The Major and Doctor Veneralli hadn’t originally wanted to plan an expedition into the Great Unknown.   The seventeen year-old Harbeckke Institute, named for Harlan Wilder-Harbeckke, a pioneer in invasive-transition sleep consciousness research, called "dreamwalking", had been working for years on a unique, and many said foolish, theory that human dreams could manifest physically as an actual landscape that could be entered and traversed.  They believed that you could enter someone's dreams and walk around in that small "pocket universe" which was, so far as the dreamer was concerned, just as "real" as the everyday world they lived in while awake.  

 Harbeckke's project was called "Outland".

 For different reasons, Major Holloway and Doctor Veneralli had worried about the feasibility and the supposed value of such an excursion.  It didn’t just sound dangerous: it sounded suicidal.  But orders from the Higher–Ups were still orders.   They’d wanted this thing done.   They saw it as an incredible opportunity to expand the scope of human knowledge and widen the power base of the human community past the confines of this solar system.  They wanted to explore.   They wanted to know what new opportunities for technology and weapons advancement they could take from such a new frontier.  They had secret dreams of colonization.

 Major Holloway had dreams that were nightmares.   He knew the Doctor had the same nightmares.

 This just didn’t feel right.

 “Just like all of you, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around this,” the soldier, a decorated officer named Axwell, said, concern and doubt edging the calm delivery of his words.  “But from what I understand, it’s all been certified as verifiable.”

 “So this place, this strange area of space, actually exists, but we don’t use a conventional form of vehicular travel to get there,” a soldier in the crowd attending the briefing said.  He was in his early thirties.  His name was Kapeleffski.  He was a beefy man, ruddy complected and square-jawed, but his eyes were alive with the anticipation of being among the first to venture forth into a territory heretofore undiscovered by conventional exploration.  

 They were all like that.  It wasn’t just about being soldiers.  It was about being trailblazers into the dangerous unknown.

 They were the men from an Eyes-Only combined U.S. Air Force/U.S. Navy Ultraviolet-code Ops unit, known formally as USEPSOC’s, the United States ExtraPlanetary Special Operations Command, the 13th Ranger Regiment 5th Battalion’s “External Environments Defense Services Mobile Assault” platoon.  Informally, they were known as “Broken Mirror”.  This specially-selected team that the Major addressed was composed of the most elite warriors from Broken Mirror.

 “That is correct.  What happens is we activate a portal, an energy gateway, that extends a piece of that other place, the intended destination, into our own geospatial area.  The two areas temporarily intersect and create a bridge, one from the other, that we can cross and then the destination retracts it, that extension, back to where it should be, very distant from us in space and in time.”

 “But this place, ‘the destination’ as you call it, sir, has been described as extremely hostile to intrusion from matter, organic and inorganic matter, from our area of space.  Is that right?”

 “Yes.”

 “Can you define this ‘hostility’, sir?”

 Holloway nodded his head as he considered the merits of the question. “Well, without specific case evidence to go on, you have to understand that this is mostly theory, but its theory based on solid intelligence.  The term ‘hostility’ refers not so much to the physical as it does to the cultural.  It’s not a science fiction fantasy kind of a thing, like matter and antimatter, and it’s not a ‘mirror universe’ thing where you’re liable to meet a physically identical version of yourself, only evil.  It’s societal.  You know what xenophobia is, right?  Good.  Then simply define our use of the word ‘hostile’ to be an attempt to define a psychotic level of xenophobia unlike anything we’ve ever encountered.  To the inhabitants of this realm, the planet we have unofficially named ‘Brimstone’, any evidence of our existence as offworlders alien to their area of space is anathematic --- just the idea we come from someplace else will be enough to drive them into a killing frenzy.”

 The Major cast a sidelong glance over towards the scientist who stood near the podium and Veneralli grimly offered a minute, but noticeable, nod.

 “But what about that creature, that man-like thing we told was a ‘non-human biological variant’, who came through from the other side?” a different soldier, a blockish-built Hispanic named Saldana, asked with clear reticent born from doubt.  “You guys call him ‘The Ambassador’.”

 “He’s a traveler, an astronaut and an archaeologist of sorts, and he knows about the existence of other worlds and other cultures.   That knowledge has made him a pariah, an outlaw heretic, amongst his own kind,” Doctor Veneralli interjected.

 “Permission to speak freely, Major Holloway?”

 “Granted, Sergeant Salzmann.”

 “This planet, Brimstone, is supposedly huge, five times the size of Earth.  Have you done any preliminary probes with unmanned piloted devices?  And what did they find?  Was it anything that would be worth the risks we and the men are going to run going there?  Because, and excuse me for saying so, this place you describe sounds impossible, like a fantasy, and if it’s not a fantasy, then it’s like Hell itself…!”

 Major Holloway squared his shoulders and sighed.  “I’m with you there, soldier.  I admit it.  But Dr. Veneralli can perhaps provide some more practical scientific insights that center less on theory and supposition and more on good hard fact…”

 Veneralli gave Holloway a pained and aggravated look that would have scorched steel plating and then stepped up to the podium in the small conference room.  He preferred not to deal with the rank and file, keeping his exposure to other members of the Institute limited to those involved in the sciences divisions.

 “Look, I know you men aren’t scientists, so I’ll give you the Readers’ Digest version, without all of the math,” Veneralli began, sticking to the script he and Holloway had worked up the night before.  “Anyone here familiar with the term ‘worm hole’…?”

 The group of men nodded.

 “Well, it’s not exactly the same as the situation here, but its close enough, and we’ve got a man, an Earth-born man, who went through from here to there -- and he survived,” Veneralli began, “His name is Raphael Karamanga.  But I’ll warn you: he has some really horrible tales to tell about his experiences there, in this place we call the Withered Land…”

                   *           *           *

 The gray and black hangar where they kept the machine was the twice the length of a football field, standing six stories tall, and located six miles due west outside city limits under a federal No-Fly Zone.  It was situated on the southern perimeter of a secure military facility referred to as “The Fort”.   The base was fenced off by an electrified, nine foot-high fence.  The Fort consisted of half a dozen buildings, mostly reinforced concrete Quonset huts, and an underground bunker area half the size of the base where scientific labs, machine shops, and the base’s sick bay were housed. 

 The huge camo-patterned hangar was surrounded by soldiers from an Army National Guard unit, the 27th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, attached to the USAF’s Air Intel Section A-2.  The troops themselves were never allowed to get closer than within forty meters of the hangar, designated “The Darkhold”.

 Major Brent Holloway had worked on the grounds of The Fort for almost four years.   He was considered a veteran of the sequestered, ultraviolet-code Science Ops scene and a rare long-term worker at what was considered America’s most top-secret testing facility.  The Fort did not have the reputation or dubious fame of other special projects bases like the notorious Area 51 in Groom Lake, Nevada, but it was well-known within the privileged ranks of various congressional Appropriations committees upon which it was dependent for funding.  Major Holloway had always experienced mixed feelings about the mission and the technology being explored at The Fort, but the career soldier was an intelligent man and a man of science.  He knew that he was the gatekeeper to the doorway to a new frontier.

 He’d become accustomed to living under the shadow of The Machine.

 Inside the Darkhold was a dark and brilliant miracle of twisted technology: The Machine.  It did not work by virtue of the laws of physics familiar to most human minds.  Though developed primarily by physicist Doctor Woodson Seward-Frank, a compatriot of Ben Veneralli, its creation had been guided by the directions of the alien being officially designated "UNHBV-R1", which stood for "Uncategorized Non-Human Biological Variant R1".  UNHVB-R1 was Dr. Veneralli’s creepy guest, the being commonly referred to as “Mystikyll”.   Soldiers assigned to the lower ranks were absolutely forbidden to know anything about his existence.   Conversely, though, they all knew about The Machine.   The Machine was the gateway-construct designed to move men and materials to and from Earth and The Withered Land.  The machine itself was so visibly complex it didn’t seem as if it could possibly be a product of human technology.  It looked like an engine powering the fires of Hell’s darkest pits.

 Made from brushed titanium steel and segmented by rib-like arches of carbonized vanadium alloy, it was shaped somewhat like a curved cone lying on its side, like a cornucopia or “horn-of-plenty”.  It was built onto a flat, oval tabletop-platform supported by angular, spidery girders that descended into a concrete-lined pit some twenty-four meters deep.  Power conduits ran up those spider’s legs from a glowing, cubed cage the size of a school bus, sitting on the floor of the pit, housing the device’s power source.

 The power source was a collection of rocks, elongated ovals, made of some previously uncategorized metal element called ‘Ikarenium’, set into pink quartz housings.  Doctor Veneralli had been principal in obtaining those strange rocks from his source, a mysterious man named Crofton Wettinger…

 An aluminum roadway ran into the interior of the horn-shaped device’s giant maw, which was nearly fifteen meters in circumference.  Except for the shining aluminum path leading in, the inside of the curved cone was lined with five foot-long fan-blades set into concentric rows running twelve-deep.  The fan-blades perpetually vibrated with a low, thrumming sound, even when no power was ran to the device, making Woodson Seward-Frank’s invention seem like it was eerily alive.

 “What does it do?” Holloway remembered asking the Project Leader, Doucette, and the Senior Systems Engineer, a woman named Reichbert.

 “They say it captures, amplifies and focuses certain sentient brain frequencies, collecting electro-encephalic energy, and runs those frequencies in an assaultive perpendicular array against the ever-present, pervasive, magneto-quantum field, a chronometric field, that surrounds each of us until the ‘bubble of spatial-time’ around any particular organic individual or geographic location is freed from the influence of that larger parental time field,” the engineer, Reichbert, had replied, reciting the theoretical summary of the machine’s workings.  The woman had been obviously doubtful the thing could ever work.  She’d seen Major Holloway’s brow wrinkle and furrow and she’d amended the explanation with, “It opens doors to faraway places.”

 “So, okay, this thing transports us to wherever we have it programmed,” Holloway said.  “But there isn’t one of these on the other end, is there?  So how do we get back home?”

 Reichbert pursed her lips and said,  “We inject each one of you with a small electronic capsule, like a tracer.  It’s subcutaneous and very small.  We’ll put it in the underside of your forearm.  That gelatin-encased capsule contains a transponder circuit and a tiny sliver, a fragment, of Doc Veneralli’s mystery mineral, that stuff he calls ‘Ikarenium’.  Ikarenium emits a peculiar energy pulse, not quite like what we think of as atomic radiation, but something similar, beyond the usual electromagnetic spectrum.  Anyway, at a preset time we’ve scheduled, The Machine will lock in on the frequency generated by the mineral and will pull you all back home.”

 “And what is that preset time period?”

 “Ninety-six hours --- unless some unforeseen crisis forces us to move up the timetable”.

 “Ninety-six hours and then The Machine yanks us away back across Space.  Sounds kind of like the theory of a wormhole?” Holloway had offered.

 The engineer had chuckled.  It was an edgy, humorless sound.  “More like a gun’s barrel preparing to shoot a bullet into the angry heart of Chaos.”

 The Project Manager, Doucette, a stately, highly professional man who’d already made his objections to the creation of the device known, made a disgusted face and said, “Glad you can find the humor in this.   I can’t.   Nothing good will come from this.  What it is, Major, is a very bad idea made into reality.  It’s the tollgate to the proverbial Highway to Hell.”

 It always gave Holloway a chill when he remembered Doucette’s words.

 The soldier looked into the wide, dark mouth of The Machine and had to fight to dispel the image of the thing as a beast waiting to eat his exploratory team.  This was the point of egress through which USEPSOC’s Broken Mirror unit was going to transport to The Withered Land.

 And Brent Holloway didn’t like the idea one damn bit.

                   *           *           *