the Gateway Tree.

Thor was a fey dwarf type, because of that his driver's seat was customized as well. Despite his short stature, he looked as if he had been exercising since birth. He had rough hands, thick knuckles and his dark brown hair was neatly combed back. Despite his hard features, bushy eyebrows and well-groomed stubble, his eyes looked more like those of a restless child. That day he was wearing a tailored Italian pinstripe suit, as he was on a date, as he was used to doing on weekends.

Claris was a fey with ash-blonde hair pulled back in a bun at the time. Her blue, almost electric eyes contrasted with her dark skin and dress. Her pointed ears had two earrings made of sapphire-like Fractium, which gave off a faint glow against her skin. The yellow dress she wore had a plunging neckline and, since she was not very buxom, when moving in a sitting position it was quite easy for something to escape from the fabric. Such was what had happened when she sneezed.

"Are you sure you haven't caught a cold?" asked Thor, raising an eyebrow as he glanced sideways at the upturned nipple on her right breast.

"I don't think not," she replied, covering herself. "You've been staring at me all night, do you want to lose more license points, like you lost money at the casino?"

"Hey! I wasn't the only one who lost. But at least you can't blame the glances," Thor grinned at her.

She sighed and, through the Neurowire, entered the dress configuration subroutine and adjusted the fabric a bit. In just a second the fabric shimmered, exhibiting a triangular pattern across the chest, and a buckle appeared below the breast. Problem solved.

"Why did you do that?"

"I don't mind showing off my body, or being looked at, but I sure don't want to get into an accident because you're looking at my boobs instead of the road."

"I can put the automatic driving on if you want."

Claris smiled, shook her head in denial and pointed her lips forward, Thor shrugged smiling.

 

Another sneeze, this time nothing escaped his place.

"Don't throw too many bugs, I cleaned it up this morning."

Claris looked at him with a grim look on her face and clicked her tongue. "I don't get sick eve-."

The word remained half-pronounced. In less than the blink of an eye they both saw the world change its orientation. Claris saw, for a split second, how the vehicle was turning on itself and the gesture of Thor, who with a crooked grimace also looked at her while shouting an expletive. A sort of whirlwind of reflections passed by them and was lost in the trees on the other side of the road.

The vehicle lurched a couple more times on the wet pavement, and due to its shape it was left swaying from side to side for a few seconds.

"What the fuck?" Claris shouted and unbuckled her seatbelt and fought against the safety cushion. Thor next to her was fighting to free himself as well. They both fell to the ceiling as the pillow began to retract again.

The doors opened and Claris came out on all fours, as the bun on her head came loose, her hair was down to her waist. She saw blue and red lights flashing and then a blinding flashlight in her face.

"Ma'am, are you all right?"

The one asking that question was one of the constables who a few minutes earlier had been on the other side of Prestonfield Park, watching where the huge dog had entered. He took Claris by the arm and helped her to her feet.

His partner ran to the driver's side. What was his surprise to see Thor come out, at first he had mistaken him for a boy with the musculature of a wrestler, albeit with an excellent sense of taste in clothing.

"What the hell was that?" Thor asked, as he finished standing up. Then he looked at his car with the wheels pointing up. "Ah, great…"

The cop watched as blood gushed from his forehead. Claris in turn had a scrape on her shoulder and had stained her dress a bit as she stepped out and touched the wet pavement from the rain.

"Sir, we need to get you to a hospital," the policeman said to Thor.

"Ahh," sighed Thor, downplaying the matter. "Don't worry about it. I guess what ran over us is the reason we're here."

"What do you mean?"

The cop looked at him quizzically for a few seconds and Thor pulled a badge ID out of his coat. "We're from Nevermore. SID. Special Agent Thor."

His partner looked at Claris expecting to see another badge, but the fey girl simply shook her head. "He's the special agent," she said and then, with a wave of her hand, sent her business card to the Neurowire of one of the cops.

"Who are you?"

"Claris Mackie, Nevermore legal department...I believe you know us as the Fire Department."

The cops looked at each other. Of course they knew where the girl belonged. Basically the Fire Department was a nickname the Nevermore law firm had. A nickname that over the years had become the official name of the firm.

Thor approached the vehicle and, with the same ease with which he would lift an object off the ground, he simply flipped the vehicle over and began to inspect the paint. "Not bad," he muttered.

The cops were still not out of their surprise, when the sound of other sirens and lights approached from behind them. The FRT truck and a couple of SIGN cars had just arrived on the scene. Philip and Zi had borrowed one of Emmeline's armortruck SUVs, since they had left their vehicle at Piershill.

"What a time to arrive," Philip said, looking at Thor with a frown.

"Hey! I wasn't expecting something to happen just today," Thor said. "We weren't anywhere near here."

Zi looked at Claris. "And what are you doing here?"

Claris was looking at the stains on her dress, and seeing if she could make them disappear with some of the configuration subroutines. "Ask him."

"What the hell was it that bumped into us? Tell me it's not a monster," Thor asked.

"A dog. A very big dog."

"How do you plan to stop it?" Claris asked.

Philip shook his head. "We don't know yet, for the moment let's try to catch it first. You! Claris! Get out of here, you can't be in the middle of a case. It's dangerous."

"You're kidding right? If that thing starts destroying the city, even if it's Sunday tomorrow all the government authorities are going to be gnawing at our heads."

"Well, go with the boys back there then. And put on an SMC suit just in case."

Claris snorted and headed for the truck. "There goes my night," she muttered annoyed.

"Hey, don't complain you've got a bundle in your bank account today," Thor said, as he climbed back into the vehicle.

"What happened?" Zi asked, as Claris passed her.

"I'll tell you later."

"Officers, if you want to help us you're welcome."

"Yes, sir." Said one of them and the other looked sideways at him. He was terrified at the prospect of a monster being loose in the city, but there was no alternative.

"Thor, turn on the vehicle's traditional comms, I'm sending you the link," Philip urged.

"The NW signal sucks here."

"It's because of the signal from the tree. Once we get a little further away we'll be fine," Philip rambled, getting into the vehicle.

A young woman from the FRT opened the door for Claris and she got in. She was surprised to see that there were only four people. She was unaware that two had remained in the SIGN building assessing the damage to the box, and that others were on standby at MCIT headquarters.

The vehicles unblocked the road and headed west towards where the animal had taken off. The police drones were following it, but it was hopping with enormous speed and was still out of sight.

Thor took manual control of the vehicle once again and sped after it. "Where have you gone doggy?"