Kelly had wanted to change all of that. It was why she’d approached him with a plan to reacquaint them with the lost knowledge, the mysteries that were spinning on the many surfaces of those venerable data drives. It had taken Samuel a while to come around to giving her permission, fearing that it could lead to catastrophe, but ultimately he’d given her the go-ahead because she was his best, and he didn’t want to start a precedent of adding to his people’s frustrations by denying them trust...especially when the project held so much promise to improve their quality of life. Perhaps they would discover a way to reawaken the sleeping generators. Perhaps they could improve the automated production of their farms and water purification plants. The whispers of providence simply became too alluring to ignore.
A cluster of computer terminals lay before him along the wall on his right. The glow from the monitors brightened the corner of the room in a greenish hue, giving some life to the otherwise lifeless black finish on the stacks nearby. Three keyboards on the desk faced the same empty chair, obviously marking it as the seat of the operator. Samuel was puzzled. He saw nothing that would indicate anything out of the ordinary, other than the computers being left on. If George had been in the room, it seemed quite plausible to assume that he’d simply left the station for a moment, and that anytime he would be emerging from the rows of servers or the door behind him, asking what all the fuss was about. What had Kelly seen to alarm her so?
Then he saw it. At the back of the chair, at the base of the backrest where the light from the monitors fell, there was a crumpled lump of clothing. Samuel approached the chair, and pulled it out. His stomach took a lurch when he realized what he was looking at.
A pair of gray technician’s coveralls were draped over the seat of the chair, flat and lifeless. They rested in such a manner that would suggest that the wearer, if there had been one, was bending over to touch his toes. The sleeves and pant legs of the garment drooped forward over the seat, and brushed against the ankle collars of a pair of workman’s boots, on the floor. Taken at face value, it was a perplexing scene...merely discarded clothing in a public space...strange, but innocuous. However, viewed through the context of Samuel’s knowledge of recent events, it became something far more foreboding.
The worst part of it was the boots. A casual observer might have missed it, but Samuel knew better.
The laces on the boots were still tied.
How do feet come out of securely fastened, shin-high work boots, without an unraveling of the laces? A skeptic with tunnel vision might have posited that the wearer simply untied the laces, slipped the boots off, and then oddly chose to retie them and leave them behind. But, discarding the coveralls, as well?
No, Samuel knew very well what had happened. One moment, George Gomez had been sitting at that very desk, wearing those very coveralls and boots, pecking away at the keyboards in front of him and working to release the mysteries of the computer system, as he’d periodically been doing on-and-off for over a month. The next moment...George was gone. Vanished.
Deleted.
The door opened behind him, and Henry stepped in. He was followed, tentatively, by Kelly.
“Where—oh...damn,” he said, noticing the chair and discarded apparel.
“I was on the radio with him,” Kelly said. Her voice was shaking. “He sounded strange...told me that he found something. Something important. I asked him what it was, but I never got an answer. Now I know why.”
Samuel’s ears picked up a hissing sound, and he scanned the floor. Sure enough, he found a hand radio, presumably the same that George had been using to call Kelly. It was still switched on, resting by one of the chair’s legs, where he assumed it had fallen from a hand that no longer existed to hold it.
Samuel’s mind was working, searching for answers.
“Was he sick, like the others?” he asked. “Was he showing any symptoms?”
“I never noticed anything,” Kelly replied, her voice shaky. “But then, I hadn’t seen him much lately. He was spending a lot of time down here alone; I’ve just been too busy with other stuff. But no, I never got any clues that he was ill.” She looked at Samuel, then, and her eyes were pleading. “I swear, Sam, if I had known anything...seen anything...I would have said so. You know I would’ve.”
“No one’s blaming you,” Samuel said through a heavy sigh, suddenly weary. “It’s okay. This isn’t anybody’s fault.”
“Damn it.” Henry swore. “It just don’t make any sense! How can a flesh-and-blood man be there one second, and then just....” His words trailed off, and he shook his head.
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
That was when Samuel noticed something blinking on one of the computer monitors. There was a window open on the middle screen.
He gingerly moved the unoccupied chair out of the way so as not to disturb George’s clothes (for some reason it felt like a violation), and leaned in closer to inspect it. When he realized what it was, goose pimples popped up all over his body.
Before him was a text document. Two paragraphs of a healthy length had been typed in and left open for anyone to see. The prose was hasty...hurried:
I think I understand. It’s not a disease...not really. What I found...it’s in my head. Happened fast. I can feel it working, taking me away. I deleted the file so what’s happening to me won’t happen to others, and I know I shouldn’t even be typing this, but it’s just too big to ignore! To whoever reads this, you should know that you’re risking yourself!!!
I get it now...wish I could push it out of my brain. At the same time, I want to hold on to it. This has all happned before! We all know it...weve just forgoten. We’d undrstan if we stopped fr a second and litened to ourelves. I’s my own fault...I dug it up nd now it hs me. Now it’s geting wors...I thik I’m goin...no tm...hard to prss th keys...hrts...godby...’m sr
Samuel stood staring at the text, mouth agape and blinking. Then, coming to his senses, he reached over, and fought for control of his quivering hand to punch in a key sequence, saving the file. George’s last words had to be preserved...didn’t they? At the very least, it seemed like the decent thing to do.
The other two technicians joined him in front of the monitor bearing the mysterious message and read it, their eyes widening with every word.
“Creepy....” Henry breathed. “What does it mean?”
“He was aware of what was happening to him,” Kelly said, horrified. “He felt it, when he was taken. He actually felt it.”
Samuel’s mind was racing. There before them, was the first, personal testament from someone who’d gone missing! Despite his grief for George, he mentally commended the man for thinking so quickly. As for the message itself, he couldn’t make too much sense of it. George had experienced something profound, that much was obvious, but whatever he was trying to communicate about his final moments was lost to Samuel.
George had considered the thing he’d uncovered to be harmful enough that it needed to be disposed of. But...why? What kind of information could be so dangerous? Could it be retrieved? Should they even try?
Or, should the artifact be left alone, lest they fall victim to the same fate it wrought upon their friend?
“Alright...we’re going back up to the surface,” he said. “Don’t touch anything. I want a security lock on the door; nobody else gets in here until we figure out what the next move is. We need to call everybody together, topside...we’ll meet at the shop.”
The other two nodded sadly, and then they all exited the server room door, closing it behind them. Kelly produced a key, inserted it into the lock, and twisted. As the bolt turned it sent a sharp echo down the length of the corridor that, due to their frayed nerves, made them jump. Then, she produced another small, hexagonal device, and pressed it flat against the door, just above the handle. There was a clicking sound, and then a beep. A small, green light on the front of the device turned on. Then, she handed Samuel a small, black cylinder with a matching light at the tip.
&
nbsp; The security locks were pretty handy; Kelly had figured out how to use them the year before. A lock could be placed on any door, and once active, it would reinforce the bolt, adding another layer of security. What was more, each security lock had a corresponding remote—the cylinder in Samuel’s hand—that displayed the lock’s status; if the lock was tampered with, the remote would know, and so would the person holding it.
Having a security lock on the door would ensure that he was notified, should anyone try to enter. After what happened to George, no one could be allowed in...at least not until they understood more about what was going on.
The three of them started their way back to the elevator on legs made of liquid. Samuel reached down and grabbed his own hand radio off of his belt, a small two-way that everybody on his team carried with them. He switched it to a channel that they only used for emergencies, one that had been set to automatically override communications in all the other units. He depressed the talk button.
“Attention, this is Samuel. I need immediate response from anybody currently working in the sub-levels. Repeat, if you are down in any of the sub-levels, you are instructed to stop whatever you are doing, and make your way back to the surface. I’ll explain when I can, but for now everyone needs to evacuate those areas, and I need all personnel to cease operations and meet at the shop. Anyone in the sub-levels...respond.”
The machine shop was a makeshift headquarters for the maintenance team. It was set up inside the Dome’s compound, sheltered from the habmods by the very fencing Samuel had to bypass to reach the service entrance he’d used to enter. It housed a generous supply of tools and parts that had been scavenged from the mining level, years ago.
He released the broadcast button, and anxiously waited. Twenty seconds went by before he got his first response. The radio crackled, and then a chuckling voice came over the speaker.
“Aww, come on. I was just remarking to Ethan here how much I love lurking around in the dark with him, like a troll. Booga booga.”
Seth Feron. The youngest member of the team. If anything came out of that kid that wasn’t a joke, it would be nothing short of miraculous. Luckily his level of immaturity was surpassed only by his competency with machinery, or else Samuel probably wouldn’t have taken him on board. Not that his levity wasn’t sometimes appreciated in a world gone to hell, but sometimes the boy could drive his teammates to a point where they wouldn’t mind throttling him.
“This is serious, Seth. Are you underground?”
“I’m down on sub-level one, hanging out with one stubborn bastard,” Seth quipped through the radio. His voice became distant as he spoke away from the receiver. “No offense, Ethan. Well, maybe just as much offense as usual.” Laughter, then a pause. “Jeez, man, unclench a little.” Back into the receiver he said, “I’ve got a coolant pipe that’s being a little disagreeable, but I think I’ve almost got it patched.”
“Finish as quickly as you can, and get topside,” Samuel said sternly. “I’ll brief everybody when we meet. Is anybody else with you besides Ethan?”
“Nope, just old grumpy-butt. I didn’t think anybody else had any jobs down here today.”
They reached the elevator, and Henry thumbed the button. The elevator’s doors whooshed open immediately; thankfully nobody else had called it to another floor. As they hurried inside, Samuel once again hit the transmit button and spoke into the radio.
“Just get to the shop. If you see anybody else, take them with you, alright? Out.”
“Will do, boss-man. Out.”
After the elevator doors closed and they began to speed upward, they leaned against the walls of the elevator for support and exchanged glances. They were breathing heavier, like the dread they still felt had sucked some of the oxygen out of the small space. The third sub-level fell below them, and Samuel turned back to Kelly.
“Kelly, is there anything else that you can remember? Anything about what George had been doing down there? What was the last thing he said to you?”
She met his green eyes with her own hazel ones, and blinked. “Like I told you this morning, he had stumbled across a whole bunch of user information, accounts that granted higher access than we’ve ever seen. He had been using them to explore farther into the system, looking for administration control settings for the generators or the farms. He was at it all night. Then, this morning after I woke you, he calls me and says that he hit something big. He sounded really shaken up about something, and was saying some pretty odd things...something about how ‘nothing is what we think it is’ and how ‘it’s all ending’...it really spooked me. George was usually so even-keeled...he wasn’t prone to hysteria. Whatever he found must have really messed with his head.”
Samuel’s brain churned. George had learned something that shook his world hard, with both hands, right before he was taken. The facts were too persuasive to dismiss. Something kept nagging at Samuel, some clue, just out of sight but nonetheless stubbornly tugging at his attention. He felt like it wanted to jump out into the full light of his understanding, but for some reason couldn’t. It frustrated him.
“It just doesn’t make any sense!” he said. “How could simply learning something cause anyone to disappear into thin air? Even saying it out loud makes me think I’ve gone crazy....”
The atmosphere in the elevator grew pensive, and the three pondered the implications of such a thing. No one spoke for the remainder of the trip to the surface. When the elevator finally shuddered to a stop and the doors opened, they stepped out and faced one another, Kelly and Henry both looking at Samuel...waiting. He could see they were scared, which he could understand. He was scared, too.
“You two should meet up with Seth and help get everybody together, before he gets distracted by something shiny,” Samuel told the emotionally haggard pair. “I’m going to go brief Gorman on what happened.”
They nodded.
“What do you think, Sam?” Kelly asked him, tentatively.
“I think we all need to be careful. We don’t know yet how bad this is going to get. In the meantime, stay together, and don’t tell anyone about what you saw until I get back. We don’t need any more panic.”
They nodded, and walked off toward the external service door Samuel had used to enter the Dome, earlier. Henry had already taken his radio off his belt, and was barking into it urgently as they stepped out into the daylight. Samuel watched them go, glad that they had something to do, hoping that staying busy would distract them from darker thoughts, if only for a little while.
Left alone with his own thoughts, he couldn’t help but ruminate on what he’d just seen, below in the server room. It made him feel vulnerable...exposed. And the worst thing was, he didn’t know to what.
He once again entered the elevator and hit the button that would whisk him off to the fourth level of the Dome, toward the office of Gorman Wade...the office of his father.
* * *
Chapter 4 – Tristan
Tristan Englewood sat alone on the bed in his ramshackle quarters, his inner sanctum, in the heart of his church. He was positively buzzing with vigor. It was a by-product of his most recent sermon, a drug that made him want to do nothing else than cry out the Message to his flock until his voice failed him. The excitement of his body heightened his senses, let him truly smell the eroding metal and splintered wood of the walls. His nostrils flexed, drawing in scents on the winds of his rapid breathing. There he sat, the entire breadth of his concentration spent on controlling his rebellious body.
That same old feeling was peaking, that impulse to giggle and laugh and never, ever stop. Whether it was his animal or he was its, he didn’t really know...didn’t care. All that mattered was that he keep the lid on it, never let it out or let it draw who he really was into the open. It was pounding on the door again, a door that he kept so securely bolted with his fear of being exposed.
Nobody would understand. If they knew him, really knew him, he would face alienation. Exile, maybe. He would lose all
that he’d gained, and the Message would be forfeit.
Tristan was insane. He knew it. He knew by now that other men didn’t feel the cracks as he did, always just outside of his periphery, didn’t have bugs on the brain like he did...the ones that had been his companions since his baptism out in the Wastes, all those years ago.
Who wouldn’t have lost their minds at such a low level of humanity, when every waking minute was spent on survival? When you live like an animal, you begin to think like an animal; more so than like a man, surely. Civilized people, like those who had spent their entire lives at the Spire, would never know that. They’d never stared the beast right in the face...never felt its hot, rancid breath filling them with demons.
With thoughts of his origins came thoughts of those that made him. He whimpered, and fought back an urge to start weeping.
They had been hard on him, but then the world had been hard on them, and so like any other parent they could only teach what they knew. They taught him not to expect pity, or comfort, for such things would not be offered to him from the world. No, the only constant to expect from the Wastes was gnashing teeth. A gnawing hole in his belly. Dust storms.
Pain.
And so, when their trio of footprints in the sand had been reduced to a pair, and then finally to a single set...his own...he was equipped to survive. When they’d left him behind, a boy astride a vast ocean of sucking, swallowing sand, he did not falter. He walked, as they had told him to walk, from ruin to ruin, taking what he could take and subsisting on what the fortunate would consider far below the line of “bare minimum”. For years, he had choked on the ash and the rocks, even as he had suckled a trickle of blood from them.
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