Belief Blockade by Garrett Carroll

Belief Blockade by Garrett Carroll

          Calm. All Vanders felt was calm. He had long since conceded himself to his inevitable fate. He was, by all accounts, on the verge of death. Physical death, yes, but mostly death by a mental war of attrition. He was assimilating into a reality abruptly thrust upon him.

          Gloaming gray brick walls surrounded him on all sides, and only a hole of bar grates above him held any semblance of shafted, natural light. The light dripping through the bar grates held hope. It wasn’t hope that it belonged to him, but it let him hone it like a fated sword. He held his hand in front of himself, clutched a portion of the light, and pressed it against the ragged red robes worn over his body. He held it tightly, though the shallow shadows of his fingers carved the light, just like the bar grates that it shined through from above. His hope felt splintered.

          The only variation in the gloam was a small, black built-in intercom located at a top corner of the cube-shaped room. Vanders would occasionally hear someone speak through it and attempt discussion with him, but he had been privy to the tricks of the voice’s deceptions thus far. Still, desperation was causing Vanders to abandon his long-held strength, and what little he clinged to was beginning to wear him down. Maybe I’m wrong? He thought.

          The voice shaved through the intercom, fuzzy and nearly indiscernible,” It is time to adm… faul… Vanders.”

          “Fall for what? Why am I here?”

          “It’s you… need… some assem… ask… visu…”

          Vanders replied,” Again, what do you want? I already gave you my address, my financial information, my trite beliefs in everyday fishing, my favorite soy flavors. What do you want?”

          Vanders waited anxiously. The intercom remained silent this time. Vanders ran his hands flat against the walls, pausing at specific intervals and moving his hand frantically around like the arrow of a ouija board. He continued walking around, though his waning patience caused his pacing to speed up slowly.

          “Admit… faul… prot…”

          Vanders pieced together the three faultline words. Admit, fault, protest.

          He knew what it was about, or at least he speculated.

          A year prior, Vanders had been a part of the orbital blockade that disrupted trade routes throughout the Arbijian system, a solar system a hundred light years away from the Earth system. The blockade began in part due to the lockdown on Arbijian citizens from utilizing time recovery in the jump drive process. Because of the forced inability to use time recovery, many Arbijians were jumping through space with hundreds of family generations dead. By the time they jumped from Earth to Arbijia, their physical reality had reached a point where the cities and peoples became unrecognizable. Sometimes they were entirely erased. Due to the complex formulas associated with faster-than-light  travel, time recovery was inputted in order to reverse age gravitational movement as people jumped between the Arbijian and Earth systems. With the blockage of time recovery, Arbijians returned to their home systems only to find their contemporaries millions of years dead.

          As a vocal proponent of the blockade, Vanders ensured that the Arbijians were warned of the lost time factor. They blocked trade and instigated sudden time safety measures as a result, looking to avoid any more unnecessary time slippage. His actions made him an enemy of the more traditional  Earth system planets. Earths, Mars, and Europas inhabitants didn’t want the Arbijian human variants becoming a part of the Earth system’s widespread populace. Strong religious fervor was the underlying factor in this decision, as it was presumed that Arbijian genetics led to many maladaptive modelings in processing communications. Many Arbijian traders presented barbaric traits, including an increased elevation in silent statistical outpourings, and a heightened ability to differentiate between deceptively good and bad cargo deals. This, of course, upset the Earth system inhabitants, who preferred simplicity and shallowness in everyday endeavors. Simply the existence of any complexity was an affront to their artificial points of view.

          The voice came statically again, “You don’t… you dun… don’t.”

          Vander’s took a long moment, contemplating this spoken reciprocation.

          He rubbed his hands along the wall right below the intercom and replied, “I think I know what you’re referencing. You want me to be a bridge between peoples. Arbijia and Earth. Mars. Europa. Whichever planets you all seem to own.”

          The voice sifted through the intercom again, “Sleight… sligh… you nev… will is… willpow…”

          Vanders replied, “I’m not for you. I would sooner starve here.”

          A faint engine in the perceived deep distance outside the grate of light could be heard from Vanders. He closed his eyes tightly, then put his head and hair in his hands to cope. If he had to take a guess, the ship landed around a hundred yards away, though he couldn’t see its physical landing.

          He paced around the walled room more. A tension of foreboding grew. It grew and grew and festered and lingered and languished and parlayed through every individual tendril and vein in Vander’s emaciated body. Skeletal, with no drought of thoughts in sight, he shot a quick glance upward at the bar grates. His eyes grew wider and wider. The footsteps gradually increased in volume, and each step brought more racing thoughts and dueling contradictions to Vander’s mind.

          Finally, a face unrecognized by Vanders appeared on the other side of the bar grates. It blocked the light shedding through the grates, and the shadow of the back of their head projected down on Vanders, who then moved out of the way to avoid its ominous entrapment. He could barely make out the actual face he was seeing, aside from an absurd smile. He stood beneath the intercom again.

          The face spoke, “Finally! Finally I can speak to you! Do that thing where you told us over your spaceship’s voice transmitter ‘I am Vanders of the 9th Fleet, our time recoveries are back online.’”

          Vanders hesitated. His mind raced through an encircling list of things to say. After ten minutes, he gathered the one thought he wanted to verbalize, which was abruptly interrupted by twenty other intrusive thoughts, then spoke glaringly at the face peering through the bar grates above with a stutter, “I won’t. I won’t until -y-y-you t-tell me what I-I-I am here for,” he cleared his throat and spoke more precisely, “I want to know how and why I ended up in here.”

          “Gladly,” began the voice, “I’ll explain. See, we knew your involvement in the trade blockade. We know your aid in helping forewarn the Arbijians from their entombing lives. As a result, we captured you. You were onboard your ship drifting along the outer edges of Arbijia’s atmosphere, so we had a group of cloaked ships sit beside your ship. We ran stealth data through your ship’s mainframes and networks until we could run sleeping gas through the vents and pipes. After that, we played an hour-long waiting game.”

          Vanders considered what was said, then replied, “But why do you need me now?”

          The voice through the bar grate replied, “Oh we don’t! We don’t need you at all. In fact, this is very likely where you’ll die. I’m stopping by to keep you some company, but ultimately there’s no reason to keep on living. We’ve left you in here to die.”

          Vanders squinted his eyes in confusion. He looked around at the ground, then gazed back up and said, “What? I’m in here to die? What was the point of all this anyways?! Why did you come all the way out here?! This news is awful.”

          The voice through the bar grate let out a sigh. A slight drool slipped off his lips and splashed against the room’s concrete.

          “Because I’m going to help you. Your way to freedom is through me, and the concrete ground you stand on.”

          Vanders shot his long-standing gaze downward. He stared intensely at the concrete ground, the ominous shadow of the bar grate face darkening under the glint of glimpsing moonlight.

          “See, the ground beneath your feet has a secret slot only accessible to your face. You’ll have to rub your face against the cold concrete to find the slot. After that, the ground will open up and you’ll be free.”

          Vanders looked back up briefly and raised his eyebrow, but he understood what needed to be done. And so he did. He rubbed and smudged his face across the entirety of the concrete floor. He turned into an awkward crawling witch. His face became covered in small scabs, dust, and webbed scratches, but then his face fell below the flat level of the floor. The dreary concrete began to split and flap open through an assortment of unseen chains, gears, and cogs. As there was nothing to grab onto, Vanders clung to the vague hope that the pitch black underground below would catch him quickly.

His reality was thrust abruptly into assimilation, and like a serpent, his slipping corpse took hold of him. His whole body looked bent like jagged drawn squiggly lines, and he slid faster and faster down the fast forming concrete slope. Calm, he thought. All Vanders thought was calm. He breathed.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Garrett Carroll 2025

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