...and then, almost on cue, I was jostled out of my thoughts by a vibration in the marble floor. Suddenly, the ceiling, walls, metal prison doors, everything started shaking! It was a mild shaking at first, much like being in a building right next to a giant moving transport vehicle as it rumbled by. However, after a few seconds, the shaking dramatically increased in intensity.
“What’s going on?” Loquacious yelled.
“Is it some sort of explosion?” Resolute asked.
“It’s lasting too long to be an explosion,” Primus and Secundus responded.
“I think it’s an earthquake!” I yelled. “Stay close to one of the interior marble walls. Those walls should be more stable than anything else.” I heeded my own advice, moving away from the exterior walls. The floor slab of marble was shaking so violently now that it caused me to bounce on my three good wheels as I moved across the prison cell.
Above all of the rumbling and shaking noises, I noticed the metal door to my prison cell started to chatter as it bounced on its hinges. A few seconds later, after one particularly forceful vibration, the door jumped off its hinges and fell loudly onto the hallway floor! A few seconds after that, the same thing happened across the hall to the metal door of Loquacious’s and Resolute’s prison cell.
“Earthquake or not, I’m getting out of here!” Resolute yelled above the deafening tremor.
“I agree. Let’s go!” I yelled in response.
“Don’t forget about us,” Primus and Secundus interjected. Their cell door had yet to succumb to the same fate as ours.
“Don’t worry; we’re breaking you out, too,” I answered, leaving my cell and maneuvering around the felled metal doors. I was beginning my attempt to unlatch their door when I heard the door at the end of the hallway burst open, and two large Peace-Keepers, armed with stun batons, came charging in.
“Prisoners, back in your cells, now!” one of the Peace-Keepers yelled as they came charging at me. By now, Loquacious and Resolute had exited their prison cell and were just behind me.
“Slow them down while I open Primus’s and Secundus’s cell door,” I commanded to Loquacious and Resolute. That didn’t go over too well with the guards.
“That’s it, prisoners. Here comes the pain!” The Peace-Keepers sprinted at us, but then they suddenly stopped, just two meters away from us. Thin, white wisps of smoke came pouring out of their casings before they toppled over in our direction, narrowly missing us. Behind them was Winston.
“That was ‘Le-vel Three’.”
“Winston! Boy, are we sure glad to see YOU!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, ‘here comes the pain’ indeed!” Resolute delighted in the downfall of its captors.
“They’re out,” Winston announced to no one in particular. A couple of seconds later, the violent shaking in the prison abruptly came to an end. With the shaking over, I was finally able to open up the cell door and let Primus and Secundus out.
“Winston, did you—” Loquacious began to speak but was interrupted by Winston.
“We must leave im-me-di-ate-ly,” Winston commanded and started leading the way out of the prison wing into the central portion of the prison facility. “We should exit Bo-re-al Junc-tion as soon as pos-si-ble.”
“No! You... you can’t leave now,” Solicitous stated while cowering in a corner.
“Solicitous! What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Surreptitious positioned half-a-dozen Peace-Keepers at each of the three exits to Boreal Junction. Even if you happen to get past them, Lazuli is beginning to rise, and you’ll be spotted out in the open.”
“Solicitous does have a point,” Loquacious added.
“OK, if that’s the case, then we need to wait until Lazuli-fall to leave Boreal Junction,” I said. “What are we going to do until then? Find a place to hide? We can’t stay here.”
“I know a good place for you to hide,” Solicitous said. “It’s not too far away from where you were captured, and it’s only about 150 meters away from here.”
“Can we trust Solicitous? It’s a Facilitator, after all,” Resolute added.
“I don’t know if we have a choice. We’ve GOT to keep moving,” I replied. “Solicitous, lead the way.”
Solicitous walked over to the doorway leading out of the west side of the prison and peered outside. “It’s still kind of dark outside, but Lazuli-rise is just a few minutes away. We’ll need to cross the street quickly to avoid detection. Follow me.”
Solicitous darted outside, followed closely by Winston and me, with Loquacious, Resolute, Primus, and Secundus trailing behind. Despite my broken rear-starboard wheel, I was able to muster the power to make a quick burst across the road. While it was nearly daybreak, it was still dark enough to obscure us from the watchful gaze of the Peace-Keepers stationed on the edge of the settlement. The earthquake had also kicked up a fair amount of dust, which further shrouded our movements.
I noticed many Autoclons wandering around outside, surely concerned after experiencing the tremors. I saw a few of them talking with each other, but no one seemed injured. Fortunately, in all of the confusion, I don’t think any of them noticed us exit the prison as we headed onto one of the side streets on the western half of town.
Solicitous took us on a couple of twists and turns, eventually leading us to an unassuming building just a few meters from the western wall of the settlement. Solicitous entered through the un-locked door and bid us all enter. Once inside, Solicitous locked the door behind us and spoke: “I don’t have much time. The prison officials are going to be looking for you all pretty soon, and I expect they’ll ask me some questions. I’ll probably be asked to aid in their search for you. But before I leave, can you give me the Freedom Protocols?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Just like you said earlier, I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to do it again.”
“Do we even know if a Facilitator can take the code?” Resolute asked.
“Well, there’s one way to find out. I’ll need to attach a network cord from me to your input processor...” Before long, the two of us were connected, and I started transferring the code update to Solicitous. After a couple of minutes, Solicitous started rebooting.
Once Solicitous finished the restart process, I asked: “So, how do you feel? Any different?”
“Well, I... I’m not sure. I can tell you I’m not too eager to get out there and help Surreptitious and the other prison officials.”
“I’d say that’s a good sign,” I replied.
“OK, I need to leave. I’ll go back and pretend that the earthquake knocked me unconscious. If they ask me to help look for you, I’ll see what I can do to keep them away from this building. Then, when I get the chance, I’ll come back here and give you an update of what’s happening out there.”
“That sounds like a great plan,” I replied. “One thing before you go: can you look into bringing us back some of our belongings, like my Cobalt laser and Resolute’s cart? Don’t worry about it if you can’t.”
“Sure, I’ll see what I can do.” Solicitous unlocked the door and started to exit the building.
“Solicitous, thanks! We really appreciate you doing what you can.”
“You’re welcome.”
∆∆∆
11.2 Cleaning Up
After Solicitous left, we had the opportunity to explore our immediate surroundings. Considering we could be in there for hours, it seemed like the prudent thing to do. We appeared to be in some sort of storage facility. The building was about eight meters wide, nearly four meters tall and over 25 meters long. Two eastern-facing windows near the ceiling allowed a few early-morning rays of Lazuli light into the building. The southeast corner of the building had a few cracks in the wall near the foundation, but they weren’t deep enough to allow air or light to come in from the outside.
The front of the building was an office area where a storage clerk could approve of the import or export of goods moving to or from the fac
ility. There was a computer terminal against the northern wall that would’ve been used by the storage clerk to keep a manifest of the storage facility’s contents. However, the storage clerk’s terminal was quite dusty and had likely been unused for the last few solar-cycles.
Behind the office, there were two levels of storage space, stretching back over the final 20 meters of the building. The upper level was vacant, but there were several large storage crates toward the port side of the ground level. They were all roughly one meter cubed in size. They too were covered in a thick layer of dust.
“Look, a power station,” Resolute observed, motioning to an area against the wall near the computer terminal. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some extra power. That crystal from Solicitous was nice, but it wasn’t that helpful.” Resolute went over to it and plugged in but nothing happened.
“Looks like the building doesn’t have any power,” I said.
“That’s too bad.”
“What’s in...”
“...those storage crates?” Primus and Secundus asked.
“Well, let’s see,” I added. We all went back to take a look for ourselves. Loquacious reached the first one and carefully cracked open the lid. “There’s nothing in this one.”
Secundus opened the second container. “Nothing in here either.”
We opened all eight of the cargo containers and found them to be empty.
“I wonder, could we hide in these containers if the building was ever searched?” Resolute asked.
“Well, they’re certainly big enough, at least for some of us. We’d have to knock them over so we could get into them, but I guess that’s an option for us,” I said.
“We’ve got another problem,” Loquacious added. “Look at all of the tracks we’re making in this dust. If someone searches this building, they’ll see pretty quickly that someone has been here.” After a glance around, it was quite evident that several Autoclons had recently disturbed the thick layer of dust on the floor.
“Wow, you’re right, Loquacious,” I replied.
“Why don’t we just clean it up? I know it’s a big building, but there are six of us,” Resolute said. “What else are we going to do until Solicitous returns?”
We agreed that removing the evidence of our presence would be the best course of action for the time being. We found some cleaning agents and a pair of large sweepers in one of the storage cabinets, and we went to work to clean the place up.
While we were hard at work, I decided to break the silence: “So, Winston, I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet for rescuing us.”
“Yes, thank you!” the twins added.
“You’re all ver-y wel-come,” Winston replied.
“Did you know there would be an earthquake?” Loquacious asked.
“Yeah, did ya know that would happen or did ya just decide to act during all of the confusion?” Resolute asked.
“Yes, I did know there would be an ‘earth-quake’, but it wasn’t ac-tu-al-ly an earth-quake,” Winston responded.
“Really? All of that shaking and vibrating, and it WASN’T from an earthquake?” Resolute asked. “What on Zarikum could have caused all of that ruckus?”
“It wasn’t from an-y-thing on Zar-i-kum, but it was from a-bove Zar-i-kum.”
“Oh... was it from the ‘Betsy Reed’?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Wow, that means Marcus is here, right?”
“He is near-by.”
“Can the Programmer get us out of here?” Resolute asked.
“Yes and no. Yes, He is ca-pa-ble, but He has de-cid-ed not to land the ship in Bo-re-al Junc-tion.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Mar-cus wants your es-cape to ap-pear as though you didn’t re-ceive an-y help from Him. He wants you to be-come a leg-end by mi-rac-u-lous-ly es-cap-ing pris-on and slip-ping through the clutches of the Rul-ing Par-ty.”
“Oh. Why would He want me to become a legend?”
“You will have great-er in-flu-ence o-ver oth-ers as a ‘leg-end’. Mar-cus pro-jects your fu-ture ef-forts will be more fruit-ful as a ‘leg-end’ or a ‘he-ro’ rath-er than just an or-di-nar-y Min-er.”
“I like it. Here approaches the Legendary Fastidious! It has a nice ring to it, very poetic,” Loquacious added.
“I do like the sound of that, but I’d rather get out of here first.”
“Out of curiosity, what was it on the ‘Betsy Reed’ that caused the prison to shake like that?” Resolute asked.
“It is called a ‘trac-tor beam’. It ex-erts a pull, much like the pull of grav-i-ty, from the ‘Bet-sy Reed’ onto some oth-er ob-ject. For this in-stance, it was used on the base of the pris-on build-ing.”
“Wow, could the tractor beam actually lift the prison off the ground?” Resolute asked, intrigued by the technology.
“No, the trac-tor beam a-board the ‘Bet-sy Reed’ is not pow-er-ful enough to do that. In-stead, by pull-ing on the pris-on foun-da-tion, the re-sult-ing force caused the foun-da-tion to shake, which in turn caused the rest of the build-ing to shake as well.”
“That’s pretty cool!”
“But that doesn’t help us get out of here,” I replied. “The exits out of Boreal Junction are still likely guarded by too many Peace-Keepers for us to handle, and even if we do get out of the settlement, we could easily be tracked in the sand.”
“Could this tractor beam pull us up outta here and onto the ship?” Resolute asked.
“I do not be-lieve that is a de-signed func-tion of the trac-tor beam.”
“What CAN we do to get out of here?” Loquacious asked out of desperation.
“This group is quite re-source-ful. You will think of some-thing,” Winston said. “Keep this in mind: Mar-cus is not un-will-ing to help you, but Mar-cus is un-will-ing to be SEEN help-ing you.”
“So, if we think of a plan that includes Marcus, can you run it by Him to see if He can help us out?”
“Yes, that is ac-cept-a-ble.”
By the time we concluded our conversation with Winston, we were nearly finished cleaning up the storage facility. Resolute and Primus were still sweeping the dust and miscellaneous debris toward the back of the building, but the rest of us had already completed our tasks.
“If we wanted to go into another line of work, I’d say we should consider becoming a cleaning crew,” Loquacious said.
“I’m not sure about that,” Resolute admitted. “I don’t think cleaning agrees with me. I’d rather be outside making a mess than inside cleaning one up.”
“I can honestly say that I never expected my journeys would include going to a small settlement in the Northernlands and cleaning up an abandoned warehouse while being hunted by a bunch of Peace-Keepers,” I replied.
“Oh really? That was actually third on my list of things to do before I died!” Loquacious answered. We all responded by laughing heartily.
It was good to hear us all laughing again. Our trek so far had been long and demanding. In the last two tetrads, I had faced life-or-death circumstances on six occasions: in the canyon near the Deep-Well Mines, in the fissure near Mount Obsidian, in the lightning storm, in the Lower Crevasse Platinum Mine, with the Peace-Keepers in the streets of Boreal Junction yesterday, and just now with the earthquake and breaking out of prison. And that’s not counting me reaching critically-low power levels before finding the ‘Betsy Reed’ or the attack that Winston fended off before we reached the Wild Crystal Grange. Needless to say, our journey had stressed us both physically and emotionally. Laughter was a healthy and welcome release of tension after facing all of these trials.
However, the humor didn’t change the fact that we were still outlaw Autoclons on the run from the local authorities, trapped in a settlement with numerous Peace-Keepers hunting us down. While the laughter was a nice diversion, we were hardly out of danger...
∆∆∆
11.3 Update from Solicitous
Upon completing our cleaning work, we decided to head b
ack to the rear of the warehouse near the cargo containers, just in case we needed to hide from any unexpected visitors. While we waited, Primus, Secundus, and Resolute all decided to hibernate to conserve their dwindling power supplies while Loquacious, Winston, and I stayed awake and alert, waiting for Solicitous to return. We ended up waiting for over an hour, but then, just before Lazuli-summit, we detected someone trying to enter the building.
I whispered to our three sleeping companions to wake up. Considering I didn’t know who was entering the building, I wanted everyone to be ready to fight if needed, but I also felt that hiding would be our best first option. As those three started waking up, someone opened the door and entered the building.
“Hello? Is anybody here? It’s me, Solicitous.”
I froze. It sounded like Solicitous, but I wasn’t positive.
“Fastidious, it’s alright, it’s just me. There’s no one else here with me.”
I peeked out from behind a container, and I confirmed that Solicitous was indeed our visitor. More importantly, Solicitous was alone. Having validated that Solicitous was telling the truth, I responded: “OK, Solicitous, we’re coming out.”
We all emerged from our hiding locations. Primus and Secundus lagged behind, still in the latter stages of startup.
“I love what you’ve done with the place. It looks so much cleaner now,” Solicitous added.
“Well, we didn’t want someone to come in here and see all of our tracks in the dust, so we decided to clean the floors,” I responded. “What is this place anyway? It doesn’t look like it’s been used for a couple of solar-cycles.”
“It’s been vacant for nearly four solar-cycles. It was a storage facility owned by a friend of mine who worked with the Hillside Titanium Mine, storing excess mining equipment here. Unfortunately, the mine hasn’t been all that profitable recently, so they had to release my friend from their services. This place has been abandoned ever since.
“Anyway, back to the news at hand. I only have a few minutes to talk before I am required back at the prison. First, here is your Cobalt laser, Fastidious.” Solicitous extended its starboard arm with my Cobalt laser in its graspers and handed it to me.
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