Wormholes

We were relaxing back in the deliciously warm sun, sipping on ice cold drinks without a care. The bar, teetering on a terrace overflowing with hot pink flowers was as picturesque as a postcard, as was the view of the towering mountain above. Its shadow cast down its side and onto the top half of the white village where the less heat-loving tourists resided, also drinking their drinks, relaxing back in the refreshingly cool shade. Lower down, the more energetic could be seen like insects skirting across the top of a pond as they flitted back and forth on windsurf boards and jet skis. This place had something for everyone — a real paradise.

The whole family were there, reunited after long. Ma and Pa were not only speaking, but seemed to be displaying genuine signs of happiness as they watched my younger brothers playing chase with my little cousin Suzie in the dusty black sand.

I was lazily listening to the sound of the ice cubes clinking in my glass as I swirled them round and marveling at the number of birds that had suddenly flown up into the sky, dancing in circles, almost frantically. I was running through a list in my mind of possible things that could have spooked them when an almighty thunderous sound shook the earth violently. The children came running, crying. As I turned round to scoop up little Suzie I saw the towering plume of smoke billowing out of the now not-so-extinct volcano.

Before my father could begin ranting about travel agents and wanting his money back and my mother’s hysterical wailing had reached a proper crescendo, the eruption hit with full force, fifty times greater than its first warning shot. All we could do was watch, frozen with horror as the once idyllic, shady mountainside glowed red in the heat of the approaching rivers of lava. Ma gazed at the molten rock, a blank expression of shock giving her face an almost childlike quality. “It’s moving so slowly…”

Pa, always quick off the mark to contradict her argued “No — it only looks that way because of the distance. It’s actually racing along — see how quickly those trees at the top were engulfed! Are you a moron? Don’t just stand there, grab the kids and run as fast as you can!”

He took the boys hands and I picked up Suzie and we sprinted and stumbled down the steps toward the distant coastline.

Even as the terrain flattened out, we quickly came to the realization there was no way we could out-run the eruption, The air had become thick with ash, chokingly bitter and blotting out the sun. Our only chance was to find high ground and hope the lava flow would spare us. We headed for the old church. It was on top of a small, steep hill that had once been a burial mound. The guidebook had told us that it had long been condemned as the ground was unstable, but now it was our last hope. When we reached the building many others had climbed up, hoping for a safe island in the encroaching ocean of fire.

The young men of the village were clinging onto the bell tower, which chimed noisily as it swayed in time to the tremors of the earth. “How biblical” I thought to myself. Pa spotted the tour guide from the hotel who was gesturing to us with wild flailing arms. He shouted, “Go down into the crypt, it will be safer there — I fear the tower will fall and crush us and inside we will be protected from the heat!”

Inside it was darker than night. We all held hands as we edged our way down crumbling stone cold steps, breathing in cool, stale air in between sobs and cusses. Just as we reached the bottom and began fumbling in pockets for a lighter or phone to see by, without warning, the ground split apart. Beneath the cracking slabs of rock beneath our feet we could see through into what looked like the fiery depths of hell itself — in reality it was a place far, far worse. Noxious fumes filled the chamber. I passed out.

When I came to, I found myself clinging to the iron rungs of a ladder, the metal sunk into the stone walls of what looked like a mine. I looked around and saw channels of lava flowing below me and tracks with little carts loaded with black crystals. Above was seemingly infinite blackness.

The impossible thought that I was inside the volcano itself crossed my mind — but then the whole situation was impossible considering my last memory was falling to my death along with my entire family.

I looked down and saw another impossible thing — from my waist up to my chest I had been tightly bound with a clean bandage. I tried to loosen its bonds to observe the extent of the damage underneath but halted immediately, gasping with searing pain. My arms had begun to tire from holding on to the ladder, but I couldn’t decide whether to climb up or down — how had I got there in the first place? None of it made any sense!

Taking the white-hot rock below into consideration, I opted for up and the marginally less lethal looking blackness. The movement of climbing didn’t hurt my waist at all — odd considering the nauseating pain I’d felt when loosening the bandage.

I had been ascending upwards for what felt like a good fifteen minutes, when I was grabbed from behind, a clammy hand covering my mouth muffling my screams. A strong, bony arm prised me off the ladder and swung me round into an adjacent cave to face my captors. I caught a glance of six pale faces and twelve pink eyes before my vision blurred and I fell unconscious once more.

When I awoke I found myself on a low bed made out of an unfamiliar metallic webbing, in a room with stone walls lit by a warm orange glow, which seemed to be emanating from the rock itself. I saw with relief that the bandage had gone and I was comfortably dressed in a loose tunic woven from the same metallic fabric as the bed. I cautiously explored my abdomen. It felt normal, no pain, no scarring. I breathed a sigh of relief and then drew it quickly back in as a voice spoke from behind me “You are safe now.”

I turned as the figure came forward and stood beside me. I recognized the same pale, drawn skin and eerie pink eyes, but despite the formidable alien appearance its expression was kindly. The creature’s name was Ban.

“How long were you enslaved in the mine for?” He asked.

My blank expression told him that I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh my! We’ve got a fresh one! Byzar! We’ve got a fresh one!” He exclaimed excitedly, turning towards an opening in the rock I’d not noticed before. He composed himself and turned back to me, kneeling next to the bed and explained “Most people we rescue are in the mine for years before we find them. They all tell the same story — that they’ve been working up there as long as they can remember and nothing else. They are slaves in the mine and controlled by the Aloom.”

He showed me the bandage. It had six limp leech-like creatures clinging to it. “These are Aloom, the spawn of the worm God Aloo. They are strapped to the body of every mine slave — some say by Aloo himself. The worm spawn seem to latch onto the central nervous systems of their victims and control the minds of the slaves to do Aloo’s bidding. The slaves mine for Lio, which they send to us to power our homes transport and industry. It has always been this way.

For as long as is recorded in the history of our Namuh race Aloo has been worshiped and thanked by my people for bestowing on our people the gift of Lio, the source of eternal energy. Every year he is offered a Namuh sacrifice so that he may feed and continue to run the mine. My own mother was one such sacrifice.

My father was a great scientist. He had a theory that the Lio was poisoning our world, causing a sickness of the mind as well as a degeneration of the cells. He recorded subtle changes in personality and intellect across the population — our people were becoming more selfish, destructive, more prone to religious fanaticism and other delusions. When he went public with his work it angered Aloo and my mother was taken as a warning. He refused to stop his work so my people hung him as a heretic.

I recovered my father’s notes from a secret hiding place and continued his work, studying how Lio changed the physiology of the brain. I found that he had been right and so I formed the resistance. We live a simple life free of Lio and dedicate ourselves to freeing mine slaves. There have only been a few like yourself — those with memories. They spoke of another world called Earth and a place called Hell, which some seemed to think they had been sent to by some god– I put it down to Lio exposure messing with their minds in the same way it was with my race. I think Earth may be real however, as all the slaves seem to be of the same species and I’ve never come across creatures such as yourselves in Nav, so it makes sense you were brought from an alien world — perhaps another dimension.

The slaves we rescued have been more than willing to join our resistance — I hope you will also.”

Realising that I was not in the mine anymore I asked him where I was? He explained that I was in a world called Nav, which existed at the center of the mine. Nav’s sky and ground both was composed of the orange glowing rock of the underside of the mine. This gave them warmth and light and made life possible. At the poles of the world were two mountains, a bit like Earth’s volcanoes. Liquefied Lio flowed steadily out of the top of these mountains from the mines and into factories built on the slopes to harvest, bottle and sell the Lio for fuel.

Aloo made his annual journey through the center of the north mountain and emerged in a cave where his sacrifices waited to be consumed and so the Lio flowed uninterrupted. One year a sacrifice had managed to escape the cave and Aloo punished the Namuh by withholding the supply of Lio. The result was near economic collapse and anarchy among the Namuh. Many joined the resistance at this time and it was a joyful time of hope for them. However, the authorities of the Lio Company and the Church of Aloo quickly crushed the riots and sent five sacrifices as penance.

After I recovered, I joined Ban and Byzar in their resistance — there was little else I could do, but I joined willingly and believed in their cause. Ban explained that as the Aloom spawn had not fully integrated with my nervous system, my mind had not fallen under the control of Aloo. I still had my memories — of Earth, of my family. I had no idea if my family were in the mine, but my only hope was to search for them while doing the work of the resistance.

To enter the mine we had to climb through a honeycomb network of passages inside the North Mountain, right past Aloo’s lair. The first time I saw the old worm I was met with both fear and repulsion. I knew I was actually safe as the worm himself was blind. He saw and heard through the eyes and ears of his slaves and controlled their actions accordingly. In reality I had more to fear from the people I was trying to save. This was why our rescues bore more resemblance to kidnappings — grabbing slaves from behind and drugging them until the worm spawn could be safely removed.

After a time I recovered all the members of my family from the mine. It was heartbreaking — all their memories had been erased and they had no idea who I was. They were kept at Ban’s resistance camp until they were strong and their eyes had adjusted to Nav’s light and become pink, just as mine had. Then they were set free to join the resistance or live in the colony of those who were too young, old or weak to fight. My own family had become strangers to me and there was nothing more I could do for them other than to ensure their safety.

The Namuh were a race not physically dissimilar to our own on Earth. Ban was an attractive young Nam and we soon fell in love and were joined together in a ceremony not unlike Earth marriage. Life went on and we were happy together and in our work.

One black day the Lio Company authorities raided our resistance camp. Ban and I were captured; his father’s notes and his own research recovered and confiscated. We were tried and found guilty as a heretics and traitors to the Lio company. Ban’s sentence was to be hung for his crimes while I was to be sent to Aloo as a sacrifice — a tragic repeat of Ban’s own family’s misfortune.

As I lay bound in the cave of the North Mountain, I wept for my love and for my own lost family and fate. It was pitch dark and I could hear the worm slithering towards me, a slow ominous sound of scaly flesh scraping against rock. I could feel the heat of the mine permeating through the rock but it seemed to be stronger than usual, almost unbearable. I struggled and turned and realized it was actually the hot rancid breath of the immense worm towering behind me. Saliva was dripping from its grotesque mouth and dripping onto my face. I knew it had no eyes or ears, yet I felt it could sense me somehow, drawn to my body by its instinct and hunger. It moved closer and encircled my waist with its tail. It lifted me up until I was dangling right in front of its foul mouth. Then to my great surprise it spoke.

“I have waited a million Nav years for this moment. I am very old beyond your comprehension and soon I will die. I’ve been waiting for a suitable queen to bear my heir. I’ve been fed well over the years on the Namuh sacrificed to me, but they were nothing more than food. I knew of the Namuh resistance rescuing the humans from my mine and protected them from total destruction by their people, saving enough from capture to keep the movement going. Why would I do this you ask? Because I needed them. I knew it would only be a matter of time before a human bearing the child of a Namuh would be caught and sacrificed to me. Only the embryo created from two different species, from two different dimensions is a suitable vessel to incubate an Aloom spawn to full maturity. You will bear me six children my human queen.”

I looked down in pain and horror as six worm spawn were secreted from the end of the great worm’s tail onto my bare and swollen abdomen. They immediately buried their way into my belly button and down into my womb. I felt a stab of unbearable sorrow as I imagined them entering the body of my unborn child. The worm continued.

“Once my Aloom wormlings are born and have suckled on your human milk and become strong, they will feast on your useless flesh and make the transition into adulthood.

The strongest of my children will take my place as heir to the mine and dominion of this planet. The others will dig new inter-dimensional wormholes to new planets where they will establish slave colonies of Namuh, captured from this world just as you were captured from yours. These slaves will mine for new resources to distribute to the inhabitants of their new planets, all infused with the mind controlling secretion Aloo produce. Before long they will be worshiped as gods, just like myself.

Inevitably new resistance movements among the native inhabitants will spring up. The rebels that are caught by their own people will of course be offered as sacrifices to my grown wormlings for food. Eventually one of those sacrifices will be a suitable breeding queen. This is the lifecycle of the Aloo worm and this will continue for all eternity.”

Or so he thought, but see — I am still here to tell you this tale.