Archaeopteryx

by Dan Darling

  “Is it something exciting?” I could envision her dark eyes getting big on the other side of the line, like they did when she got manic about tormenting me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very exciting.”

  “And why should I do this exciting something for you?” she asked.

  “Because you owe me. You chained me to a chair for a night. You imprisoned two of the only human beings I like.” My voice boomed as the anger washed back through me.

  “That was just a ruse. They would have been snatched up with or without me. I insinuated myself into those operations as a precautionary measure. You should be thanking me. I’m your guardian angel.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Yes,” she said, “not because you asked me to―you didn’t even ask nicely―but because it’ll balance the scales.”

  I didn’t want to ask what she meant, but I did anyway.

  “Think of our world, in which men do things to each other, as two sides of a math equation. Each man wants to destabilize the equation. They want to have more value, more power than the person on the other side of the equal sign. I’m like a natural phenomenon whose job it is to balance the equation.”

  “You’re saying that you’re math.”

  “I’m correct math. Men will always try to imbalance the world in their own favor. I will always be around to correct that imbalance. At least, until I die.”

  “Well, you’re doing a bang-up job,” I said. “We are living in a world of total peace and harmony. You can tell by the number of fatal car accidents on the freeway each morning. Or the number of kids who shoot their moms. Or you can just take a drive through the shacks of the lower west side showing people pictures of the mansions in the foothills―they’ll let you know how balanced the math is.”

  “I didn’t say it was an easy job,” she said. “Men are terrible people.”

  “I’ve met a woman or two who aren’t so wonderful.”

  “Those women are confused.”

  I sighed. Tanis inspired me to loose a lot of frustrated air. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Of course.” Her smile blazed through the phone. “After all, I owe you.”

  I drove out to Typhon Industries the next morning, early, where I’d arranged to meet Tanis. I weaved my way through the scattered dozen or two protesters holding signs of bunnies with electrodes fastened to their eyes, pictures of Latino men and women with the word missing beneath them, and slogans condemning the theft of land and heritage. The man at the guard post took one look at me and waved me through.

  A figure in a white coat, dark slacks, and a teal blouse stood in front of Hades. She had dark hair and brown skin. I parked far away, and she hung in my sightline for nearly a minute as I walked. She was too short, too dark, and her hair was straight, but I was still disappointed to discover that she was Tanis and not Melodía―even though I knew which of them would be waiting for me.

  “You do not look happy to see me. My feelings,” Tanis said, “hurt.”

  “Do we actually have feelings, or are they just an illusion in a meaningless universe?”

  “You are making fun of your own atheism.”

  “Should we get on with it? I don’t want to keep you from your day job of kidnapping grandmothers and confiscating their retirement money.”

  Tanis smiled. “By all means. Let’s get on with it.”

  “I was thinking that you could show me―” I didn’t have time to finish. Tanis grabbed me by the arm and hauled me through the outer and inner doors of the building. She waved at the gorillas on duty, who all tried to pretend their chests were made out of cement. She led me to a door in the side of the antechamber and into a tangle of featureless corridors. We walked over tile, under florescent lights, and past doors that led into rooms that would forever remain mysterious. Tanis bounded along on rubber-soled sneakers and didn’t waste time with chitchat. It was a refreshing change and a little unnerving.

  As we penetrated deeper into the building, the din of animal noise rose from the joints of the place, the song of my people calling out to me.

  Eventually, we burst through a door that opened on a stairway leading down. Tanis leapt down the first flight before I could even duck the doorjamb. I took them three at a time and barely kept up with her. I was a giraffe chasing a jaguar. We descended three stories below the Earth’s surface. No one in New Mexico dug so deep. The desert earth was hard. Eons of pressure had packed the clay and rock into an impenetrable crust. Besides, the desert offered limitless space to sprawl above ground.

  Tanis didn’t give me a chance to voice my grievances against the engineers who’d defied geologic common sense. The staircase led to three corridors, each barreling off in a different direction. She power-walked down the rightmost corridor like a secretary on her lunch break.

  “Hey!” I yelled after her, just to see what would happen.

  “This way, please.” She didn’t even turn around.

  I had no choice. I caught up to her without much trouble. The cacophony of the chupacabras faded away and we walked in that careful silence of space carved out beneath tons of earth above. I guessed that the corridors connected the buildings of the campus so that employees wouldn’t have to leave their respective buildings to travel from one to another. This also made no sense. The air was perfectly fine in New Mexico. It never became dangerously hot or cold. There were no wild animals waiting outside your door to bite your head off―or at least not until recently.

  The tunnel ended in a freight elevator on one side and a pair of double doors on the other. Tanis spun on me in front of the doors and wrapped her fingers into the front of my jacket. She pushed me into the corner where the two walls met and pressed her body against mine. It would have felt good if I hadn’t been worried that all this cuddling was a precursor to a cold blade between the ribs.

  She cranked her head back, locked her big dark eyes with mine, and pointed straight up. A camera hung still and lifeless overhead. After a few seconds, a green light blinked on, and the camera began to calmly scan the hall we’d just come through. We occupied one of the few blind spots on the campus.

  “It doesn’t record sound,” she said.

  “That’s too bad. Now no one can hear me scream for help.”

  She slapped my chest. “Be serious. I sabotaged the cameras just before you showed up.”

  “I would ask why, but you’d only lie to me.”

  “That’s correct, but the truth is mostly relative anyway.”

  “Now that you’ve given me your daily dose of wisdom, I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what we’re doing down here, other than hiding from a camera.”

  “I’m taking you somewhere I’m not supposed to. You wanted information about this place. I’m going to show you things that nobody wants you to see.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Because you owe me? Or am I just part of your math equation?”

  “I’m doing it because you’re so handsome.” She gave me a flash of her Cheshire cat smile. “And because I want to.”

  Something snapped in my brain, and I found that I’d picked Tanis up by her lab coat. She weighed as much as a winter sweater. I held her nose three inches from mine. Her shoes dangled three feet off the ground. I gave her a few blasts of air from the deepest hell of my lungs. “I’m done with games. Since they abducted my dad, I’ve been taking life more seriously.”

  Her smile vanished, replaced with an impassive mask, but her eyes held that same distant amusement they always did. “And what do you want, John Stick?”

  “I want my animals back,” I said. “I want my best friend and my father back. I want my platonic but flirty friendship with a female. I want my quiet home and peaceful, endless desert. You’ve ruined all that. And I’m mad.”

  “What if I told you all those things were delusions?”

  “I’d say that compared to what I’ve got now, those delusions seemed pretty real.”

  �
��Nothing in your life was what it seemed,” Tanis said. “It was a bunch of childhood perceptions you clung to or people masquerading behind lies.”

  “And you’re a truth-teller?”

  “I’m a trickster. I’m a woman who sheds her skins, but who ultimately unveils great truths.”

  “Did you read that on a napkin at a Pueblo casino?”

  “You’re getting closer to your life-truth. You’re getting closer to becoming a man.”

  “I hope that doesn’t involve another growth spurt, because I can’t afford new outfits.”

  “You’re on a vision quest. It’s not easy, but in the long run, you’ll find out who you are. You’ve been malingering in adolescence for thirty years. It’s time you figured out how to move on to the next phase of existence.”

  “I find it hard to listen to the advice of a woman who coerces me into helping sic a vampiric dog on a band of helpless migrants.”

  Her expression became more earnest. “I’m bringing you down here for the greater good. You have to trust me.”

  “It would take a minor miracle for me to believe that you’re helping me now after everything else you’ve done. I’m just another man in your power equation.”

  Tanis sighed. Her body rose in my hands and then fell. I realized that I’d been holding her aloft for our entire conversation. I felt kind of bad about it.

  “Can’t you see? I’m helping you exactly because you’re not part of my equation. I’ll put it to you in a new analogy. I serve the universe. I’m a facilitator. When the natural order of things becomes clogged up, it has to be loosened. Think of me as a plumber. When the pipes of the universe get clogged, I shoot some liquid plumber down into the works to get things moving again. You’re the liquid plumber. The pipes have been static for a while. As soon as you stepped into the equation, things started to move. That’s all I’m trying to do: get you where you need to be.”

  “So, I’m liquid plumber.”

  “Yes. And the universe is poopy. There’s a chance you’ll clear it out. There’s also a chance you’ll only make it worse.”

  “What will you do then?” I asked.

  “I’ll try something else. There are many tricks a woman like me knows.”

  “At least you’ve said one true thing to me today.”

  “Truth.” She sighed. “People should stop using that word.”

  “Want me to put you down now?”

  “I like it up here.” She smiled, put her palms on my cheeks, and wrinkled her nose. “Your face is scratchy.”

  I lowered her to the floor. She landed noiselessly on her rubber shoes, and her hands slipped from my cheeks.

  “Put your game face on.” She straightened her lab coat and ran her fingertips through her hair. “We’re not supposed to be down here. If anyone challenges us, give them that look you wear when you’re mad.”

  I showed her the look I thought she meant.

  “That’s the one! The security guards have obviously turned all the cameras back on, so it’s only a matter of time before the eyes of this place notice that we’re in an area we’re not supposed to be and send their lackeys after us.”

  “And where exactly are we going?” I asked.

  “Toward a lower level of Hades. They call it Sisyphus.”

  She barged through the double doors and set off down the hall before I could ask why. I followed. It wasn’t a choice I made. It happened. My body was connected to strings and everybody held the end of a strand or two except me.

  We wound through a series of hallways and doors until we emerged into a room featuring a large window that ran the span of the far wall. It went from waist height to the ceiling, reinforced with wire mesh. The glass revealed a large windowless chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Several vents were positioned at the highest span of the ceiling. Roughly a dozen capstans spanned across the floor of the room. Each one consisted of a central hub with several regularly spaced spokes projecting out horizontally three feet from the floor. They looked like giant steering wheels of old pirate ships turned on their sides. The cement beneath the spokes was scuffed and worn by the passage of many feet.

  We waited only a few moments before several doors opened along the walls of the chamber. A parade of men and women plodded into the room. They all looked like Latino immigrants. They were dressed in clothes dark with stains. Their hair was matted and dirty. Their shoes had seen miles of dirt, rock, river and cactus. A handful of armed guards herded them to positions behind the arms of the capstans. When everyone was in place, a guard blew a whistle and the men and women plodded forward, pushing the capstan arms. They walked in circles, turning and turning the central hubs. It looked like a medieval regimen designed to break the spirits of heretics. The people walked and sweated. The heat of the room radiated through the big picture window―which I hoped was made of one-way glass.

  The people treaded in quiet circles. They didn’t protest, speak, or even look up. It took me only a few minutes to pick out the face of the woman with the high strong cheekbones and the piercing gaze I’d seen out on the desert. She pushed her arm of the capstan along with everyone else, only instead of looking down, she fixed her gaze directly ahead. She was fierce and beautiful.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  Tanis stood quietly.

  After fifteen minutes or so, all of the people turning the capstans dripped with sweat. Their clothes were dark in the armpits and lower backs. Their foreheads glistened. After half an hour, the guards called a break and allowed the prisoners to drink for a few minutes. Then they were back, turning the great wooden wheels.

  I turned to Tanis. “What is going on here?”

  Tanis gestured through the window at the large vents in the ceiling. “Those vents don’t blow air in. They suck it out.”

  “Thanks. That clears up everything.”

  She tipped her head to one side. “Now, why would anyone install such vents in a room where people toil and sweat? Wouldn’t you want to circulate fresh air in, not export the smell of people working to another place?” She let me chew on that question. It took me some time.

  “The animals in Hades are all good smellers.”

  She nodded.

  I recalled the many vents in the floor of the main chamber. “This room is designed to drain the scent out of people and send it upward into the animal enclosures.” My head was making connections. It felt good, but before I could get too far with it, human screams rung through the corridors.

  Tanis took my hand. “I may be able to smuggle you into one more room.”

  “If it’s the cafeteria, don’t bother. Watching a bunch of innocent people power the wheel of pain has dampened my appetite.”

  Tanis grimaced. “In a way, it is the cafeteria.”

  We moved even faster this time. Around a few corners and down a hall or two, we found another door with a keypad. Tanis swiped a card and punched some numbers. The picture on the card showed the face of a middle-aged man with black hair and deep jowl lines. She’d obviously stolen someone else’s security badge.

  This observation room was smaller, but followed the same formula: a couple lines of chairs in a blank room with a window for the fourth wall. Beyond was a small chamber, this one with a dozen chairs outfitted with wrist and ankle restraints bolted to the floor. Guards buckled in several women and men. They fit the people’s faces with masks and chinstraps to hold them in place. The people were young, their hands were knotted with callous, their skin dark and lined. They’d spent their lives working.

  Once the guards had buckled the people in, they left. Above our heads, the quixotic din of raving animals rained down. There were no vents in the ceiling of the room, but the outline of a square trapdoor showed in its center. The trapdoor slowly slid open. As it did, hundreds of buzzing insects―the drosophila-mosquito hybrids that I’d seen in Hades―spilled through. They traveled in separate swarms, and each swarm settled on the body of a different person. The eyes above each body were wide and white, t
he faces obscured by the masks, but the horror showed through fine. I was too far away to see, but I imagined a thousand abdomens, each the size of a pea, swelling with blood. After a few minutes, the insects buzzed around the chairs in lazy clouds where their prey sat helpless, or simply rested above the puncture wounds from which they had fed. A few swarms drifted to the glass in front of me and settled there. Eventually, air swept up from the vents in the floor and the clouds of insects floated upward and back through the ceiling. Men in yellow hazmat suits entered and shooed at the few hundred netted over the window in front of me. They swirled around a little bit and were gradually shepherded up, up, and away.

  At that point, the door behind us opened and some men who’d been fed too much beef thundered in on black boots. The Captain stood at their center.

  “You know,” he said lazily, regarding Tanis through half-mast lids, “if you weren’t the boss’ favorite pet, I’d drive you out onto the mesa, chain you to a cactus, and leave you for the coyotes.”

  Tanis fluttered her eyelashes and splashed a vapid look across her features. “This is Mr. Stick. He’s the new supervisor of feed training. Isn’t he?”

  The Captain shifted his gaze to me. His face was studiously bored. “He is not in charge of anything. Nor does he have clearance for anything.”

  “But Dr. Charon let him into―”

  “Charon is a glorified zookeeper. We should build him his own cage next to Goliath’s.” The Captain stood with his meaty arms crossed over his meaty chest and shot me a look. “I guess you’ve figured a few things out.”

  “Give me one and one and I’ll make two,” I said.

  Several dozen flies had evaded the men in hazmat suits and persisted in batting themselves at the glass between me and the chamber with the people still strapped to their torture chairs.

  The Captain sighed. “We’ve got to get you out of here. You’re turning this place upside down.”

  “Suits me,” I said.

  The Captain turned to one of his overfed lackeys. “Take Ms. Rivera to the cafeteria and buy her an ice cream cone.”