by Ben Farthing
This ship had appeared overnight, like the skyscraper. But where the building had been a weird counterfeit of an office building, this was close to the genuine article. As far as Chris could tell, anyways. He’d never been on a cruise before.
He wasn’t sure what that genuineness meant. The purpose of the Aria was different from the purpose of the skyscraper—he knew that much. It likely meant that he needed to more fully explore the ship. If all the parts he’d seen were normal, maybe the parts he hadn’t seen were beyond bizarre.
Pete hugged his chest. Even in his tweed blazer, he shivered. “I’m used to warmer weather. I live with my folks in Arizona.”
“That why you couldn’t make it to the skyscraper?” Chris sat on a lounge chair. This was as good a spot as any.
“Micah only let us know about it right before she went inside. I waited for her next communication. It never came.”
“And eventually, your tall silverback friend took over?”
“Nathaniel reached out to us, yes.” Pete looked nervously at the glass doors leading to the elevator bank. “Let’s move more out of the way.”
Chris obliged. They found a spot against the ship’s edge, with the central concrete piers blocking the view from one elevator bank.
Pete kept his eye on the other elevator bank. “Tell me how Micah found the Deviser. Did you witness it yourself? Why did you leave if you had the option of remaining?”
Chris sighed. That was a whole barrel of ignorance. “You tell me everything you know about the Aria and why you’re on it. Then I’ll tell you about the skyscraper.”
Pete would likely deny Chris’s story and clam up about his own, so the kid needed to go first.
“I already told you what we know about the ship. It was found floating in the ocean. The cruise line claimed it before anyone else realized it was there. They swapped it out with a ship that was about to be retired.”
“Aren’t there laws about salvage? Wouldn’t they have spent months contacting every other cruise line to make sure they didn’t get sued?”
“They did. This Aria appeared nearly a year ago.”
That was a surprise. Chris had assumed it had appeared right before Pete’s cryptic text messages to him. But now Pete was saying that once the overnight skyscraper had disappeared, the Aria showed up shortly afterwards. “How’d you find out about it? If it had leaked anywhere, it’d be all over the news.”
“Nathaniel found out.”
“How?”
Pete scratched at his fingernails like a raccoon washing a meal. “I can’t tell you that part.”
Chris stood up. “Then you won’t learn what happened to Micah.”
“What happened to her? Were the others right? Did you kill her?”
Chris hid any expression from his face. “Everything you know, in exchange for everything I know. No exceptions.”
“Fine. Sit down.”
Chris got comfortable again. Water lapped at the pool’s edge.
Pete chewed on his lip, then continued. “Nathaniel’s got some way of knowing when the Deviser has reached over.”
“Reached over?”
“Like the skyscraper.”
“I thought that skyscraper was the first the Deviser had acted in decades. That’s what Micah said.”
“Micah only had eyes for the future. She was after the next construction breakthrough.” Pete pulled a playing-card-sized shard of glass from his pocket. “Most of us are also passionate about the past. What the Deviser has left behind.”
“Micah said the past buildings it sent over all disappeared. The skyscraper certainly did. It’s still on the news sometimes.”
“The structures themselves disappear. But not what explorers removed from inside. Nathaniel gave me this glass from the first greenhouse.”
Chris took it and held it up to the light. “You’re saying this is centuries old?”
“Millenia.”
“Neat.”
“It’s amazing. It’s from the Deviser’s dimension.”
Chris had a sudden vivid memory of being near the top of the skyscraper, looking out at a flat, infinite plane, while something enormous stalked behind the buildings of Richmond. He handed the glass back to Pete. “What’s this got to do with how Nathaniel found out about the ship?”
“Nathaniel’s and Micah’s families have been rivals for generations. Nathaniel has been studying with the purpose of worship, Micah with the purpose of progress.”
“Where do you fall?”
“Progress has been an effect of worshipping the Deviser, but it’s not the purpose of that worship. That’s beside the point. Nathaniel has an artifact from the Tremont Hotel. He’s secretive about it and how it works, but it led him to the Aria. He actually found the ship at dock, then had his people research what it was and who it belonged to.”
“And the cruise line just told him the story of finding it?”
“He’s got a lot of money,” Pete said. “He negotiates million-dollar deals from a fancy bar in his basement. He’s persuasive.”
Chris took it all in. He leaned back to look up at the stars. The pool lights dulled the night sky. The lounge chair creaked under his weight. “Okay. That’s how you found out about the ship. Why are you on it?”
Pete’s constantly gesturing hands went still. “The same reason as you. To get close to the Deviser.”
“But why?”
“Why have people gone to church for thousands of years?”
“This is your religion?”
“That’s not a word I usually use, but sure.”
Chris felt bad that he was about to shatter this kid’s faith. “Most people pray to a God they believe cares about them.”
“The Deviser gifted us modern civilization. If that’s not benevolence, what is?”
Chris watched ripples in the pool from the ship’s movement. “That’s why all of you are here? Even your bossman Nathaniel?”
“Everyone has their individual motivation.”
“Maybe I’m not being clear enough. What plans does Nathaniel have for this trip?”
“To draw close to the Deviser.”
Chris wanted to pull his hair out. “And how is he planning on drawing closer the Deviser?”
“By finding the purpose of this ship and helping it to fruition.”
Chris exhaled and closed his eyes. He’d worried that was the answer.
It was insane. To think that some random person could help along the purposes of the Deviser. He’d seen glimpses of its infinite flat plane. He’d survived the impact of its tendrils reaching into this world. No way in hell someone could have any impact on what it planned. That’d be like a cockroach helping create the Hadron Collider. Impossible in every way.
And it was insane that someone would want to help the Deviser in the first place. Chris had seen men yanked away from our reality to an eternity of slavery. Or torture. Chris honestly didn’t know what had happened to them, only that they’d screamed for help.
“You look like you’re disgusted with me,” Pete said.
Chris blinked and sat up straight. “Do you really want to know what happened in that skyscraper? Or would you rather go on living with faith, or whatever you call it?”
“Knowledge only strengthens faith.”
Chris took a breath. He told Pete how he’d entered the overnight skyscraper to find Eddie, who had broken in to search for treasure. He told him how one of Micah’s men had disappeared in the basement, and he’d only later understood that the building was absorbing people once it had formed their mental state to its liking.
Pete nodded. “The Deviser values growth. Communion must be the reward.”
Chris told Pete how when he later caught glimpses of the taken men, they screamed and begged for rescue. Pete shook his head. Chris shared his theory that all the Deviser’s past gifts—wells, smokehouses, cement, then the modern construction breakthroughs that allowed cities to flourish, like steel frames, elevators, and air-condit
ioning—were meant to gather mankind close together. Not out of benevolence, but for harvesting. The overnight skyscraper provided the final mental sculpting to prepare people for whatever tasks the Deviser wanted them for.
Pete shook his head. “You’re lying.” His face held the youthful pain of life’s first big betrayal. For most people, it was romantic heartbreak. For Pete, it’d be finding out that an incomprehensible entity didn’t love him.
Chris told him how Micah was obsessed with finding the next construction breakthrough for her own wealth and power. When she realized there was nothing she could use, something snapped. She tried to sacrifice Chris and Eddie to the Deviser as a last-ditch attempt to pry from it what she wanted. She died in the attempt, and then the building mutilated her corpse.
Chris left out how he’d intentionally maimed her before her death. He could still feel her bones breaking under his blows. It had been necessary to save Eddie’s life. He knew that. He also knew that he’d assaulted a frail old woman.
Pete stood up. “Why are you telling these lies? The Deviser loves us. I’m on this ship to get closer to him.”
“I’m only telling you what I experienced.”
“Did you even go inside that building? Or has it all been a ruse to damage our faith? Nathaniel warned me that people would try to tear me down. I thought he meant my parents laughing at me, but he apparently knew someone like you would try to deceive me. He knew someone would try to stop us from achieving the next step of our plans.”
“The next step? So your plans are more specific than just helping the Deviser? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nathaniel guides us. I told you, he’ll help us help the Deviser’s purposes for the Aria. He doesn’t tell us all the details. That’s where faith comes in.”
So the lanky silver haired cult leader knew more than he was sharing with his followers. Chris wanted that info. Sinking the ship was still the top priority, but the more he knew about what horrors might appear, the better.
Pete waved both index fingers in a for shame motion. “I invited you here because I thought you shared my love for the Deviser. How could you not? You’d been so close to him. But you’re a deceiver. I have to confess to Nathaniel what I’ve done.”
“Wait!” Chris jumped up, but Pete was already running away.
This was bad. Chris didn’t know how dangerous Nathaniel was, but cults generally weren’t friendly to people trying to stop them. And this particular cult’s former leader had been happily capable of violence.
Chris didn’t try to stop Pete. What could he do? Wrestle him to the ground, and then what?
The kid’s cheap leather shoes slapped against the deck as he sprinted along the swimming pool. He ran for the far elevator bank. He stopped near the concrete divider in the middle of the pool and looked back like he thought Chris was chasing him.
They locked eyes across the pool. Pete was frantic and scared. Chris figured part of the kid believed what he’d told him. Shattered faith couldn’t feel good.
Chris raised his hands and shrugged, trying to convey his harmlessness.
Pete turned and ran.
Chris was left alone on the top deck of the Aria.
The cult would know he was here now. Pete had already said he was the only one who didn’t blame Chris for Micah’s death.
He’d need to keep a low profile. Get his meals in his cabin. Stay away from public spaces.
The plan was still to get everyone off the ship by clogging the plumbing, then planting his bombs around the lower hull.
But he wanted to know what threats the Aria contained.
His brief exploration earlier today hadn’t yielded anything, but there was plenty of the ship he hadn’t explored yet. The bottom decks, for example.
But the ship was huge. If Nathaniel really had a trinket that could lead him to threats from the Deviser’s plane, then Chris wanted that trinket. He had enough explosives that he could blow up any especially dangerous areas and still have enough to sink the ship.
And getting the trinket out of Nathaniel’s hands might also interrupt the cultist’s plans, whatever they were. Pete had suggested that Nathaniel had a specific way in mind to help the Deviser’s purpose with the Aria.
Chris still didn’t know what that was. If he wanted to find out, he’d have to steal Nathaniel’s trinket.
He wasn’t the best burglar, but he’d been preparing for a year to collapse a building. He’d learned the basics of getting into places he wasn’t supposed to be.
Tomorrow, he’d set both his plans into motion: clog the plumbing, and steal Nathaniel’s trinket.
For now, he’d go to his cabin and sleep.
15
Riley threw back her head and sang along to “Sweet Caroline.”
It turned out, the jazz pianist from the dining room doubled as the evening entertainment in the Cloud Club.
Krystal had somehow found Marjorie again—who once again said that her sisters weren’t drinking enough—and the three of them now sat around a table next to a huge window.
The night reflected the inside revelry, with only occasional glimpses of movement outside as someone walked by on the outer deck.
Riley watched her reflection enjoy feeling tipsy, singing along with her best friend and a pink-haired old woman who Riley envied for her open embrace of life.
Tomorrow, Riley would get her watch back. Tonight, she was on a cruise.
Marjorie stood up. “I’m getting a refill,” she shouted over the music. “What are you ladies having?”
“Margaritas!” Krystal cheered.
Riley almost said no, but then gave a thumbs up. She had all day tomorrow to recover from a hangover.
With Marjorie gone, Krystal leaned over to Riley to be heard over the crowd’s singing. “I was hoping there’d be more men.”
Riley pointed to a white-haired man with coke-bottle glasses. “What about him?” She giggled at her own joke.
“After six weeks of this, ask me again.” Krystal sipped at her drink. “Did you think Bobby was cute?”
“Who?” Riley couldn’t remember meeting anybody on the cruise.
“The guy looking into your mystery photo.”
“Ohhhh, him.” Riley rolled her eyes. “There’s not enough tequila on this ship. Somehow I’m just not attracted to men who treat me like a hysterical woman in a bonnet drama.”
“Oh, he wasn’t that bad.”
“Yes, he was—”
The lights went out.
The speakers died.
The crowd gasped. Krystal screamed in that exaggerated way she did at any little shock, except for her, it was earnest.
Riley patted Krystal’s arm. “It’s probably just for a couple of seconds.”
The piano played a few more chords, and then the pianist gave it up.
From somewhere across the dark room, the bartender yelled. “Everyone stay calm. Probably just the crew working on some circuits. Stay where you are. Don’t try to move anywhere in the dark.”
Good advice for the guests who would break a hip if they fell over. Riley laughed at the image, then felt guilty about it. She was drunker than she’d thought.
“We have plenty of backup power generators,” yelled the bartender. “Just give them a few seconds.”
But seconds turned into minutes. In the dark, people started complaining. The only light in the bar was the glow of cell phones.
Riley about jumped out of her skin when Marjorie appeared next to her. “I didn’t get there in time to order, but I swiped a bottle of something. Who wants to do a blind taste test?”
Riley took a small sip. It was rum. Not what she wanted in a pitch dark nightclub half a cruise ship away from her cabin.
After another ten minutes in the dark, the pianist dove back into the singalongs, sans microphone.
It meant lots of off-tune crooning geriatrics drowning out the professional singer.
After an hour, Riley’s long day was catching up to her.
She wanted her bed. Surely the whole ship’s power wasn’t out. It was still moving forward, after all. She could feel it swaying under her, ever so slightly.
The bartender interrupted again. “We have emergency flashlights and glow sticks for everyone. They’re still working on the power, so you’re invited to return to your cabins. By the time morning comes, we’ll have everything up and running. Anyone who wants an escort through the dark hallways, find one of our staff. They’re the ones with the big lanterns.”
There were only four lanterns, beacons in the dark, revealing young, orange-shirted staff. Already, elderly guests began to crowd them like moths to a flame.
“I’m not waiting for an escort,” Riley said. “Let’s find our way back.”
“How about you be my escort?” Marjorie asked. “I’ll grab us some flashlights and glow sticks.” She was off before Riley or Krystal could answer.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Krystal asked. “She’ll probably try on her own if we don’t go with her. If she falls down the stairs because we’re not there, I’d feel awful.”
Riley didn’t want to escort random old ladies through the dark cruise ship. But they had five weeks and six days left on the voyage. She wasn’t going to start it out by making enemies. “Of course. It’ll be fun.”
Riley stood up. Her head spun. She’d only had a few margaritas, but she wasn’t a big drinker. She caught her balance on the table and took a breath. “I’m fine.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” Krystal asked.
The room was still too dark to see each other.
“I’m fine.” Riley repeated.
Marjorie returned, her face lit green from a glow stick she’d tucked between her breasts. “I’m gonna make the men stare at me!”
She handed them each a cheap plastic flashlight and a glow stick. “I’m on Deck Three, close to the front of the ship. It’ll be fastest to get to the front outside, then go down.”