Future Lovecraft

This artifact, showing evidence of prolonged exposure to the conditions of space, was recovered by Professor Amadou Sangare in a folk market outside the New Lagos Desolation Zone, although its true origins remain unknown. The inscription is etched in a dead language, not native to Africa, believed to have once been a trade language prevalent on Terra. Translation has revealed the meaning of the prayer poem, though elements such as rhyme and metre have been lost in transition.

The plaque bears a prayer offered by early starfarers to the Elder Gods, pleading for protection and safe passage between planets and star systems. The crude mysticism and superstition once applied to space travel parallels the rudimentary nature of technology and knowledge of that bygone epoch. Note the childish optimism expressed in the verses, reflecting a primitive belief that the long-dead Elder Gods yet possessed any influence amongst the stars. This artifact represents both an infantile step in starfaring history and a remnant from the Dark Ages, when mortals yet doubted, and even challenged, the supremacy of the Great Old Ones.

The flapping of heavy, grey wings against the membranous thickness of the void

Echoes in the thundering roar of our thermonuclear heart, pounding against its carbon bonds.

Humble are we who sail the satin tapestry of night, ever on the verge

Of the Pit, where sleeping lies the Blind Idiot of all Oblivion.

May the sheen of Bast’s smile, though never so warm as upon her brood,

Find our voyage safe from the burning cold wrath of the aether.

Before Hypnos closes all eyes forevermore, for another day,

May we yet gaze with awe and horror unfettered.

Protect your servants from the ebon, bilious hearts that throb against the crystalline

Chains that bind them to the orbs and spheres that pulsate brightly in the

Eternally Yawning Gulfs. Their noxious, chromatic radiations pollute the

Eons with the foul beneficence of their Great Old Masters.

The narrow, blanched roads between worlds that our vessel travels overhang with

The looming, glassy canopy of galaxies and nebulae fertile with Three-Lobed Eyes.

They watch with a patience as icy as the void that cradles their bower.

Though our voices are mere flecks of cosmic dust adrift between eons,

Please heed this plea from your vassals, O Elder Lords.

May the dying light of the cosmos find our hull shining with the might and majesty

Of the vast shell that ferries Lord Nodens across his abyssal kingdom.

From the hearth fires of one sacred star to the next, may we lowly souls find safe passage,

And in our journeys, may we find comforting respite

Against the Old Ones who dream in their deathless slumber.

THE DOOR FROM EARTH

By Jesse Bullington

I

WHEN PIPALUK, THE chief engineer of Hiurapaluk’s Peril Containment Plant, together with 12 of her most well-armed and efficient underlings, came at flickering, artificial dusk to seek the infamous Professori, Laila, in her amphibechanical facility on the lower-most substreet of the city’s underlevel, they were surprised, as well as disappointed, to find her absent.

Their surprise was due to the fact that Professori Laila had made much to-do about her expedition not taking place for another fortnight; all of Pipaluk’s plots against the Professori had hinged on there being sufficient time to gain the rest of the Quorum’s approval before confronting the rabble-rousing academic. They were disappointed because their formidable warrant, with symbolic fiery font glowing on an antique digital tablet, was now useless; and there seemed to be no earthly prospect of wiping the smug expression from Laila’s hairy face, to say nothing of confiscating her domestic warrens for the use of the Engineers Guild.

Ingeniøri Pipaluk was especially disappointed, for Laila was her chief rival in the Quorum’s science bloc, and was acquiring altogether too much fame and prestige among the Voormis of Mhu Thulan, that ultimate peninsula of the Grænland subcontinent. Pipaluk had been glad to receive certain evidence corroborating her suspicions that Laila’s expedition through the Eibon Gate could be catastrophic, and not just in terms of heightening the Professori’s already-dangerous popularity.

This evidence suggested that Laila was not, in fact, a devotee of the state-god, Tsathoggua, whose worship was incalculably older than the Voormi race. No, it seemed that the Professori instead paid tribute to Tsathoggua’s paternal uncle, Hziulquoigmnzhah, with whom the true god of the Voormis had suffered a falling-out sometime in the previous millennium or three. This schism, which had something to do with the fall of Humanity, or perhaps the rise of the Voormis of Grænland and sundry other peoples in sundry different places, had resulted in the sealing of the Eibon Gate.

Walling up the entryway between the worlds of the benevolent, bat-furred toad-god Tsathoggua and that of the much-less-attractive demon prince Hziulquoigmnzhah seemed a surefire means of reaffirming Tsathoggua’s favour. The Quorum’s vote on this matter had been unanimous, and so the pit where the portal was located was closed off using a variety of fail-safes, and then the whole area was surrounded in a series of airlocks, cultural heritage be damned. Until Professori Laila started in with her insane theories of interstellar harmony and pan-theological unification, no one had given any thought to reopening the portal of ultratelluric metal that lay buried in ruins of black gneiss beneath Mhu Thulan’s capital city.

Pipaluk had suspected the worst as soon as she discovered the Professori’s new laboratory was directly adjacent to the outermost airlock housing the gate to Cykranosh that the warlock Eibon had used to escape Earth in ancient times, if the mytho-historical record was to be given credence. Alas, the Quorum had dragged its feet, despite Pipaluk’s warnings, and now it was too late—she would have given her musk glands to kick the Provost in the kanaaks for postponing his vote as long as he had.

Pipaluk’s subgineers bustled about Laila’s laboratory in their glistening salamander-suits and, behind a tarp, they discovered where the Professori and her team of graduate students, clone servitors, and formless spawn had hacked into the municipal pipe that made up one of the facility’s walls and plugged in their plasmaborers. The tunnel they had excavated led—surprise surprise—out of the lab, through a mega-support column, and directly into the first airlock bay, the dull-metal doors towering some thirty meters tall over Pipaluk’s team.

“Airlock initially opened, Aggusti Second,” the voice of one of the subgineers crackled in Pipaluk’s pulsing, yellow bio-helm. “Breached on average twice daily each day since.”

“Hymirbjarg,” Pipaluk cursed, and several of her underlings grinned to themselves to hear their normally unflappable superior use such strong language. “I trust this is sufficient?”

“Fall back, Ingeniøri,” Provost Ole answered over the Quorum channel. “We’ll hold an emergency meeting. Politibetjent Chief Malik is on his way up, so extract your team and—”

“Wha—shhhack?” Pipaluk held down the garble button she’d installed onto her com-panel as she addressed her subgineers on their private channel. “Right, we don’t have time to deal with more dawdling by those kanaaks. Ane and Nuka, with me. The rest, seal this airlock after us and don’t open it, no matter what. I trust you all remember what happens when you open airlocks, yes?”

They did. It had been Pipaluk’s team, after all, who designed the last batch of svataarsualiartartoq-suits for Mhu Thulan’s formless spawn commandos—space stations tended to lack many gaps for the polymorphous spawn to flow through, so infiltrating the interstellar strongholds of those Yig-worshipping Valusians and Ithaqua-kissing Gnophkehs necessitated finding another way to get the formless spawn inside. Spacesuits that matched the design of those used by the targeted station, save with opaque helmets, did the trick quite nicely—fill a few suits with the spawn, trigger a rescue beacon on the station’s frequency, and float the formless commandos through the void until they were retrieved by drones and taken inside the airlocks. Then, total havoc as the deadly children of Tsathoggua swept through the station, a sentient tidal wave of ichorous death.

“How will we get back, Ingeniøri?” subgineer Nuka asked, his voice cracking.

“Have some faith, son,” said Pipaluk. “We’ll recode the locks as we go. Things were built by your ancestors; think their primitive programming is beyond your skill?”

Nuka straightened his shoulders, his three-toed foot snapping up in salute. Through the faceshield of his bio-helm, Pipaluk could see the lad’s umber fur bristling straight out from his face in embarrassment. Good, he should feel like an idiot.

“—stunt,” Provost Ole was saying as Pipaluk relaxed her finger on the garble button. “Is that clear?”

“Perfectly, sir,” said Pipaluk, and quit the channel altogether. “Right, let’s go.”

Nuka whined, long and low; Ane prayed, fast and loud; and the other subgineers all saluted as the ancient airlock opened into the deep.

II

There were three airlocks in total, and the trio had reached the control panel beside the second by the time the first had ground shut behind them. Before advancing any further, Pipaluk had Ane explore to the left and Nuka to the right—the Ingeniøri had been over the schematics a dozen times lest just such an emergency entry become necessary, but it never hurt to confirm what the blueprints had already told her.

“Dead end,” Nuka reported through the bio-helm’s thrumming com-membrane. “Basalt. Dry. No cracks.”

“Same here,” Ane said, as she hiked back across the bay.

“Good,” said Pipaluk. “Everything matches up. The reports state that the Eibon Gate was interdimensional, so they were able to completely surround it. Basically, they built a giant basalt box around the thing, with only an airlock leading in or out. Around that, another stone box with an airlock, and then another. So, through this door is another bay and across that is the final airlock, which opens into the ruins where the Gate is. Professori Laila and her team are either in the bay beyond this door, working on the last airlock, or they’ve managed to breach it and gain the ruins, which could be bad. Very bad.”

“‘Bad’?” said Nuka. “‘Very bad’?”

“Depends,” said Pipaluk, hoping against hope that her quarry was still fiddling with the last airlock and not beyond it. “Even with the feeble half-lives they were capable of producing, back when this was all built, the fail-safes in the ruins should still be operational. So, in a best-case scenario, the fail-safe will have arrested the Professori’s advance. Worst-case scenario, Laila will have somehow gained the Gate.”

“Fail-safes?” Nuka whimpered. “Issi.”

“Act like you’ve got a quad,” Ane snorted, petting the slimy muzzle of her microwave spitter as she sidled up to Pipaluk. The weapon purred at the subgineer’s touch and Pipaluk made a mental note to invite Ane over for a soak in her breeding bath when they were safely home—the Ingeniøri’s whiskers needed a serious stroking and she had a feeling this was just the Voormi to give it to her. This wasn’t really the time for such concerns, admittedly, but stress always made Pipaluk’s glands overproduce.

“Remember,” Pipaluk said, as her fingers danced over the airlock’s panel, “we need to stop Laila at all costs. Alive to stand trial is preferable but by no means necessary. The main thing will be avoiding the fail-safes, if those idiots have opened the airlock, and the Professori’s formless spawn if they haven’t. We may already be too late, so from here on out, we move faster than fast, got it? Now, let’s get this heretic.”

“Oh yeah,” said Ane, and her weapon shivered in anticipation.

Nuka whinnied and made the sign of Saint Toad.

Pipaluk opened the airlock. A rush of cooling, semi-congealed blood poured out over their feet.

III

The bay between the second and third airlock doors glowed a faint turquoise from a K’n-yan luminance system, and before the Voormis’ bio-helms could tint out the blinding, pale light a fail-safe leapt on Ane and bit off her head. The thing’s gears screamed and spat puffs of rust as it thrashed atop the decapitated subgineer, a blur of slick, amphibious tails and bluish metal pincers. Nuka panicked, his high-pitched howl nearly blowing out Pipaluk’s com-membrane, and the Ingeniøri had to force herself not to attack the subgineer before taking out the fail-safe. She spat out the immolation code for Ane’s suit, even as she leapt out of the way of the imminent blast. Even through her own salamander armor, she felt the wave of heat buffet her like a solar flare.

The fail-safe was still alive, but its metallic components had melted to the point of incapacitating the thing. Nuka had managed to avoid the worst of the blast, but was still crying like a Gnophkeh, sitting in the tacky, smoking blood that had flooded the bay. The bio-helm filtered out everything but the smell, the bouquet of burnt hair and engine oil making Pipaluk’s eyes water. She didn’t look down at the fused mass of mewling fail-safe and gorgeous, dead subgineer. Instead, she yanked Nuka to his feet and fired a cold-shower code down his channel—the result was instantaneous, the coward straightening up and shuddering as his suit doused him in a psychoactive chemical spray.

“Subgineer Nuka,” Pipaluk barked in his face while he was ripe for imprinting. “Ready your weapon and follow me. Those hymirbjarg-brained academics have obviously breached the last airlock. Hurry!”

The subgineer saluted and snapped his olid-pistol off his belt. It was no microwave spitter, but it was better than the ceremonial gladius that Pipaluk had brought—had she known Laila wouldn’t be in her lab, ready for arrest, she obviously would have brought something more substantial. At least there weren’t any more fail-safes between them and the final airlock. Probably.

They cautiously entered the final bay, splashing in puddles as they moved through the cobalt twilight. Judging from the oily whorls of colour in the blood, the team of grad students, servitors, and spawn had taken out a fail-safe, as well, but there was no sign of the fallen guardian, nor, for that matter, any of Laila’s crew, beyond the blood. That was…odd. Holding her hand up to the last panel, Pipaluk saw her talons were shaking. She gritted her fangs, willing herself to enter the code, when Nuka nickered excitedly behind her. She lowered the volume on his channel before turning to see what was bothering him now.

A pillar of blood had flowed straight up into the air behind them. Pipaluk went into a roll, just as the formless spawn crashed down. Of course that was why there were no bodies—this must be one of Laila’s, injured in battle with the fail-safe and left behind to heal itself on the corpses of the fallen. It probably couldn’t have hid from the fail-safe for long, trapped alone with it in this bay, which meant they might be just behind the blasphemous Professori…unless she had died in this place, too. Well, no sense being optimistic just yet, Pipaluk reasoned, as her reflexes carried her backward, up, down, sideways, flipping away from the relentless, deadly ooze.

“Stink it!” Pipaluk panted, as she lured the pursuing wave back toward Nuka, who sat with his back to the final airlock. “Stink the thing, already!”

Nothing came over the subgineer’s channel and, cartwheeling up to his splayed body, she saw he was not simply lying down on the job; he had quit it altogether: His neck had been twisted almost completely off when the spawn had hit him, only the suit keeping it attached. Gross. The pistol in his hand seemed intact, however, and all she had to do was—

—Go spinning across the bay as the formless spawn caught her foot and hurled her away from her prize. It was on her before she stopped sliding over the slick basalt, but a low heatburst from her suit drove it back, the thing hissing as it smoldered. Before it could throw itself atop her again, she was on all fours and dashing back to Nuka’s corpse. It tried to put itself between her and the gun, but another suit-pulse let her slip past it, then the bony handle of the stinker was in hand. The spawn tried to hide in the pools on the ground, but her bio-helm filters picked up the creature immediately and she blasted it into oblivion with the foul little weapon.

“For Ane,” she caught herself saying, as she depressed the trigger a second, superfluous time, which surprised her—she was not one for redundancy or sentimentality, as a rule. If anyone found out she was going soft, they might make a move for her position, try to hit her with the old bump-and-shuffle. But there was no time for politics, not now. Giving the bay another scan, just to make sure she hadn’t missed any of the spawn in her haste, she turned and opened the final airlock, praying she wasn’t too late.

IV

The ruins of Eibon’s tower retained their pentagonal design but little else, at least that Pipaluk could recall from the blueprints. There certainly hadn’t been any mention of mineral cacti, molten streams of metal crisscrossing the floor, or a perpetual ashy cloud in the toxic air. A yellow moss coating the walls and fallen blocks confused her, for it was surely a close relation to the squamous fungus that grew only in the most hallowed temples of Tsathoggua, and yet she could not imagine a place less-favoured by the god than this foyer to his uncle’s realm.

The moss also carpeted the floor wherever the mercurial creeks did not, but was trampled down so thoroughly that she could make no estimate of who had passed this way, or when. Everywhere she looked were wet scraps of Voormis, oily hunks of fail-safes, and puddles of deconstructed formless spawn, but nothing seemed alive in the ruins. The grotto was cramped, dark, and malodorous; it immediately put her at ease.

Pipaluk crossed the bizarre chamber, ducking beneath acid-dripping stalactites that whispered to her in a foreign tongue as she methodically searched the area. She paid them no mind, for she made out the name ‘Hziulquoigmnzhah’ amidst their stony gibberings and knew them to be heretical deposits. Then, at last, she saw a florescent reddish panel set in a spit of black gneiss that rose from a pool of the liquid metal—the small plate had a crack at its base, and from this fissure issued the iridescent fluid that dribbled down the ebon rock to feed stream and puddle alike. There was no sign of Laila, any member of her team, or even an active fail-safe. Pipaluk had failed.

“Pipaluk!” Provost Ole blared in her ear, the Quorum channel forcejacked back on. He sounded upset. “We’ve been monitoring everything. You’ve failed.”

“Impossible,” she sneered, too tired and disappointed for diplomacy. “You’re bluffing; you can’t—”

“Subgineer Refn here sneakpatched us into your bio-helm before you even reached the second airlock,” said Ole. “He’s also filled us in rather thoroughly regarding the numerous infractions you have committed in the course of your tenure. Effective immediately, you are to return to the first bay, where politibetjents are waiting to relieve you of your government equipment. Thereupon, you will stand trial for putting your subgineers in harm’s way instead of using spawn, as is basic protocol. And then there is the matter of your refusal to obey my direct order to return to the Quorum for further instruction, and—”

Pipaluk couldn’t deactivate the channel anymore, but she found she could still mute it. Subgineer Refn, eh? She hadn’t seen that coming—she’d taken him back to her warrens a few months ago, but hadn’t found him particularly enjoyable or even memorable. Now she wondered if he had been researching her, probing for weaknesses, rather than probing for—well, no matter, the damage was done. She had to admit he’d made a decent play of it, going directly to the Quorum, but it was hard to admire an action that would most likely result in her being painfully sacrificed to the inscrutable god she had spent her entire life trying to serve.

Of course, there was a second option. Depriving Ole, Refn, and their cronies of the political points her public trial would bring was a proposition too tempting to pass up, interdimensional, reality-shattering horror be damned. Pipaluk smiled to herself, shaking her head, and stepped into the shallow pool of shimmering metal. Just as she put her hand on the portal, however, a cry came from just behind her. Spinning around with the olid-pistol primed, she saw Professori Laila rising from behind a softly-chanting stalagmite, the camouflage of her suit falling away as she willingly revealed herself.

“Wait!” Laila repeated. “Don’t!”

“Fancy seeing you here,” said Pipaluk, dialing the gun down to Reek. She wanted Laila alive and sane enough to stand trial, after all. Pipaluk might be going down, but it wouldn’t be alone. Then she remembered the portal just behind her, her potentially suicidal resolution of moments before, and she cocked her head curiously. “What are you doing here? I thought the whole point was to go through the Gate, not get your team killed just to skulk about some ruins.”

“The point was to determine if the Gate could be safely used,” said Laila, crossing her arms. “Just as I always said. You were the one who insisted I was trying to enter the damn thing.”

“Right,” said Pipaluk. “Sure. So, you’re telling me you didn’t have any of your team go through?”

Laila winced. “Most of them didn’t make it this far. Those fail-safes were—”

“Most. But you made it. And so did…?”

“A couple of grad students.” Laila shivered. “Their names aren’t important now. They’ll come up at the trial, I’m sure, and—”

“What happened to them!” Pipaluk barked. “You crazy kanaak, what happened to them?!”

“They went through.” Laila looked down at the blurred shadow of her reflection in the metal pool. “Dorthe went first. She was supposed to return immediately, if she could. When she didn’t, after a day, Nivi went and—”

“A day,” Pipaluk groaned. “Those toe-dragging fools on the Quorum.”

“More like two,” Laila said sheepishly. “No sign of either of them. Which, well, isn’t surprising—the portal is older than we could date. Even if it still leads to Cykranosh, there’s no telling what might be on the other end by now. Maybe the Gate projects you into solid rock, the bottom of an ocean. Maybe the planet’s shifted so much it just dumps you into space.” The Professori shuddered. “None of the probes we sent through came back, observation cables were severed as soon as they crossed over, remotes failed, blah blah blah, and so those two volunteered. And now we know—it’s not safe, anymore. If it ever was.”

“Maybe,” said Pipaluk thoughtfully. “Maybe not. Surprised you didn’t take your chances with it when you saw me coming. Surprised you warned me off it.”

“Despite your slanderous campaign of character assassination, I’m a devout Klarkashian,” said Laila, straightening her shoulders. “I would never allow a fellow servant of the Sleeper of N’Kai to unwittingly fall into that devil Hziulquoigmnzhah’s realm without a sure means of escape. I told you and I told the Quorum time and again, I’m not a heretic. I’m just—”

“Hush!” said Pipaluk, her com-membrane rippling. The second airlock had just been activated. The politibetjents were coming to arrest them. “They’re coming. For both of us—I violated orders by pursuing you and got a few subgineers killed in the process. That puts us in the same bath, so let’s make a break for it. I’ll take a possible death of my own making over a certain one of theirs.”

“Pipaluk, Pipaluk, Pipaluk,” Laila chided. “Where is your faith? There is nowhere to run. We have committed crimes, you and I, and must be taken to the Eiglophian Plains for punishment. It is written that they who err in the service of the slothful ebon god shall be forgiven, so long as they are purified by a sacrificial death. I go willingly to my justice and suggest you—blargh!”

Laila doubled over in agony, retching into her bio-helm. A faint wisp of stench danced at the end of Pipaluk’s pistol as she tucked the hot weapon into her belt and went to the incapacitated Professori. The final airlock was beginning to open as Pipaluk hoisted her former adversary and shoved her headlong through the Eibon Gate, the back of the hinged metal panel banging softly against its gneiss setting as the Voormi disappeared into the misty haze that obscured whatever lay on the far side. Without a backward glance at her pursuers, Pipaluk hoisted herself up and squirmed after, through the door to Saturn.

V

The team of politibetjents and formless spawn sent to capture Pipaluk waited for days in the mossy ruins, neither wishing to follow the Ingeniøri through the mysterious portal, nor daring to leave in disobedience of Provost Ole’s orders. At length, they were recalled, but the result of the whole affair was highly regrettable from the standpoint of the Quorum. It was universally believed, due to a leaked bio-helm file here and an uploaded simcreation there, that Professori Laila and Ingeniøri Pipaluk had not only escaped, by virtue of the luminous science they had learned from Hziulquoigmnzhah, but had made away with a dozen formless spawn commandos and fail-safe behemoths in the bargain. As a consequence of this belief, the public’s trust in the Quorum declined and there was a widespread revival of the dark worship of Tsathoggua’s paternal uncle throughout Mhu Thulan in the last century before the onset of the great Solar Firestorms.