A memo stated that this sexual segregation was an "efficiency" measure, although what that meant was unclear. In practice, it meant that Ray Barnstable could walk nude down the halls to the showers. And if that was efficiency—a view of Barnstable's hairy, pocked butt—then inefficiency, chaos itself, had much to recommend it.
Each room was supplied with a computer, and Philip had brought a disk with the last chapter of his novel. He worked on it for awhile.
When he tried to save the disk, the screen uttered a green error message: DISK FULL.
SHIT.
Just save it to the hard disk, Philip urged his younger self.
At the time it had seemed critical that he find a blank disk. Why? A foolish question. As Philip was learning, bad decisions never made sense in retrospect.
He went into the hall.
Some kind of tarlike residue covered the carpet. He entered the elevator where the usual reek of strong cleaning agents was dominated, that night, by something dark and fetid, a stink of slaughtered animals and stagnant tidal pools.
Philip did not reexperience the odors, but they had been so strong that his memory conjured them instantly.
Don't you smell that? Aren't you just a little bit concerned with the goddam originator of that stink?
The fifth floor, where Philip worked, was locked. The elevator doors refused to open, and he had forgotten to bring his access card with him. SHIT.
That's when he had rolled his eyes upward. Philip watched again as this action of petition or dismay brought the lurid graffiti into focus. On the elevator's ceiling, someone had spray painted a purple scrawl, the jagged script reading, e'yaya ngh'aaaaa YOG-SOTHOTH!
Yog-Sothoth, the accursed gate-keeper, the one who would usher in the Old Ones, the blight from black Space and Time.
Philip experienced the same sharp fear that had occurred when he first saw the writing. But then he had been able to allay the fear with reason. Some practical joker, no doubt. Someone who was aware of Philip's fascination with Lovecraft.
Now reason could not quell the fear, for Philip had been here before, and he knew what lay ahead.
Back to the fourteenth floor, he urged.
But he did not heed himself. He stepped out into the basement.
The lights in the hallway were flickering wickedly, accompanied by a dull hum and something else, the rolling liturgical sound of voices speaking in unison.
Had he recognized the sound as voices then, or only now, knowing what was to come?
He followed the voices, past a room of coiled wires and large, steel barrels and blind computer screens and the peeled nervous systems of unidentifiable electronic components, and past glass-enclosed banks of white computers. The hall was long, and—a trick of perspective— seemed to narrow as it stretched in front of him. He had been in the basement before, of course— and didn't he know that bad things happened in the basement?—but none of what he saw seemed familiar. The walls were speckled, a gray and black reticulation that suggested those optical illusions that appeared three dimensional if stared at long enough. From the corner of his eye, he sensed motion and sudden pockets of swirling translucency.
He passed another bank of glassed-in computers. These computers were black and showed signs of corrosion and disuse, as though they had been repaired endlessly and in a slipshod, expedient way. The massive machines rested in a tangled sea of cable and rubber tubing. A junkyard for old technology, Philip thought, but myriad small lights, green and blue and red, flickered, and tire-sized wheels whirred, transporting tape. The machines were running.
On-line to the Other World, he thought.
Then he was moving away from the sound. He stopped, turned back.
He tried a black, unmarked door, and it opened to reveal a descending flight of concrete steps—a basement beneath the basement. The sound rose up, a mournful chant, conjuring the horror of forbidden rituals in the dark— implacable, cruel deeds that shunned the light.
Always, poised above an unwelcoming flight of stairs that led into darkness and the threat of death or worse, the Lovecraftian hero shivered and marched downward. Philip, a writer himself, was powerless to resist the call. Unreasonable, unmotivated, plain stupid by the standards of even the most rudimentary of single- or several- celled creatures, all this could be said of these descents into the abyss. But it was a tradition older than reason that willed Philip into the dank, noxious depths of MicroMeg. It was the tradition of pulp fiction, the tradition that his father had instilled in every fiber of his being, the tradition that Philip carried on in the grueling narrative of his own novel, The Despicable Quest.
Down.
It went, of course, a long way down. And somewhere, light ceased to exist, and then the walls seemed to speak, to form his name with something other than human tongues, and there was a large, inhuman wheezing noise mixed with the chanting voices, and some of the concrete steps did not appear to be concrete at all but of living flesh, or, more precisely, once-living flesh that had reached a state of unpleasant mortification.
Then the walls lightened again, and he saw that they were covered with ancient, violent graffiti. He made out the names Cthulhu and Azathoth and Tsathoggua and some drawings that the mind tripped over rather than attempt to correlate into the known universe.
He entered a vast underground hall, the ceiling of which dripped with huge, round-bodied heating ducts and thick cables. On the lighted stage, in front of a twelve-foot-high, silver sculpture of that same writhing star that Philip had observed on Amelia's wrist, stood a gray- haired man that Philip instantly recognized as MicroMeg's chairman, Alastair Stern.
The hall was crowded with business-suited men and women, all attired as they would be for a workday at MicroMeg. They took no notice of Philip.
Chairman Stern was speaking with his arms stretched out, a stance familiar to Philip, who had attended numerous Monday morning motivation rallies at which awards were made for various employee achievements (records of long attendance without a sick day, projects brought in under cost, slogans invented, clients enlisted, et cetera). Stern stood in a circle of squat, white photocopiers. Between each photocopier was a small white table upon which sat a fax machine.
Now Stern was intoning, "...with a great binding and dreaming, Yog-Sothoth came. The Old Ones who were, who are, and who shall be. Who throw shadows between the stars. Yog-Sothoth."
"Yog-Sothoth!" the crowd responded, the words rolling and echoing in the vaulted room.
Stern coughed, let his shoulders sag slightly, his arms fall to his side in the classic manner of a preacher winding down. '"Bind all of them,' Yog-Sothoth said. 'From the greatest to the smallest.'
'"The Leap is at hand,' cried great Nyarlathotep from the watery depths. 'The path is cleared. All the dreamers are aligned.'"
Stern raised his hands over his head. "Facilitators, approach."
Men and women in business suits climbed the stage, and stood, in military stances, next to the copy machines, one person per machine.
"Dream to dream!" Stern roared. "We shall incorporate the very stars with the aid of our mentors. Come up, bask in their radiance."
Philip watched the scene unfold, wondering how it lost so little of its strangeness from being replayed. His fascination and horror was untempered by his knowledge of what was to come.
He watched as the crowd, sedately, in what was obviously a practiced ritual, approached the stage from either side. The facilitators then went to the edge of the stage and brought individuals to stand by the photocopiers. At a nod from Stern, these pilgrims bent forward and pressed their faces against the glass of the machines, hunched under the lids with varying degrees of grace. Philip recognized old Filmore from Accounting and Personnel's obese Meg Smathers, her wide buttocks thrust upward in straining black slacks. Then the multiple explosions of white light occurred, and a faint hum of electric industry filled the air.
The supplicants backed away from the machines, adjusted their clothing, and exited t
he stage. More of the faithful were led forward.
When all of the crowd that cared to come forward had done so, the photocopied images were gathered with great pomp and brought to Stern, who raised the thick sheaf over his head and said, "From three dimensions to two. From thick to thin. From sleep to dream."
He nodded his head and the facilitators approached him and took the photocopies and divided them between themselves and fed them into the fax machines.
"From two dimensions to four. From thin to thick. From dream to the mind of Yog-Sothoth."
YOG-SOTHOTH! the crowd screamed.
YOG-SOTHOTH! YOG-SOTHOTH! There was a collective shivering, an undulating frenzy that seemed to travel through the crowd, each member convulsing as though part of some fused chain, electrified and then released, the air thick and silver. And in the liquid-mercury air, hidden by its reflective properties, things moved. And without seeing their true form, Philip knew their terror and otherworldliness. The Old Ones.
YOG-SOTHOTH! the crowd roared. YOG-SOTHOTH!
The Old Ones were coming through, summoned in some damnable bargain between vast corporations, souls faxed on a number that was, most certainly, a row of 6's.
They are not coining through. They are not because that isn't what happens at all, because—
And what if this were not the past, were, instead, an alternate world? Perhaps these cold and implacable Architects of Time had altered the outcome this time.
A dozen, two dozen articulated legs, scrambling wildly, pierced the void and sought purchase in this human realm. A leg touched one of the photocopiers, which burst instantly into flame. A second copier was lofted into the air.
They are—they are coming!
A dark, oblong shape obscured the ceiling. A noise, like laughter in the center of some shattering, all-destructive explosion, shook the underground cavern.
Here.
Too late. Too late.
A hissing. Rain. Not rain, but the sprinkler system. And not an alternate universe but the one that Philip had lived through before.
Thank you, God.
Something howled in frustration. Chairman Stern shouted vainly, "Wait."
The falling water tore holes in the silver fabric of the atmosphere. Thick, undulating bodies shivered and rained black scales that decayed and disappeared even as they fell. The silver air poured into invisible drains, once again revealing the dirty, dripping ceiling.
Philip laughed wildly, the laughter of shattered reason, of relief. He laughed in unison with his old self, stumbling toward the stairs, pushing his way through the dazed crowd, moving in the clarity of utter exhaustion, his only goal his bed, sleep, forgetting.
#
Whup. "So," Lily was saying, "these Old Ones, these all-knowing super monsters, were scared off by the sprinkler system."
"I think," Philip said, "they may have misinterpreted the falling water. They may have identified it as rain, and thought they were emerging under open skies. They would not want to do that, of course. They would not want to be so exposed, not before they had regrouped. Their old enemies, the Mi-Go, had come from the sky and forced them to seek refuge under the ocean. They were naturally skittish about open spaces."
"Makes sense to me," AL Bingham said.
Lily frowned at her companion. "Why don't you wait in the lobby?" she said. AL shrugged and left the room.
"Tell me," Philip's therapist said, moving to the dresser and fluffing her unruly hair in the mirror, "what do you think of me and Bingham as a couple?"
"Is this question pertinent to my therapy?" Philip asked. "I mean, will my answer determine your treatment modality?"
Lily shrugged. "No, I guess not."
"I want you to talk to Dr. Beasley about my medication. I think it is sapping energy. I believe I could actually be caught in MicroMeg if I jump one more time—"
The old woman reached forward and gripped Philip's shoulder. "I'll do that, Philip. Tomorrow, I want to shut the door on MicroMeg. I want to hypnotize you and end these nightmares, achieve closure on those events."
"We are not talking about nightmares," Philip said, feeling a sense of hopelessness.
Lily squeezed his shoulder. "Just let me try."
"Okay."
"Good." Lily nodded, turning to go.
"You could do worse than Bingham," Philip said.
#
A new woman had arrived in group, a stout, brown-haired woman with small, angry eyes. Her name was Caroline Trout.
"I am a goddess-empowered menstrual warrior," Trout told the group. "I only want justice; I only want the yoke of oppression lifted."
She had attacked a middle-aged man named Richard Milton, biting him on the wrist.
"I didn't do anything," he grumbled.
Olivia said, "Does anyone here feel Richard had a part in this?"
"We might not know all the facts," Sammy said. "Maybe he goosed her or something."
"He wasn't sensitive to her needs," Michael Jackson said.
“I just won't be railroaded by male-sexist power rhetoric," Trout growled.
"It's my goddam name!" Milton roared, jumping up.
"You should change it then," Trout said. "I won't be responsible for my actions if you call yourself an imperialist, territorial, invasive phallus."
"I'm not following any of this," said a timid woman who seemed uncertain of just where she was, having been in a number of psychiatric wards for depression.
Olivia smiled. "We have some boundary issues here, don't we? Does anyone feel that Caroline has overreacted?"
Either no one felt that way, or the question was simply beyond them. Silence.
"How about you, Philip?"
"I'm sorry," Philip said. "I can't seem to think of anything except the end of the world—well, the end of humanity, in any event, which I realize isn't the same thing at all. I think that end is approaching. I believe it is inevitable, and that the arrival of the Old Ones will render Ms. Trout's objections to Richard's nickname irrelevant."
Olivia continued to smile, but her eyes narrowed and lost what little warmth they held. "Well, I suppose we all think our personal problems are the center of the universe, but I want you to try very hard, Philip, to listen to others and empathize with them. I'll ask you, during the course of group, to be as attentive as possible."
Philip was about to say something, although he couldn't later remember whether it was in the nature of a rebuttal or acquiescence.
Richard Milton, speaking low in a taunting singsong and smiling grimly said, "Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick." He began to shout as Caroline leapt from her chair and raced across the circle.
"Stinking semen sack!" she screamed, hurling herself into him.
His chair slammed backward, but he continued to scream. "Dick Dick Dick!"
They rolled on the floor. Two orderlies came running.
Someone grabbed Philip from behind and dragged him backward. His chair tilted over. Bang. He struck out at his assailant, the lunatic bald man.
The bald man embraced Philip in a rib- cracking bear hug. “I been watching you," the bald man screamed. "You don't fool me. Thou Sower of Dissension, Thou Betrayer, Thou Vile Anti-Christ."
#
Whup. They rolled on the floor. Philip had his hand on her mouth. PLEASE, AMELIA, PLEASE. JUST BE QUIET JUST LISTEN TO ME. YOUR MIND IS PRESENTLY IN THRALL TO POWERFUL ENTITIES TRANSMITTING ACROSS SIX HUNDRED MILLION YEARS. YOU ARE NOT—
She bit his hand.
OW!
Philip watched himself struggle with his lover, watched with some of the same sadness that hovered over their lovemaking.
Perhaps trickery would have worked better than force. But he had never been able to fool Amelia.
Amelia, I'm sorry.
He watched himself bind and gag her.
Don't hurt her.
What else could he have done? There was no time to spare, and although the Old Ones might wait to attempt a second crossing over, it was not something Philip could c
ount on. He had to act. Reasoning with Amelia was out of the question. She had been subverted by Quality Management. Her wrist bore the tattoo, the writhing star that was the mark of the Old Ones. No doubt she had felt the eldritch light of photocopiers flood her mind and the damnable ecstasy of being faxed across the limitless reaches of black space.
The next day, before curfew, he had gone to the fifteenth floor, where Amelia slept at night, and he had jammed the lock on the fire exit door.
That night he had stolen to her room. And when she had opened the door, a protest on her lips, he had entered and wrestled her to the floor. Now as she struck at his face and chest, he felt no pain, just the jostling of vision, and he thought he probably hadn't felt pain then, either, being so full of larger fears.
Résumé With Monsters Page 14