Chapter 18
The Mysterious Jungle
At the time the saga takes place—as already mentioned—there was an enormous jungle measuring thousands of square kilometers, called "The Jungle." Strictly speaking, it was a sovereign state with its own characteristics, as if it were not a no-man's-land. It was located between the states of Catalonia, Soria, and Chancín del Norte. Garduna and Musarana were not counted, since each shared a border of only one meter with the aforementioned territory.
This jungle was a mystery to the entire world. No one was ever able to penetrate it, explore it, annex it to their territory, or even see it, except from afar.
From Catalonia, for example, four expeditions set out, with orders to return immediately at the slightest hint of danger. They carried the best weapons and ultra-modern vehicles. Not a single expeditionary returned. Carrying two-way radios was useless, since as soon as the jungle began—just a few meters away—powerful interference made all communication impossible. It was like a giant electromagnetic field.
If aircraft tried to fly over and photograph it, the pilot seemed to go crazy and the combat spacecraft would crash. One option was for the craft to be destroyed in midair. The Technocracy itself, the greatest air power of all time, sent one of its space machines—considered nearly invulnerable, as they could even withstand low-yield time bomb blasts. To eliminate all human risk, they crewed it with robots. Everything was perfect at first. It even seemed as if the craft's powerful engines rejected the interference. It managed to penetrate much deeper than any Russian or Soria aircraft. The servos began to transmit: "Information. This is Machine 31. Powerful, indescribably powerful. Large, very large . . . through the green leaves . . . " Suddenly the ship seemed to go mad. Instead of flying straight ahead, it stopped and began to oscillate: up and down, but maintaining a center. Then it assumed other extraordinary movements. It was as if it wanted to up, down to the right, slide to the left, down, up once in the middle, and then repeat the entire circle with variations. When the two movements—up-down, right-left—became very noticeable, it acquired a third: a propelled leap forward in a circular motion. It made a second turn and again a little further in. It was tracing a spiral trajectory. That lasted for about an hour and a half. When the aerial vehicle reached the center of the geometric figure, it exploded.
Even then, the Monitor didn't give up. He sent a second combat spacecraft with orders not to penetrate the jungle circuit, but to land thirty mechanical men, some of the most sophisticated the Technocracy had at that time. The ship then gently landed the robots at the northernmost tip of Chanchin del Norte (its inhabitants were driven out by bombs), and from there they advanced across the Chanchin border, penetrating into forbidden territory. Almost immediately, all contact with them was lost.
Through their flying machines, equipped with powerful telephoto lenses, the technocats saw the thirty servomechanisms, motionless, less than fifty meters from the border with Chanchin del Norte. They were rusted and dead. The fact that they were rusted impressed the wise men of the Technocracy more than the fact of their destruction. They knew that the robots were not invincible. The Russians and Sorias, for example, had weapons capable of opposing a robotic offensive. That wasn't it, of course. A robot could be put out of action, its pieces scattered across an area. Yes, but not rusted. The alloys of technocratic metals were capable of withstanding not only the activity of natural forces, but also the corrosive, highly oxidizing processes in the Great Machines' testing laboratories.
Interest in the Mysterious Forest occupied the technocrats on a whim, the Russians on a strategic basis, and Soria, Catalonia, and Chanchin del Norte for annexation reasons. If Chanchin del Norte, for example, managed to annex the Forest to its territory, it would see it grow into a province almost as large as two thirds of Catalonia. But not even the Sorias could enter. To say that not a single Soria penetrates anything is like stating that the Anti-being itself was defeated. The Sorias themselves, therefore, cursed as they were, were afraid to venture. This prompted the powers involved in the Cold or Hot War to conduct another type of investigation. So they had their teams of magicians who performed sacred tasks. These hermetic tasks generally consisted of reading secret documents from a distance, magically supporting or protecting military operations or operations of any other nature, assassinating powerful enemies, and countering the actions of opposing magicians. The technocratic occultists, who were extremely powerful although relatively few compared to those of other countries, when they wanted to read the Akashic Records in order to find out what mysterious agent was interfering from La Selva, saw in the astral a sort of impenetrable white wall. It was as if the entire jungle were armored, and they couldn't observe a thing. Then, one day, they decided to work together to clear their doubts. Joining forces, they created a kind of penetration cone to pierce the armor at a single point. They unleashed an energy capable of making half of Soria disappear. And nothing. They strained themselves until they were exhausted. It was no use. Always the implacable white wall that the Akashic rays could not penetrate. They finally gave up because they were very tired, and the magicians of Soria could take advantage of the situation to attack the Technocracy or, at the very least, assassinate the head of state.
When the Monitor—capricious and stubborn—was told by his exhausted magicians that they had failed, he suffered a terrible tantrum. Once he had overcome his initial anger, he came up with the idea of achieving, with the all-powerful machines of Central Machines, what the occultists had been unable to achieve. It was useless for them to dissuade him from such madness. After much pleading, they persuaded him, instead of using all the machines, to use a single gigantic complex: so powerful that it—without any other help—was capable of launching an attack on Russia. Nothing less. So, determined, he set his systems to work on an energy arrow that, supposedly, would pierce the barrier. Shortly after the vector was configured, the dials signaled danger. Monitor took no notice and blindly continued forward. One by one, all the machines in the complex, in a progression of destruction that couldn't have lasted more than a minute, diverged and exploded. Nothing remained of the system that could have been recovered. That entire Central Machines sector had to be sealed forever with lead plates to prevent contamination. All in all, the lesson served the Monitor well, as he never again ignored the advice of his magicians.
The Soria occultists, who, as mentioned, were less powerful than the technocrats but still far more numerous, created a cone of penetration on their own on another side of the jungle. Naturally, they also failed.
And so were the Soviet esotericists.
The Technocrat, Soria, and Russian governments were so intrigued that they decided to make peace for a moment and join forces in a single energy vector to pierce the armor. A convention of magicians was held in Western Protonia, considered neutral even though it wasn't. But, due to mutual suspicions, they couldn't reach an agreement. The Technocrat magicians assumed, and rightly so, that the Russian occultists would take advantage of the distraction to attack the Technocracy. The Sorias, for their part, who didn't have the slightest trust in their Soviet friends, thought: "What if these guys liquidate the Technocrats and then gut us?" The Russians, by the way, vigorously insisted on the need to do it, showing themselves willing to make any concession. This only fueled the suspicions of the others. Technocrats and Soviets, at one point, were within touching distance of coming to blows, and war almost started right there. The result was that each went home, having resolved nothing. And La Selva remained impenetrable.
But what the technocratic magicians, Sorias, and Russians didn't know was that, even if they had created a single energy pool with all their good intentions, using the magical forces of the whole until they were exhausted, they still wouldn't have been able to penetrate the armor.
At the time the saga takes place—as already mentioned—there was an enormous jungle measuring thousands of square kilometers, called "The Jungle." Strictly speaking, it was a sovereign state with its own characteristics, as if it were not a no-man's-land. It was located between the states of Catalonia, Soria, and Chancín del Norte. Garduna and Musarana were not counted, since each shared a border of only one meter with the aforementioned territory.
This jungle was a mystery to the entire world. No one was ever able to penetrate it, explore it, annex it to their territory, or even see it, except from afar.
From Catalonia, for example, four expeditions set out, with orders to return immediately at the slightest hint of danger. They carried the best weapons and ultra-modern vehicles. Not a single expeditionary returned. Carrying two-way radios was useless, since as soon as the jungle began—just a few meters away—powerful interference made all communication impossible. It was like a giant electromagnetic field.
If aircraft tried to fly over and photograph it, the pilot seemed to go crazy and the combat spacecraft would crash. One option was for the craft to be destroyed in midair. The Technocracy itself, the greatest air power of all time, sent one of its space machines—considered nearly invulnerable, as they could even withstand low-yield time bomb blasts. To eliminate all human risk, they crewed it with robots. Everything was perfect at first. It even seemed as if the craft's powerful engines rejected the interference. It managed to penetrate much deeper than any Russian or Soria aircraft. The servos began to transmit: "Information. This is Machine 31. Powerful, indescribably powerful. Large, very large . . . through the green leaves . . . " Suddenly the ship seemed to go mad. Instead of flying straight ahead, it stopped and began to oscillate: up and down, but maintaining a center. Then it assumed other extraordinary movements. It was as if it wanted to up, down to the right, slide to the left, down, up once in the middle, and then repeat the entire circle with variations. When the two movements—up-down, right-left—became very noticeable, it acquired a third: a propelled leap forward in a circular motion. It made a second turn and again a little further in. It was tracing a spiral trajectory. That lasted for about an hour and a half. When the aerial vehicle reached the center of the geometric figure, it exploded.
Even then, the Monitor didn't give up. He sent a second combat spacecraft with orders not to penetrate the jungle circuit, but to land thirty mechanical men, some of the most sophisticated the Technocracy had at that time. The ship then gently landed the robots at the northernmost tip of Chanchin del Norte (its inhabitants were driven out by bombs), and from there they advanced across the Chanchin border, penetrating into forbidden territory. Almost immediately, all contact with them was lost.
Through their flying machines, equipped with powerful telephoto lenses, the technocats saw the thirty servomechanisms, motionless, less than fifty meters from the border with Chanchin del Norte. They were rusted and dead. The fact that they were rusted impressed the wise men of the Technocracy more than the fact of their destruction. They knew that the robots were not invincible. The Russians and Sorias, for example, had weapons capable of opposing a robotic offensive. That wasn't it, of course. A robot could be put out of action, its pieces scattered across an area. Yes, but not rusted. The alloys of technocratic metals were capable of withstanding not only the activity of natural forces, but also the corrosive, highly oxidizing processes in the Great Machines' testing laboratories.
Interest in the Mysterious Forest occupied the technocrats on a whim, the Russians on a strategic basis, and Soria, Catalonia, and Chanchin del Norte for annexation reasons. If Chanchin del Norte, for example, managed to annex the Forest to its territory, it would see it grow into a province almost as large as two thirds of Catalonia. But not even the Sorias could enter. To say that not a single Soria penetrates anything is like stating that the Anti-being itself was defeated. The Sorias themselves, therefore, cursed as they were, were afraid to venture. This prompted the powers involved in the Cold or Hot War to conduct another type of investigation. So they had their teams of magicians who performed sacred tasks. These hermetic tasks generally consisted of reading secret documents from a distance, magically supporting or protecting military operations or operations of any other nature, assassinating powerful enemies, and countering the actions of opposing magicians. The technocratic occultists, who were extremely powerful although relatively few compared to those of other countries, when they wanted to read the Akashic Records in order to find out what mysterious agent was interfering from La Selva, saw in the astral a sort of impenetrable white wall. It was as if the entire jungle were armored, and they couldn't observe a thing. Then, one day, they decided to work together to clear their doubts. Joining forces, they created a kind of penetration cone to pierce the armor at a single point. They unleashed an energy capable of making half of Soria disappear. And nothing. They strained themselves until they were exhausted. It was no use. Always the implacable white wall that the Akashic rays could not penetrate. They finally gave up because they were very tired, and the magicians of Soria could take advantage of the situation to attack the Technocracy or, at the very least, assassinate the head of state.
When the Monitor—capricious and stubborn—was told by his exhausted magicians that they had failed, he suffered a terrible tantrum. Once he had overcome his initial anger, he came up with the idea of achieving, with the all-powerful machines of Central Machines, what the occultists had been unable to achieve. It was useless for them to dissuade him from such madness. After much pleading, they persuaded him, instead of using all the machines, to use a single gigantic complex: so powerful that it—without any other help—was capable of launching an attack on Russia. Nothing less. So, determined, he set his systems to work on an energy arrow that, supposedly, would pierce the barrier. Shortly after the vector was configured, the dials signaled danger. Monitor took no notice and blindly continued forward. One by one, all the machines in the complex, in a progression of destruction that couldn't have lasted more than a minute, diverged and exploded. Nothing remained of the system that could have been recovered. That entire Central Machines sector had to be sealed forever with lead plates to prevent contamination. All in all, the lesson served the Monitor well, as he never again ignored the advice of his magicians.
The Soria occultists, who, as mentioned, were less powerful than the technocrats but still far more numerous, created a cone of penetration on their own on another side of the jungle. Naturally, they also failed.
And so were the Soviet esotericists.
The Technocrat, Soria, and Russian governments were so intrigued that they decided to make peace for a moment and join forces in a single energy vector to pierce the armor. A convention of magicians was held in Western Protonia, considered neutral even though it wasn't. But, due to mutual suspicions, they couldn't reach an agreement. The Technocrat magicians assumed, and rightly so, that the Russian occultists would take advantage of the distraction to attack the Technocracy. The Sorias, for their part, who didn't have the slightest trust in their Soviet friends, thought: "What if these guys liquidate the Technocrats and then gut us?" The Russians, by the way, vigorously insisted on the need to do it, showing themselves willing to make any concession. This only fueled the suspicions of the others. Technocrats and Soviets, at one point, were within touching distance of coming to blows, and war almost started right there. The result was that each went home, having resolved nothing. And La Selva remained impenetrable.
But what the technocratic magicians, Sorias, and Russians didn't know was that, even if they had created a single energy pool with all their good intentions, using the magical forces of the whole until they were exhausted, they still wouldn't have been able to penetrate the armor.
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