Lt. Commander Doz Finch - All Things Gateside (Part IV)
Doz Finch
((Tanglewoods, Gateside Dimension))
The sky above Doz Finch was an eerie blanket of merlot with no sun, no stars, no nothing, unlike the ground below her that felt alive, if alive was the word, hogged by creeping hummocks of desquamating flora. But there was an above, and there was a below, and that, she had decided, was good enough for now.
With her almond eyes ahead and with one foot in front of the other, she reckoned that anything was possible, including putting a stop to whatever process was enabling this dimension from relentlessly marauding its way into their own.
She’d kept the same team with her, because it only made sense. Samira Neathler and Ethan Espinoza, whose combined shrewdness and ingenuity had helped to forge a path and a map for the other teams to use on their way through the gate, had seen first-hand what strange possibilities came from a Gateside bleed. So stick together like glue, that’s what they’d do.
The older woman turned to her colleagues with a smile as wide as it so often tended to be, but her brows may have been knitting together just a little bit.
Finch: The research data suggests that the encroachment is powered by an intelligent defensive/terraforming system, and we believe the source of it is…ta-da! Somewhere here.
Neathler / Espinoza: Response
They had tramped a few miles west of the gate, to an area of dense, rose-coloured tanglewood. A seemingly endless stretch of stunted and horizontally twisting trees and vines that not even the witch from the tale of Hansel and Gretel would dare call home. It was terribly odd being out there in the wilderness of an unfamiliar realm, far away from the reliability of metal, durasteel and the reassuring thrum of a power line. But the clunky footsteps and melodious swishing of hydraulic actuators emanating from the robotized mech suit that walked alongside them, provided a small comfort at least.
She’d learned a thing or two from her brother Wallace over the years.
Finch: It’s believed that it was somehow inadvertently activated by the scientists. That means it can be deactivated. It’s just a case of figuring out how.
Neathler / Espinoza: Response
And not necessarily just figuring it out but staying ahead of the curve. She felt mad thinking it, even madder believing it, but the whole place had this dreadful sense of things shifting around them. As though if she dared to look in one spot for too long, then the spot next to it was likely to change, like a sleight of hand. Losing their visual of the gate after they had all gone through it was where it started, and that was confounding enough.
She glanced at the information flowing along the screen of the device in her hand, its pictures and annotations shining back at her. Contained there was a wealth of information, enough to hopefully guide her lot with their search through that grim, twisting place.
Finch: Jugtuk has been kind enough to upload his own findings to our devices. He believes that certain flora here function through an extremely advanced mycorrhizal network, and that there might be a connection.
Neathler / Espinoza: Response