The Northern Ring Tower
The Northern Ring Tower
"I just heard someone say something." Hao Ren exhaled and turned to look at the monitor in the car. The convoy was almost done crossing the river. On the other side, there was light shining in the distance. "The voice said something like this world wouldn't last long…"
"Your dreams have always seemed bizarre. Don't take it lightly," the MDT said in an unusually serious tone of voice. "You seem to have the ability to communicate with other consciousness through dreams."
"I know, I know. But this time, the "connection" was too short. I couldn't grasp anything. But I have a feeling that we've come to the right place this time. This place must be the key to the planet. The sign always appears in the center of the incident, right?"
The three armored vehicles crossed the solidified Gray River safely. What greeted the mercenaries was a more desolate world than the wasteland outside. Everything there was more bizarre than ever. Through the camera mounted at the front and on both sides of the vehicle, Hao Ren saw that the earth outside was glimmering with a silvery-gray light, as though the entire world had turned into a piece of metal. There were no plants, no buildings, or even a stone of normal shape on the silvery-gray land. There were only some weird bulges and round towers, which looked like they melted into the ground like cheese. The smooth surfaces reflected the armored cars' light and refracted the light among the metal structures, creating a bizarre sight.
Hao Ren tried to make sense of the scene, and he finally figured it out; it was a melted city.
It was like casting a world in equal proportions of metal, then letting it melt and cool down rapidly halfway. That was what it would become.
"A great plain of steel..." A young soldier drew his rifle close to himself and looked at the scene nervously. "Everything's turned into metal?"
"Not metal. The Nanomachine Swarm cannot change material properties. They just made things appear similar to themselves," Ulyanov said, hitting the armored deck behind him with his rifle. "Welcome to the Old Star Continent. You're now on the remains of 6.53 million citizens and 200,000 buildings, including one of my legs, one of my arms, my liver, and three-fourths of my lungs. I really can't identify them now."
A young soldier turned to look at him queerly. "Your jokes have never been funny."
Ulyanov laughed loudly. He was satisfied with his "visceral joke". Gazing at the scenery outside, Hao Ren could not help but feel a weird emotion. The silvery land was an aftermath of the Nanomachine Swarm disaster. It looked strange and beautiful, but it was a land of dead bodies as well as city ruins. Those big bulges and round towers, which looked like melted ice cream were probably once large buildings. Were there still traces of human-made structures inside if one blew them apart? Were there remains of the city's subways and pipelines underground if one dug deep enough?
Perhaps there was nothing left. The Nanomachine Swarm may have penetrated the land long ago, turning the entire land starting from the underground in the North into its domain. But all these were just wild guesses. What happened there was unknown. Buried deep underground in the silvery-gray earth were fields that no human could touch. For the past 65 years, no one could figure out what the Nanomachine Swarm did in the land.
Similar thinking was prevalent among the mercenaries. The boorish men who fought battles to make a living could not help but feel upset when faced with the ruins of the North. Due to fear and reverence, they became sensitive. However, Nolan yawned and appeared uninterested in their reactions.
As night fell, there were no stars and moon visible in the hazy sky. It was all dark. People on the planet had not seen stars for decades. Instead of stopping, Nolan ordered the convoy to speed up. She said that the Nanomachine Swarm was the least active at night as the horrific little devils still needed to rely on solar energy to provide part of their needs. Although they were "awake" at night, their response was much slower than during the day.
Nolan calculated that if things went smoothly, they should be able to reach the Northern Ring Tower before sunrise, just in time before the window closed and the Nanomachine Swarm regained its level of activity.
The armored vehicles were passing between two towering silvery "hills". As strong lights shone on the metal "hills" on both sides, it created circles of elusive glow. Ulyanov looked at the two symmetrical "hills" and said in a low voice, "This must be the Rock Lyndon Twin Towers. They used to be the tallest buildings in the world. I came here several times when the city was still here."
"Yes, the tallest building in the world. When the Nanomachine Swarm went amok, it set a world record for the largest number of deaths in the same building. But the record was surpassed in the fourth year by the big explosion of Sanctuary No. 3 in the Far East," said Nolan as she switched on the comm next to her. "All vehicles, turn off your lights and use echolocation. We're entering a dangerous area; strong light may agitate some Nanomachines that are lightly dormant."
All the lights were switched off. The convoy now looked like stray souls wandering in a silent netherworld. In the cold, dead, bleak world, everything seemed to be small and fragile. The heavy armor plates of the vehicles did not help in giving them much sense of security. Nowhere else could make them feel farther away from the living more than this place. And the convoy was still heading deeper into death.
During the boring and monotonous journey, Hao Ren dozed off several times but never heard anything strange anymore. At last, he saw a glimmer of light outside as the convoy passed through a vast silvery-white barrier. The material of the barrier was different from that of the silvery-gray substance of the Nanomachine Swarm. Its uniformed surface was recognizably the work of humans. It was as high as tens of meters. It looked indestructible, but there was a massive hole in its lower part. High temperature seemed to have melted through the barrier and formed the crater.
The convoy passed through the hole under the barrier. Ulyanov patted Hao Ren on the shoulders and said, "This was the first hole that the Nanomachine Swarm created when it got out of hand. They flew out from the container behind this barrier. The container's long gone, and there are no longer Nanomachine Swarms across the barrier. They've all gone to the Gray River outside. No one knows why."
After passing through the hole, Hao Ren finally saw natural but mutated rocks, soil, and plants severely growing in between the rock crevices. He knew he had arrived in the hinterland of the ruins in the North—an isolated island, which was surrounded but not devoured by the Nanomachine Swarm.
Nolan raised her hand and pointed at the center of the monitor's screen. "That's the Northern Ring Tower."
In the hinterland of the northern ruins, the former walls of the sea of Nano had become a crater-shaped barrier, dividing the acidic soil outside from the natural land around the ring tower into two distinct regions. The Northern Ring Tower was sitting right on top of a hill at more than 400 m high. It was composed of three symmetrically arranged, conical spires. The three-tower building had a massive ring at the top and middle respectively—that was how the Ring Tower got its name.
The two large ring facilities were antennas. When the Master Computers were still running, these antennas were used to release signals to control the surrounding Nanomachine Swarm.
The mercenaries let out a sigh of relief when they saw the Ring Tower. They had made it through the most dangerous part of the journey. They did not have to worry about being swallowed by the Nanomachine Swarm anymore, at least before they made the return trip. The armored vehicles drove all the way to the side of the hill and stopped. The road ahead had collapsed entirely and was inaccessible to vehicles. Nonetheless, the entrance to the Ring Tower was within sight. Nolan ordered everyone to disembark and get to the building on foot.
Ulyanov got off the vehicle at the same time as Hao Ren. He looked up at the building that he last saw 65 years ago and took a deep breath.
Then he strode ahead.