Earthchime: Our Own Devices
An Excerpt from Book I of the Earthchime Trilogy
by Dietrick Hardwick
Prelude: The Egg and the Void
Arabella stood on the precipice of nothing, her feet weightless, her breath a whisper carried off by the hiss—a sound older than the stars.
It wasn’t the hiss of menace, no snake’s venom. It was the vibration of something infinite, a quiet crackle, like the first shiver of an egg fracturing against the pressure of becoming.
The sound of beginnings.
Around her, the void wasn’t black but alive—flickering, folding, bending in on itself. The Oraculum Ovum hung suspended in the chaos, its surface smooth yet shifting, as if it carried the weight of every possibility in its shell. A low glow pulsed from within, the color of dawn and endings.
Arabella reached out. Her fingertips trembled before the fragile perfection of it. She knew instinctively what it was—knew it like a memory she’d been born with. This wasn’t the first egg. Nor would it be the last.
The hiss grew louder, a rhythm, a call.
She felt it in her bones, her blood, her breath. A whisper passed through her mind, not in words but in resonance, a truth carried on the waves of Incandescence. She spoke aloud without meaning to, her voice as fragile as the shell before her.
“I am only an egg.”
The phrase carried no shame, only awe. She felt the words resonate, not with her but through her, as if the universe itself had borrowed her tongue for a moment. Her knees gave out, and she sank, not in despair but in surrender.
She was small. Insignificant. But she was also necessary.
She was the vessel, the fragment through which the Incandescence peered back at itself.
The hiss crescendoed into a sound almost melodic—a crackling harmony that enveloped her. The shell of the egg shimmered, and she saw it then, through the folds of time and space:
The hiss was the first note.
The fracture of silence into being.
Creation wasn’t ordered. It wasn’t planned. It was a messy, divine explosion, and she could see it all unfolding from this singular moment.
The egg cracked.
Just a hairline fracture, but it was enough.
Light poured forth, and with it, life, chaos, and the infinite expanse of what could be. Arabella reached out again, tears streaking her cheeks.
This wasn’t the end.
It wasn’t even the beginning.
It was the eternal Now, a perfect loop of becoming.
Somewhere in the glow, she heard a voice—not hers, not the Incandescence, but something older, softer, and infinitely wise. It was the voice of the sacred feminine, the mother of all things.
“This is how we begin again, child. And again. And again.”
Arabella smiled through her tears, cradling the warmth of the universe’s first breath in her hands.
“I am only an egg,” she whispered again, not to herself, but to the endless unfolding.
The hiss faded, leaving behind only light.
Prologue: The Wheels of Fate
The hum of machines blanketed New Guardiana like a relentless lullaby—a low, vibrating tone embedded in the city’s bones. Every corner, every gleaming tower, seemed to pulse in sync with the soft resonance, a heartbeat for a city that never slept. From the outside, New Guardiana was a marvel. Towers of silver and glass stretched skyward, their spires piercing the clouds, symbolizing progress and unity under UniFed’s watchful eye. Each building gleamed with a pristine beauty, reflecting neon hues across streets as smooth and flawless as polished stone. But the light was a facade, hiding the truth beneath.
Beneath the silvered streets and sprawling vistas, the world twisted into a maze of forgotten alleys, crumbling infrastructures, and shadows that crept across walls scarred by time. The ciphers —the city’s compliant citizens—moved in an endless cycle, locked into preordained routines, their roles dictated by UniFed’s unyielding algorithm. Every action, every breath, every heartbeat was part of a grand equation, monitored and adjusted with precision. It was a delicate, artificial harmony, an existence forged by control.
The ciphers themselves no longer questioned the routine. Drugs trickled through their veins like clockwork, designed to dull rebellion and suppress the echo of memory. They had long forgotten the cost of this harmony, pacified by the system’s steady hand. Compliance was easy when the edges of one’s consciousness were sanded smooth. Each capsule swallowed was a dose of contentment, a deliberate veil over a once-restless humanity.
Arabella stood at her surveillance station, illuminated by the soft glow of a hundred screens. Data streamed across her console in a constant cascade of symbols, numbers, and colors—an endless river of information pouring from the city’s hidden veins. The screen pulsed with life, monitoring every citizen’s movement, every whisper, every anomaly. Tonight, a warning glowed on her screen. Somewhere in the city, an aberrant had been detected. Anomalies, or “aberrants,” were rare, irregular blips in the city’s immaculate order.
Arabella’s fingers drummed lightly against the glass console as her gaze followed the data flow, scanning for any flicker of disruption in the carefully curated pattern. Locate, track, report, dispatch—the order was embedded in her, a routine as automatic as breathing. But as she scrolled through the data, an unfamiliar sensation tugged at her consciousness. It was a feeling without a name, a stirring that had no place in her world. She pressed it down, buried it under her training, but it lingered like a shadow behind her eyes.
When she closed her eyes, she was haunted by fragments, fractured images that slipped through the cracks of her consciousness. A shimmering light danced on the edges of her vision—a firefly, flickering softly. It pulsed with a warmth that felt strangely real, leading her to the edge of a world she didn’t understand. It whispered of something beyond New Guardiana’s sterile walls, a truth hidden in shadows.
Her eyes snapped open. Routine. Order. The firefly dissolved back into the dark. Somewhere in the city, the aberrant waited, a threat to the system’s delicate balance. She took a steadying breath, forcing the visions into the depths of her mind. Her training took over, mechanical, methodical. But a single thought lingered as she began the hunt: Could there be something beyond this world, something the system didn’t want her to see?
Chapter One: A Cipher’s Routine
Arabella’s day began as it always did, in the sterile embrace of her sleep pod. She lay cocooned in the chamber’s dim glow, the remnants of last night’s sedative still clinging to her mind like a thick fog. The pod tracked her vitals—her heart rate, breathing, brainwaves—every detail cataloged and recorded. She stretched, her fingers grazing the sleek, soft interior of the pod. A warm hum thrummed beneath her fingertips, like the breath of a slumbering machine.
She rolled out of the pod and onto the cool, metallic floor, blinking against the bright lights of her living cell. Her fingers brushed her uniform, a second skin woven from fibers embedded with her unique series code—Cipher 211-A. The fabric clung to her like a synthetic exoskeleton, snug yet strangely comforting. Each strand, each stitch, tracked her every move. It was designed for her alone, woven from the **Fibonacci biotech seed cells** encoded with her biometrics, binding her even closer to the city’s grand design.
Breakfast was a capsule—nutrient-dense, flavorless, devoid of sensation. She swallowed it, feeling its chemical rush hit her bloodstream. She barely tasted it, though she sometimes caught herself longing for flavor, for the richness of a world she’d never known. But as always, she suppressed the thought, chalking it up to routine glitches in her mind. After the capsule came her first choice of the day: the Cocktail.
The dispenser glowed in the corner of her cell, a sleek machine offering a choice between three capsules, each neatly categorized, each promising its own form of controlled escape:
• **Meldium-A**: A stimulant, good for physical tasks or exercise, a jolt of energy in a world of monotony.
• **Tranquil-B**: A hallucinogen, giving a few hours of vivid dreams and a haze of contentment that blurred the city’s sharp edges.
• **Serenum-C**: A cerebral experience, expanding awareness with a sense of detachment—a blend of clarity and distance.
She hesitated, her finger hovering over the Serenum-C option. It offered a brief escape from herself, a moment to drift beyond the rigid confines of her reality. She selected it, feeling the capsule dissolve in her mouth, spreading a cool numbness through her veins. Her body relaxed into the restraint chair as it locked her in place, securing her for the drug’s effect.
As the Serenum-C took hold, images unfurled in her mind. Cityscape Reflections: Volume 27. She’d seen it before—a thousand times, perhaps more. Perfect, orderly streets stretched endlessly in her mind’s eye. Skyscrapers rose like polished pillars of glass, piercing a sky of artificial serenity. Each citizen walked in seamless harmony, their steps synchronized, their faces void of expression. It was the world they promised her—the world of perfect order. A mirage.
But tonight, something was different. A faint hum wove through the scenery, distorting the sounds around her, resonating deep in her skull. The familiar cityscape wavered, lines bending and twisting, colors bleeding at the edges. The buildings quivered, their smooth facades glitching, becoming cracked and twisted. And there, hovering in the corner of her vision—a flicker of light, pulsing like a heartbeat. The firefly.
The firefly’s light hung in her mind like a ghost, a tiny spark fighting against the shadows. She blinked, trying to steady herself, but the image lingered, flickering in and out, as though it were alive within her mind. Her pulse quickened as she struggled to focus, the firefly’s glow punctuating her breath in beats, each one louder than the last. Her vision trembled, bending around the cityscape like a glitch in the code. The once-familiar, pristine world distorted and blurred, skyscrapers bending into sharp angles, dissolving into broken fragments.
The smooth, endless streets now stretched like veins across a decaying landscape, cracked and uneven, as though the very ground beneath her feet was shifting. The sterile beauty of New Guardiana’s cityscape felt thin, like a mask slipping, revealing something raw and dark beneath.
Then the firefly vanished, leaving only a faint afterglow that pulsed behind her closed eyelids. Her head felt heavy as the Serenum-C worked its way deeper into her bloodstream, coating her senses in a muffled haze. She forced herself to breathe, to settle back into the chair, telling herself it was only a hallucination, a side effect of the cocktail. But as her fingers tightened against the armrests, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the firefly was more than just a flicker of her mind.
“What… was that?” she whispered, her voice swallowed by the silence.
The image left her unsettled, a crack running through her carefully constructed reality. She tried to refocus on Volume 27, the familiar scenes of the cityscape meant to calm her mind, to center her in the order she knew. But as the drug’s hold loosened slightly, she found herself restless, her gaze drifting back to the console, to the data streams, to the hum of the system that governed her every breath.
The resonators. The pulse of the system thrummed beneath the visuals, like a heartbeat she had never noticed before. It was a sound that seemed to vibrate within her bones, a rhythm that matched her own, echoing in the back of her mind. Yet now, she could feel the rhythm shifting, an imperceptible discord woven into the seamless melody. The sound nagged at her, scratching at the edges of her awareness.
She released herself from the restraint chair and took a shaky breath. As her hands rested on the cool metal of the console, she became acutely aware of the data streaming across the screens, cascading in a steady, relentless flow. It felt suffocating, this endless stream of numbers and symbols, like a wave crashing over her mind, forcing her back into the mold she had always known. But that brief flicker of light—the firefly—had left a mark she couldn’t ignore.
As she gathered her bearings, a directive buzzed at her wrist, yanking her back into the present. She glanced down, her eyes narrowing at the words blinking across the small screen on her communicator: Aberrant Detected: Sector D-4.
Sector D. Her chest tightened, her mind snapping back into protocol, instinct honed by years of training taking control. The outlying districts were seldom talked about, half-forgotten sectors left to decay on the outskirts of New Guardiana’s meticulously curated heart. Sector D-4 was among the oldest, the scars of time visible on every wall, every cracked pavement. There, the buildings sagged under the weight of neglect, their once-sleek facades crumbling and marred by years of erosion.
Arabella’s boots echoed down the stark corridor as she left her cell, her steps measured and precise, like the rhythm of a machine. But as she moved toward the exit, the thought of the firefly still burned in her mind, its faint glow casting shadows over her doubts. She pressed her hand to her chest, her fingers brushing against the small badge bearing her series code: Cipher 211-A. It was meant to ground her, a reminder of her identity, her role in the grand design. But tonight, it felt heavy, an anchor pulling her down.
Outside, the streets were deserted, bathed in the cold neon light spilling from the city’s towering structures. Skyscrapers stretched into the dark sky, their glass surfaces reflecting back the sterile glow of the streets below. Every inch of New Guardiana was illuminated, bathed in a light that left no room for shadows. The city thrummed with energy, a mechanical heartbeat resonating through every wall, every street, every soul.
As she moved toward Sector D-4, the pristine scenery began to shift, transforming into something older, grittier. The polished streets gave way to cracked pavement, weeds pushing through the concrete like silent rebels. The gleaming skyscrapers faded into squat, neglected buildings, their windows darkened, their walls scarred by decay. Here, the hum of the resonators was faint, as if the city’s control had loosened, allowing something raw and wild to seep through the cracks.
Arabella’s steps slowed as she turned down a narrow alley, her breath fogging in the chill night air. The silence here was thick, almost tangible, pressing down on her with a weight she hadn’t felt before. She felt exposed, vulnerable in a way she had never known, as though the city’s watchful gaze was weaker here, its grip loosened.
And then, just ahead, she saw him—the outlander. He was huddled in the shadows, his form a dark silhouette against the crumbling wall. His breaths came in ragged gasps, his body tense and coiled, like a cornered animal. When he turned to face her, his eyes caught the faint glow of a distant streetlight, wild and desperate.
Arabella’s heart pounded, her fingers instinctively reaching for her communicator. Protocol dictated she should call it in, report him, wait for backup. But something about the way he looked at her—a flicker of recognition, of fear and defiance—stayed her hand.
“You…” he rasped, his voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper. “You have to listen.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with urgency, tinged with a desperation that gnawed at her instincts. She took a step closer, her gaze narrowing as she studied him. His clothes were torn, his face smeared with grime, but there was something in his eyes, a glint of something she couldn’t place.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
The outlander glanced around, his gaze darting to the shadows as if he expected something to emerge and snatch him away. “It’s all a lie,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “Everything they told you. The resonators, the system—it’s not real. They’re keeping us asleep.”
The words hit her like a jolt, a cold shock that spread through her veins, mingling with the remnants of the drug in her bloodstream. She stiffened, her fingers twitching as the resonance in her ears grew louder, a low hum building into a roar. She wanted to dismiss him, to call him mad, delusional. But the firefly’s flicker lingered in her mind, casting doubts she couldn’t shake.
“What do you mean, ‘asleep’?” she asked, her voice softer, a tremor of curiosity betraying her otherwise calm demeanor.
The outlander’s eyes met hers, his gaze intense, unwavering. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The glitches, the firefly. They’re cracks in the system, fractures in the reality they’ve built around us.” His voice grew stronger, his words spilling out in a rush. “They trap us in this illusion, keeping us compliant, making us believe there’s nothing else. But there is… there’s so much more.”
Arabella’s pulse thundered in her ears. She wanted to deny it, to tell him he was wrong, that the system was perfect, that everything was under control. But a tiny voice, buried deep within her, whispered a different truth. She could feel the weight of the city pressing down on her, a suffocating force that left no room for doubt, no space for freedom.
“I… I don’t understand,” she stammered, her voice faltering as the resonance in her ears became a pounding beat, a visceral reminder of the system’s hold over her.
The outlander’s gaze softened, a trace of sorrow in his eyes. “You will,” he murmured, his voice barely more than a breath. “Soon enough.”
And then, with a swift movement, he melted into the shadows, disappearing down the twisted alleys of Sector D-4. Arabella stood frozen, her mind reeling, her thoughts a whirlwind of confusion and doubt. The directive on her wrist buzzed again, the words **Aberrant detected** flashing insistently. She was supposed to report him, to call for backup, to fulfill her role in the system. But something held her back, a weight in her chest that wouldn’t let her move.
She glanced down at her communicator, her finger hovering over the call button. But instead of pressing it, she turned and began to walk away, her steps slow, her heart heavy with questions that had no answers. The resonance hummed louder in her ears, a dull roar that pulsed with each beat of her heart. The firefly’s glow lingered in her mind, a flicker of light in the darkness.
For the first time, Arabella felt as though the world around her was slipping, like sand through her fingers—a once-solid reality dissolving into fragments. Each step away from Sector D-4 felt like she was pulling herself free from an invisible chain, one she hadn’t known was there until now.
The streets back to her cell were silent, and for the first time, Arabella noticed how hollow the city felt at night. New Guardiana, with its gleaming towers and perfect symmetry, suddenly seemed brittle, fragile. The smooth neon lights and polished metal felt cold, devoid of the vibrance and warmth of life. Each building, each street, was a monument to control—a carefully maintained illusion hiding a truth she couldn’t yet grasp.
As she approached her cell, the resonance had softened, but the firefly still flickered at the edge of her vision, an ember refusing to die. She stopped before the door, feeling the weight of it all—her routine, her role, the whispers of the outlander—pressing down on her. The words he’d spoken repeated in her mind, intertwining with her own questions, each one pulling her further from the certainty she’d once known.
She slipped inside, letting the door hiss shut behind her. Her eyes drifted to the console, to the screens that streamed the city’s endless data, and for a moment, she felt a surge of defiance, a need to tear it all down, to escape the walls that held her. But the moment passed, replaced by a gnawing doubt, a whisper that maybe she was safer within the cage of routine, within the known.
Still, the firefly danced in her mind, a tiny beacon defying the shadows.
Arabella lay down, the hum of the pod lulling her into a light sleep, but her dreams came swiftly, vivid and sharp, as if called forth by something beyond her control.
Chapter Two: Shadows in Sector D
The firefly was there, pulsing softly, casting its glow over an alien landscape. Arabella stood barefoot on a surface that felt like cold glass, stretching endlessly beneath her, reflecting fragments of her own face in a thousand shifting, broken pieces. Around her, shadows twisted, folding in on themselves in shapes that defied logic, fragments of New Guardiana warped and stretched into impossible forms.
She reached out, her hand trembling, as the firefly flitted ahead, its glow casting an amber warmth over the cracked glass beneath her feet. The world shifted as she moved, bending around her, a place that was both familiar and wrong. Skyscrapers rose at impossible angles, spiraling toward a darkened sky where faint stars blinked like dying embers. She recognized landmarks from her city, but they were distorted, half-formed visions that seemed to mock the perfection of New Guardiana.
As she took a step forward, her reflection on the glass twisted and fragmented, her face splitting into a mosaic of disjointed features, eyes that blinked out of sync, a mouth that stretched into a silent scream. She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, but no sound escaped. The resonance—the same hum she heard in the real world—echoed in the dream, but here it was discordant, broken, the steady rhythm fractured into something jagged and raw.
“Arabella…” a voice whispered, soft yet pervasive, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.
She froze, her eyes darting around, trying to locate the source. The firefly pulsed again, its light growing, bathing her in a warmth that felt almost real, almost alive. Her reflection on the glass shifted, each shard glowing with fragments of memories she couldn’t place—an old city burning, resonators humming like ancient machinery, faces of people who felt familiar but whom she didn’t recognize.
The firefly flitted toward her face, hovering before her eyes, its light growing until it was blinding. She felt a pull, like it was drawing something out of her, an ancient, buried truth clawing its way to the surface.
“Wake up, Arabella…” the voice whispered again, louder this time, and she felt her mind unraveling, the edges of the dream fraying like a fragile thread stretched too thin.
Arabella jolted awake, gasping, her body drenched in sweat. Her fingers gripped the edge of the pod, her nails digging into the metal as she tried to steady herself. Her heart hammered, her breaths coming fast and shallow, the firefly’s light still imprinted on the backs of her eyelids.
The console blinked softly beside her, streaming its usual data, but she felt different, raw, as though a layer of her consciousness had been stripped away, leaving her vulnerable. She could still hear the outlander’s words, echoing in her mind, blending with the voice from her dream.
“Wake up, Arabella…”
The words haunted her, pulling her from the comfort of her routine, her role. The familiar rhythm of the resonators no longer soothed her. Instead, it grated against her senses, each beat a reminder of the cage she hadn’t noticed before.
Unable to shake the feeling, she slipped out of the pod, her movements slow and cautious. The sleek walls of her cell seemed to close in around her, the hum of the system pressing down like a weight on her shoulders. She couldn’t stay here, not tonight, not with the firefly’s glow still burning in her mind.
She left her cell, the cold light of the corridors washing over her as she walked, aimless, her steps carrying her toward the lower levels of the city. Down here, the air was stale, thick with a faint metallic tang, the scent of old machinery left to rot. The pristine cleanliness of New Guardiana’s upper levels faded, replaced by peeling walls and flickering lights that cast long shadows over the cracked floors.
As she descended, the hum of the resonators grew fainter, as if the system’s hold weakened in these forgotten corners. She felt a strange thrill, a sense of freedom that tingled at the edges of her consciousness. Here, beneath the city’s carefully maintained surface, the world felt raw, imperfect, alive.
Her footsteps echoed as she ventured deeper, the lights growing dimmer, casting the hallway in a sickly yellow hue. Ahead, a single door stood slightly ajar, leading into a room she didn’t recognize. She hesitated, her pulse quickening, a voice in the back of her mind urging her to turn back. But the firefly’s glow lingered in her vision, urging her forward.
She stepped inside, her breath catching as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The room was filled with machinery—old, rusted, its metal skeletons exposed, wires dangling like vines in a forgotten jungle. In the center of the room, partially obscured by shadows, stood a large machine, its surface covered in symbols she couldn’t read, intricate patterns etched into the metal.
It hummed faintly, a low, uneven pulse that felt different from the resonators she knew. This was something older, a relic from a world she’d never known. She took a step closer, her hand reaching out to touch it, fingers grazing the cold metal. A jolt shot through her, a spark of energy that prickled up her arm, making her skin tingle.
Images flooded her mind, visions of machines humming in perfect unison, their rhythms blending with the pulse of the earth, a resonance that felt more alive than anything she’d felt in New Guardiana. She saw glimpses of places beyond the city, landscapes untouched by the system’s control, where nature and machine coexisted in harmony.
The firefly flickered at the edge of her vision, its light weaving through the patterns on the machine, guiding her hand to a hidden latch. She hesitated, a voice in the back of her mind warning her to stop, to turn back, to forget she’d ever seen this place. But the firefly pulsed, insistent, urging her on.
Her fingers found the latch, and with a soft click, a panel slid open, revealing a compartment within the machine. Inside lay a small, delicate device—a pendant, intricate and ancient, its surface etched with symbols that seemed to glow with a faint, internal light. She reached for it, her fingers brushing the cold metal, and a warmth spread through her, a sense of familiarity, of belonging.
The pendant pulsed in time with her heartbeat, the light within it flickering like the firefly, casting its glow over her hand. She slipped it into her pocket, her fingers closing around it, feeling the warmth seep into her skin.
As she turned to leave, a strange calm settled over her, the weight of the pendant grounding her, anchoring her to this new reality. She walked back through the dim corridors, the firefly’s glow fading but its warmth lingering within her, a beacon in the darkness.
The hum of the resonators was quieter now, a distant echo that no longer held its grip over her. For the first time, Arabella felt a sense of freedom, of possibility, as though a door had opened in her mind, revealing a path she hadn’t known existed. The world around her was changing, the cracks widening, and she felt herself slipping through, drawn toward a truth that lay just beyond the edge of her understanding.
As she climbed back toward her cell, the pendant’s warmth pulsing against her chest, she knew that something fundamental had shifted. She wasn’t the same cipher who had awoken in her pod this morning. Something deeper had been awakened, something that wouldn’t be silenced.
And as she lay back in her pod, her hand resting over the pendant, she closed her eyes, the firefly’s light burning bright in her mind, a promise of the journey ahead.