by Alfred Wurr
After a while, he set things up so that I could join his favourite computer bulletin board system and meet some of his friends, virtually. I chose the online handle Cool Hand after a movie that I had seen once. It seemed to fit. I didn’t share my true identity with the BBS’s other denizens, of course; they wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told them, I suspect.
Though we communicated solely by text, interacting with other like-minded people became a favourite part of my day. Behind the anonymity of the keyboard, it doesn’t matter what you look like or sound like or where you come from—just what you type. On the BBS, we were connected by common interests and were able to be, in some ways, more our true selves.
Until recently, life had been as good as it could be without my freedom. I’d been having dreams since just before arriving in the cavern all those years ago, but they’d stopped after the experiments that took my memories. Then, six months earlier, in February 1983, they’d started up again with no warning.
Flashes of frost and fire, blackened earth and clouds of steam on a lifeless, scorched desert plain left me moaning and sweating for weeks. They weren’t all doom and gloom; others presented images of glittering crystals, radiant, crackling with power, giving off light in all the colours of the rainbow. Some were mammoth, the height of three-storey buildings, yet others as small as marbles. Next, a swirling sphere, white as snow, translucent, surrounded in a veil of fog.
At first, I tried to ignore them all as random flights of fancy of an overwrought mind. The experiments were taxing, requiring me to channel and manipulate the Underfrost for hours on end. I must be cracking under the strain, I thought. Then I started to see myself flying over the desert floor, on a journey somewhere, and suspected my mind was trying to tell me something—something it had forgotten or could not integrate into a conscious thought. I knew I had amnesia, that my long-term memories were damaged, jumbled, or locked in my subconscious. Maybe this was my wounded mind struggling to repair itself. Whatever the source, they didn’t go away.
Instead they continued to grow more frequent and urgent as time passed. In the past month, they’d become so intense I feared going to sleep, so I’d just stay awake for weeks on end, but it was an unsustainable solution. I don’t need to slumber every sixteen hours like warm bloods, but I still need to do so periodically. More than a week without it and I’ll suffer from sleep deprivation like anyone else.
After trashing my quarters during a particularly intense hallucination, I consulted my small circle of friends—Scott and Emmett—desperate for a solution.
“Too many movies, maybe?” Scott suggested when I finally told him of the visions. “Have you watched anything with a desert in it lately? After watching King Kong, I once dreamed I was running from a creature on a tropical island in a dress, wearing high heels.”
Laughing at Scott’s jokes and staying conscious helped, for a while—then I started hallucinating even while wide awake.
Eventually we concluded that the visions were drawing me back to the cavern of crystals where I’d first arrived. Whatever I had once known about the cavern had disappeared along with my memories, so I had nothing to go on except what my friends could find out.
“When you see the desert, are there identifiable landmarks, anything that stands out?” Scott asked, when quizzing me for details.
There wasn’t much to distinguish one part of the desert from another, but a few large craters did catch my eye. To aid in the search, Scott secured classified satellite photos of the Nevada desert and I pored over them, but most were too high-altitude to match what I saw in my visions. With no other alternatives, we both put out the word on the BBS, describing the two most notable craters. A day later, Boreas, the BBS SysOp, suggested Lunar Crater as a possible match. “It’s a volcanic maar,” Boreas wrote. “Astronauts trained there for the moon landings. It’s a bit of a tourist spot these days.” Scott located some photos; it matched my visions. Easy Chair Crater came quickly afterward, lying roughly northeast of Lunar Crater.
Scott solved the mystery of the crystals, using his root computer systems access to find out what he could. “They’ve been studying them since before you showed up, Shivurr,” Scott said as we played Ms. Pac-Man. “Apparently the crystals contain chemical elements not found on the periodic table. Even a single unknown element would be incredible, but these crystals are made of several new elements.” He pushed his eyeglasses back up his nose, shaking his head. “No wonder they’re so interested.”
I shrugged. “What’s that got to do with me? They’re still just a bunch of rocks, right?”
Scott shook his head slowly and pursed his lips. “More than you’d think, man. You’re made of this stuff, too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-uh, no joke,” Scott said. “Seems the crystals react to you too. It’s been part of their experimental protocols for a while now. There’s some connection they don’t really understand there. I don’t know, man. Maybe the crystals are calling you or something.”
Whatever the case, I realized that I needed to get wherever the dreams wanted me to go, find out more and hopefully put an end to the visions and my compulsion to find the chamber at their centre. Leaving my few friends and the safety and comfort of the Institute wasn’t easy. I had no real choice, though; staying meant losing my mind, eventually.
Chapter 3
Unto the Allfrost
A quarter mile from Easy Chair, I veered to the right and followed a shallow valley between it and another shorter rise to my right, treading on a bed of volcanic bombs and scoria. Six miles later, the blacktop of a two-lane highway lay across my path, bisected down its centre by twin lines of yellow. US Route 6, I thought, smiling. Right where it should be. No vehicles were visible in either direction, coming from neither California on the left, nor Utah on the right.
I walked across without stopping and up the rise on the other side. Loose stones and gravel rolled down behind me as I climbed. After a few more miles of similar countryside, the ground turned black and rougher, stained dark with volcanic ash, evidence of an ancient conflagration of brimstone and fire, lava and steam, too terrible to imagine.
I ascended gradually, making for the peak of a hill a few hundred feet high and a mile or so distant, an island surrounded by a sea of black. I glanced to my left at the sun, now descending into the western horizon, spreading an orange-and-yellow glow across the sky above the mountains in the west, almost appearing to set them alight. Shadows, cast by rocks, boulders, and rises in the terrain, lengthened and stretched across the ground, often indistinct and indistinguishable among and upon the blackened earth, until darkness swallowed them fully. I tripped now and then, but there was still enough ambient light to make my way—barely.
I’d been walking for about five hours since leaving Lunar Crater. I’d sucked down a few more sodas on the way, staving off dehydration in the intense heat and sunlight of the afternoon. Now that the skies were dark, I felt like a 7-Eleven Slurpee put back in the fridge after being left out in the sun too long.
I paused in my trek and took another small sip from my dwindling supplies. The fresh moisture spread through me with a rush. I shivered as my digestive system worked to cool and crystallize the water, restoring the snow that I’d lost to the sun and warmth and dry wind, a process fuelled and fanned by sugar and caffeine. It made me light-headed, drained as I was. I stopped short of drinking all of it, lowering my hand like helium balloons were tied to my wrist. Not knowing when I’d be able to resupply, I knew that rationing now might mean the difference between life and death.
Finding the drinks at Lunar Crater saved my life, I realized. Any lingering regrets about exposing myself to the long-haired kid vanished. I resumed walking, feeling better.
The crystals were close, buried somewhere in front of me under tons of volcanic rock, giving off a chill like a campfire radiates heat. The ground continued to rise, and the blackened earth gave way to the rusty reds and browns, mixed with grey, of
the slope of the hillside. I trudged steadily to the northeast, then turned due east and at last made it to the plateau at the top. I spent the next thirty minutes exploring the summit, looking for a way down into the rock but finding none. The faint whup-whup of helicopter blades, carried on the wind, drew my gaze to the east. A few miles away, a black helicopter rose from behind a hill. I crouched down, held still, and watched as it flew southwest.
Curious, and with no better alternatives, I began walking east, toward the helicopter’s point of origin. Stars grew visible in the sky overhead as I marched, shining bright in the dry, clear air. The relatively flat ground made the going much easier. About a mile farther along, I found myself at the bottom of another volcanic maar, partially filled with volcanic residue, ash, scoria, and sand that spilled out to the west. To the east, the massive bowl was still intact, forming a sloped wall of rock four hundred feet high, from behind which the helicopter had first appeared. I walked to the top, scrambling over rocks and sliding on gravel. An aura of light reflected off motes of dust hanging in the air at the top of the hillside.
The far side was all murky shadows, except for the lights of a large camp at the base of the hill. Unable to see much, I descended for a closer look. As I neared, inchoate rectangles coalesced into an encampment of windowless trailers, trucks, tractors and other excavation equipment. Off to my left, I could see a collection of portable toilets, bookended by large blue dumpsters. Beyond the trailers lay a helicopter landing pad, currently unoccupied, next to a collection of large fuel tanks. Heavy-duty construction lights on stands stood sentry, illuminating the grounds. To the right, several chairs ringed an unlit firepit. Stacks of wood—trucked in from elsewhere, I presumed—lay ready for the cool nights and recreational gatherings of the camp’s inhabitants.
I drifted closer, hugging the ground, hoping that the glare from the floodlights would blind anyone in the camp to anything that lay beyond. No people were visible. The loud hum of gasoline generators washed away the sounds of my approach in a sea of white noise. Electric cabling snaked from the generators across the desert floor into the nearby trailers to the east and into the hillside beneath my feet, running alongside thick hoses and ductwork attached to large portable air-conditioning units.
No way this is a coincidence, I thought. I’ve got to get in there.
I remained still, above it all, and listened. Hearing no voices or footsteps, I moved down into the camp and raced over to the closest generator. Discarded bottles, cans, and cigarette butts littered the area. Keeping low, I glanced left, taking note of an opening in the side of the maar, leading down into the earth to the west, from where I’d come—from where I still felt the crystals’ pull.
The sound of a radio playing hard rock rose above the generator’s hum as a trailer door opened to my right. A man stepped out, lighting a cigarette. He leaned against the wall.
“Close the damn door, Larry,” shouted a voice from within. “You’re letting in the heat.”
Without reply, the smoker, Larry, kicked the door shut, taking a long pull on his cancer stick, the tip glowing red in the near darkness. He wore military fatigues, a battle dress hat over a buzz cut, and a sidearm in a holster on his hip. I judged the fresh-faced soldier to be in his early twenties.
The trailer lacked windows; more men than just the one who had complained about the open door might be inside. Looking around, I spotted two sentries I had missed before as they walked the perimeter of the encampment and another standing guard a hundred feet away, down the faint trail that led off into the desert. That made at least five soldiers that I had to worry about.
The door of another trailer, crowned with multiple satellite dishes and antennae, banged open. A woman and two men, all wearing white lab coats, exited, engaged in conversation. Though I didn’t know them personally, I’d seen enough eggheads to recognize their type at a glance. The woman had dark hair, cut short. She appeared to be in her early forties. One man was balding, with a trim beard, wearing thick glasses with heavy black rims, and of similar age. The other appeared to be mid-fifties, judging by his shock of grey hair.
Oh, shit, I thought as they moved my way. I hugged the generator and looked for an escape. Lights to right of me; lights to the left of me. If I moved, with my white complexion, I would be as visible as a lighthouse on a dark night.
“It’s unchanged,” said the woman as they approached my hiding spot. “Particle bombardment has, at best, minimal effect.”
“Electron diffraction interference patterns still fluctuate chaotically as temperature rises,” the younger man added as they walked past, heading for the tunnel entrance. “Eventually the crystalline structure collapses and disintegrates.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding as they strode by my hiding spot.
“With no trace?” said the older man, shaking his head.
“Not so much as an atom. Thermal reduction, applied quickly, reverses degradation in some cases; statistical analysis shows the function is sigmoidal rather than thresh…,” the woman said before moving out of earshot as the trio descended into the maar. I counted to sixty in my head, watching the soldier smoking by the trailer before he flicked the cigarette butt to the ground, crushed it with his boot, and walked toward the distant toilets. With his back to me, I burst from my hiding spot, running on tiptoe for the tunnel entrance.
To the right and left, large black, red, and white signs announced “Danger, Risk of Cave-In” next to even larger red-and-white “No Trespassing” signs. A few steps past them lay an even scarier yellow-and-black sign warning of radiation danger, behind which sat tightly spaced traffic barricades: a last effort to discourage, but not physically prevent, intruders from going any deeper. Must be for trespassers that can’t read, I thought as I strode past, slipping between the barricades without hesitation. It was all bogus—lies and fabrications left to keep away anyone who might somehow wander or sneak past the security outside.
Undeterred, I slipped inside. Within, my way was lit by a string of lights stretched along the ceiling above. Like the scrawling of an overly enthusiastic child, the tunnel floor was crisscrossed by countless tractor treads. A few hundred feet within the twelve-foot-wide, twenty-foot-high passageway, large boulders and rocks had been piled to seal it tight around a concrete tube, the end capped by a metal wall with a single door.
As I approached, the three scientists were zipping up heavy winter coats taken from a wall of nearby lockers. I hugged the wall behind large metal canisters lining the right side and waited as they placed yellow hard hats on their heads and pulled on gloves. The woman punched a code into the keypad near the door, her body blocking my view, and the trio entered. The door slammed shut moments later, and I advanced, on tiptoe, once more.
The door was thick, metal—like a square door to a vault. I tried it anyway. It clunked but refused to budge.
I didn’t try entering a code in case invalid entries raised an alarm. Besides, what are the odds I’d guess right?
Waiting by the door for the scientists to return, or for more to enter, and slipping in after them was an option, but risky. If soldiers came in behind me, I’d be trapped, and the longer I waited, the greater the chance of discovery. Not to mention, I had a rendezvous to make. Scott had arranged a ride for me on the back of an ice truck heading north from Las Vegas tomorrow morning. The sooner I could find what I had come for and get on my way, the better. I needed to find another way in.
Five minutes of searching revealed that no opening existed through which I could fit. Electrical cables, ventilation ductwork and other equipment ran along the wall into a narrow tube that led straight into the piled rock. The machinery piping was crowded; a snake might squeeze through its hoses and cables, but not me.
I grabbed one of the boulders, roughly three feet in diameter, and pulled and pushed and muttered curses under my breath. It jiggled slightly as if tickled by my efforts to move it. I tried budging some of the smaller rocks, but other stones,
about the size of a fast-pitch softball, rolled from atop the pile, nearly hitting me on the way down.
I scurried back and looked upward, in case more rubble followed, and watched as a few more pebbles bounced their way to the tunnel floor and the rock pile settled into a new configuration, still blocking my way.
I sat down at the base and pondered my options.
“All right, just give me a minute. Got to finish my rounds,” said a voice, coming from the direction of the tunnel entrance.
The shuffling of footsteps followed.
I burst to my feet, scanning for somewhere to hide. The nearby lockers were too small for me to fit. The row of canisters where I had hidden on my way in was too far away and a poor hiding spot at best.
I’m blown.
I clambered up the rock pile to where it met the ceiling, cloaking myself in thick shadows. I looked for a snowman-sized crevice. I found a cat-sized one instead. The gap in the barrier, presumably caused by erosion and gravity, wasn’t large enough for me to fit through.
Cool air emanated from the hole, but I didn’t have time to enjoy it. An idea was forming in my head, though it meant using up more, maybe all, of my water reserves; there wasn’t enough latent moisture in the earth to accomplish what I had in mind. I pulled out my last water bottle and splashed its contents into and around the opening, soaking the area. I reached inside as far as I could and splattered the rest.
The footsteps stopped abruptly. “Hello,” said the voice I’d heard earlier. “Is someone there?”
I looked back. The soldier, Larry, skulked toward me, weapon half-raised, squinting into the dim light. He stopped, patting his jacket with his free hand.
I slipped the empty bottle into my backpack, straightened my hat, and reached out, focusing my energy, shaping and directing it, manipulating the moisture I’d splashed on the bone-dry ground. Snowflakes materialized out of thin air, crystalized from the evaporate that had not yet drifted away on the faint breeze, and fell slowly down upon the damp rocks and cinders. Moments later, pure white snow bloomed from the ground, spreading like moss down the side of the scree and forward into the gap.