"Scavenger Hunt," it said, in ornate, golden text. Confused, he scratched more. As he scratched, more text began to take shape. "Go to the library. There you will find the next clue." What library? Before he could ponder further, his door was thrown open. Mr. Fountaindrink burst into the office in a flurry of hair and loose paperwork. He plopped a large pile of folders on Curtchweilder's desk and was halfway down the hall before shouting back "sue all these people!" Exhaling, Fenton swept the unnoticed pile of white debris into the waste-paper basket, pocketed the photo and went to work.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The sun was already plunging behind the grimy building opposite Fenton's when he left for home. He was absentmindedly rummaging through his bag for the keys to his bike lock when he heard someone say his name. He looked up to see a man wearing circular glasses leaning out of the driver window of a black Volvo parked next to the pole where his bike had been locked.
ReplyDelete"Fenton! Hey, c'mere!"
"Do I know you?"
"You're about to," he said with a distressing smile. "Looks like you're in need of a ride, buddy."
"No, I rode..." he trailed off. Where was his bike?
"A couple of punk kids came by and jacked it a little while ago. You really should get a u-lock, they're harder to get through with bolt cutters."
Sure enough, his chain lay near the pole, obviously cut. "Why didn't you stop them?" he asked angrily.
"Eh, not my bike. Plus, this way you'll have to come with me."
Fenton was getting nervous. "Why do you want me to come with you? And how do you know my name?"
"Relax, relax. I'm a cab driver, I know things. You ask too many questions. Get in and I'll explain everything."
ReplyDelete"Explain what? What's going on?"
The cab driver sighed. "Christ, more questions. You recently found a photograph, no? With a cryptic, though attractively penned note on the back? I'm here about that. I know someone who can help you find the library."
The world spun. "Wh- who are you?"
ReplyDelete"Hank, nice to meet you, etc. Get in."
[CHAPTER BREAK Switch to another storyline here.]
ReplyDeleteFenton Curtchweilder stood hesitantly outside the door. It was large and wood. Oak, maybe? It had been painted green some time before, the paint oxidized and flaking here and there. There was a small, sliding window at eye level and he got the impression that the paint had been an attempt to cover some shady and unsavory past. The knob was hefty and bronze, both blackened by years of exposure and polished by countless hands. It was obviously very old and something about the way it hung conveyed weight, heft, at time when mass meant quality. He wondered for a moment how many had walked through this door over it's lifespan, but caught himself. He was stalling. He took a deep breath and knocked three times, hard.
"Just a minute!" came the muffled call from the other side of the door. Fenton shuffled his feet awkwardly, looked out onto the street. It was a nice area, left largely untouched in the chaos following the plague and the crash. He was glad; places with doors like this should be preserved. The knowledge these buildings possessed, trapped away in wood and stone, needed to be maintained, even in a raw form. Raw, but uncensored. He wondered if the residents realized they were living in giant data-banks.
ReplyDeleteHis thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the peep-hole. "Hello? Who is that?"
"Uh, hi. My name is Fenton. A 'mutual friend' sent me? He said you might be able to help me out."
"'Mutual friend?' Do you mean Hank?"
"Yeah. Good, you do know him."
The door was opened by a pretty woman in her late twenties. Her hair was wet and wrapped up in a towel. "Well I wouldn't go so far as to say that. Only Viv even comes close to knowing Hank. Come on in."
"I didn't come at a bad time, did I?"
"Don't worry about it. I'm sure Hank waited until I was getting out of the shower on purpose. He's a bit of an asshole, as I'm sure you'll discover. Did he just ditch you out here?"
He looked over his shoulder as the door closed. "Yeah, kinda. He said you were home and then took off."
"He did know I was home, but still. That's just rude."
"I'm Jamie, by the way. What did you need help with?"
ReplyDelete"Well, I found this photo in my now dead boss's office. I'm pretty sure he was looking at it when he died. Today I noticed there was something on the back and... well take a look." He rummaged in his pockets. "See? Go to the library. Does that mean anything to you?"
"Wait, let me see that picture," Jamie said, taking the paper from him and studying it closely for a moment. "Shit, I actually think I know where this is."
"Seriously? Where?"
ReplyDelete"I don't know, but look in the corner here. See?" she pointed. Fenton leaned close. "See on the wall behind this stack of books? Someone spraypainted 'perfume.' That's my thing, I do that. I've definitely been there."
"What do you mean, 'you've definitely been there?' Do you remember being there?"
"Well... not exactly. It's kinda a long story."
"I've got nowhere to be."
"Alright. Let me preface this by saying I'm not sure how long this has been going on. Years, but I don't have any way of knowing exactly. I started... waking up and finding things rearranged. It started out with small stuff. You know, like I'd leave my keys on a table and then I couldn't find them in the morning. I didn't really think much about it; I just assumed I was forgetting where I was putting stuff. As it started to get worse though, I couldn't explain it away anymore. I would wake up in a different room than I went to sleep in, or I would find my car parked somewhere other than where I parked it. I decided to set up a camera, you know, to see what I was up to."
ReplyDeleteJulia paused.
ReplyDelete"What happened?"
"It was the weirdest thing. I woke up the next morning, feeling totally normal and everything. I expected to just see a video of me sleeping through the night, but when I played it back... I watched myself get up, look straight at the camera, and then get some paper and write a note. I walked over, put it in my desk and went back to bed."
(EDIT) That's Jamie. Not sure where Julia came from.
ReplyDeleteJamie walked over to a large wooden table. Everything in this house was so OLD. Fenton was shocked that places like this could exist after the turmoil of the past century.
ReplyDelete"After watching the video, I immediately went and found the note," she said. "Basically, it said that since the plague, I had been slowly trading places with... well, with myself. Or who I become when I'm sleeping, I guess. My sleep-self couldn't even gain consciouses at first, but as she gained strength over the years, she began to exist during a larger and larger amount of each day. Anyway, we're a little more than halfway switched now, toward her. She can remember things I do during the day, but I have no memory of anything she's been up to. Eventually, I'll be the side of the personality that sleeps and she'll be the side that is awake."
"So, you're two different people?"
"Not exactly. I have multiple copies of the same personality. We are the same person, just duplicated. Like clones, except sharing a body."
Fenton could not believe he was hearing this. Surely he was not standing in the living room of a comparatively ancient home listening to an attractive woman tell him she shared her head with herself. He decided to roll with it. "So what's with the 'Perfume' thing?"
"Honestly, I don't know. It's technically not me who's been doing it. It does help me know where I've been, but you'll have to talk with... me. You're more than welcome to stay here tonight if you want to meet me."
Well, what the fuck? "Yeah, ok."
As the night wore on, Fenton learned more and more about Jamie's past. She had been living here with her parents at the time of the plague (she had been 8). Her mother had dissapeared, presumably a specter and she was raised by her father who died shortly after the crash from a heart attack. After he died, she inhereted the house and moved back in. She had apparently been doing some work with regards to the desperacidos, but she was not sure what it was.
ReplyDeleteFenton was actually a little dissapointed when she announced that she was tired and was heading to bed. "Just hang out in here, I guess. I should be out in less than an hour, it usually doesn't take long." He stretched himself out on the couch. What a strange day it had been; a mysterious scavenger hunt had begun, his bike had been stolen (under suspiscious cirumstances), he had been more or less abducted by a cab driver who just might be psychic and delivered to the home of a woman for whom's duplicate self he was now waiting. He shook his head, smiled, and got comfortable.
ReplyDeleteSomeone was shaking him gently. "Hey, Fenton... Fenton, wake up." He blinked in the light. "There we go. Get up, we need to get going," she smiled.
ReplyDelete"I guess I dozed off," he said with a laugh. "Are you... which Jamie are you?"
"The same one, just the other side. Like a stereo. I'm the left track, she's the right."
"Nice to meet you, LeftJamie." He held out his hand and she laughed.
"Nice to meet you too. Now, we need to get moving." Suddenly she was all buisiness. She grabbed a green purse out of a closet near the door. "Come on, Hank is waiting for us."
"Is he ever not waiting?"
"Only very occasionally."
Hank was indeed waiting for them at the curb in a black Volvo. "Fancy seeing you guys again," he said with a grin.
ReplyDelete[Chapter Skip (or brief change to another storyline)]
ReplyDelete"Here we are," said Hank. "32.53, please." Fenton fumbled in his pockets. "Just fucking with you. Get the hell out of my car."
"Good luck, Fenton. The library in the picture is just down the stairs at the end of the alley."
"Wait, you're not coming with me?"
"Unfortunately, no. I have something I need to do, sorry." She gave him an apologetic look as Hank slammed the passenger door and took off in a cloud of dust. Everything here was covered in a layer of thin powder, mostly ashes and encroaching dirt. It was entirely undisturbed aside from the tire-treads left by the departing Volvo and, on closer inspection, what appeared to be footprints leading into the alley from farther up the street. Great, he thought. Section 35 at midnight and there's someone else here.
Fucking perfect.
[Sorry I haven't been able to write more, today was busier than I thought. I'll try to wrap this up tomorrow, I PROMISE.]
ReplyDeleteHe had the advantage, he knew that. Whoever it was probably didn't know he was here. He darted to the wall of the alley and ducked down behind a pile scorched, empty file cabinets. Who was it? Were they armed? It was silly to think they might not be hostile; the only people that ever came here were the Assigners's men and people who wanted to be left alone. Neither liked to be intruded upon, and out here, no one could hear you scream for help. No one would hear the gunshot.
ReplyDeleteHe crept silently, feeling his way in the shadows. The dust on the ground kicked up little grey puffs, colorless in the moonlight. There was no sounds aside from his muffled footsteps. "I might as well be on the moon," he thought. He imagined this is how if felt, all those years ago. Dust and stillness and potential death only an inch away.
ReplyDeleteHe paused reached the end of the alley. The footprints clearly led down the stairs and into the basement. Crouching, he waited, listening. Silence. Quietly, he walked down a few steps and stopped. Still nothing. He kept moving.
ReplyDeleteThe stairs wound down into a large, high roofed storage room with empty book cases to the ceiling. Tall windows on one wall illuminated the building with a sad, pale light. Paper scraps lay about on the ground, most bearing the marks of having been burned. The sooty dust had not worked its way into the underground room (although there were signs of water damage) and he lost the footprints. He took the picture out and studied it. The shelves in the picture were the same style, but where were the books? Was he too late? Fenton froze. Footsteps. He flattened himself against one of the shelves, his heart beating in his throat. Shitshitshitshitshit...
ReplyDeleteThe footsteps came closer. A man walked across the end of the row of shelves, a large book in his arms, making no effort to be quiet. It was huge, probably 600 pages, apparently unmolested by the ravages of the technophiles. It was the most beautiful thing Fenton had ever seen. Cautiously, he got to his feet and walked to the end of the row. The man was wearing grey body armor with a distinctive logo on the back. The Assigners. That could only mean one thing: cleaning crew.
ReplyDeleteA weight settled on his chest. His fear was instantly replaced by an immense sense of loss and rage. Cleaning crews were dispatched to any places where uncensored information was thought to lurk. As the man walked around a corner, Fenton looked around frantically. A shelf, broken and collapsed, one of its legs sheared off lay by the wall. He grabbed it, felt it's heft, the jagged, broken edge on the end. It would do. He must protect the book.
ReplyDeleteHe jogged quietly past rows of empty shelves to the corner where the cleaning man had dissapeared. He saw a flash reflected on the wall ahead and the sickeningly distictive sound of a flicked lighter, deafening in the coffin-like stillness of the room. "NO!" he shouted, breaking into a sprint as he rounded the corner, a primal rage taking over. "STOP!"
ReplyDeleteFenton stopped, his imrpovised club still held high.
The man was sitting at a table with the book open in front of him, frozen, a freshly lit cigarette halfway to his mouth. For an instant, neither reacted. The man calmly pulled a handgun out of its holster and pointed it at Fenton's chest. He seemed at a loss for words. "...Who the fuck are you?"
"I... sorry, I thought you were going to burn that book. Aren't you on a cleaning crew?"
ReplyDeleteHe lowered the leg.
"Christ, I was just going to read it! You were going to hit me with that thing weren't you?"
"Well shit, what is a cleaning operative doing READING? Aren't you guys trained to destroy any books on contact? The assigners..." the man cut him off.
ReplyDelete"Fuck the assigners. Just 'cause they sign my paycheck doesn't mean I give half a shit what they want. I never destroy the books I find. I did once and it left a bad taste in my mouth."
Fenton was taken aback by this. "Well... what do you do with them then?"
"Stash 'em, read them when I'm in the area. I don't find them very often. I ran across this one a few weeks ago and I volunteered to come out to section 35 again so I could finish it up. Which is saying something. This place sucks."
"What's it about?"
"Christ it's boring. It's an old encyclopedia, or at least part of one. It's only the 'x' through 'z' section. It must be a hundred years old, the writing is all flowery and hard to follow. That and it's an encyclopedia, so it's not exactly riveting."
ReplyDeleteFenton stared. "It must be 600 pages! That's only 'x' 'y' and 'z?'"
"Pretty impressive, huh? To think, this kind of stuff used to be available to anybody who was interested. Not the 100 page horseshit we have now."
Both were silent for a moment, Fenton staring pointedly at the gun. "Do you mind?" he asked, hesitantly.
"Tell me who you are and what you're doing here."
"I'm Fenton Curtchweilder and I'm here on a scavenger hunt after being semi-kidnapped by a psychic cabbie and directed by a stereophonic woman."
ReplyDeleteThe man seemed to chew this over for a minute. "Yeah, sounds about right. Well a friend of Hank's is someone who's in at least as much shit as I am. I'm Charles, nice meeting you." He holstered the gun and held out his gloved hand.
"Go ahead and sit down," said Charles, kicking the chair opposite him away from the table.
ReplyDelete"Thanks. So, how did it get here? The book, I mean. This library looks pretty much cleaned out." He glanced to a corner of the room where 'Perfume' was barely visible under a layer of grime.
"I found it outside, laying in the middle of the street."
"Seriously? How did it wind up there?"
"I was wondering that myself. Then I found this:" he picked up the book and turned it over. The back cover bore a red stamp with the Assigner insignia and "ADMITTED: Andover Holding Facility (XYZ SECTION)" written below it.
"I actually found that the same day as I found this." He slid a scrap of paper across the table and took a long drag on his cigarette.
Fenton turned the page over in his hands. One side had some sort of official memo on it. The other had what looked like a child's doodle. "What am I looking at here?"
Charles flipped towards the back of the encyclopedia. "A Zeppelin. I wouldn't have known myself if I hadn't found a book on World War I a few years back. There was a picture of one in there and a description of what it was."
Fenton mumbled absent-mindedly as he traced along the page. "Blah blah...designed by Ferdinand, Graf von Zeppelin... in 1900? Shit, 245 metres long? And these things actually flew?"
"Hell yeah, look." He pointed to a black and white picture of two Zeppelins flying over an important looking building."
Fenton handed the tome back to Charles who closed it and held it under his arm. Zeppelins were giant flying contraptions, sure. And cleaners weren't all bitches to the Assigner's agenda, Fenton could deal with that too, but it left him no closer to finding the next clue to the scavenger hunt. His natural curiosity wouldn't let him let that go.
ReplyDeleteHe pulled out the picture again. "Go to the library." He was at the library, but all he'd found was detritus and debris. It was empty. There weren't even any books anymore. There was no information to be had here, which meant no answers.
"Let me look at that closer for a second." Fenton jumped at Charles's voice in his ear.
"Holy shit! I forgot you were here."
There was nothing comforting in Charles's grin. "Well, can I look at that picture you got there?"
Fenton didn't see why not. Maybe the rogue cleaner could help him find the next clue.
"If I'm not mistaken... isn't this a picture of this book?"
Fenton almost dropped the photo as he snatched it from Charles's hand. No, it couldn't be. But yes indeed, it was. The spine of one of the books in the picture did indeed have an "X,Y, Z" barely readable. It couldn't be a coincidence then that he'd run into Charles here at the library.
"I think you're the next clue."
ReplyDeleteCharles gave him a once-over.
"If you think I'm somehow involved with whatever Hank and whoever-the-fuck-he's-working-for is scheming, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I ain't got no clues to some scavenger hunt. I'm not involved with them. They do their thing and I do mine. I don't have time to end the world or whatever it is they're doing."
But Fenton knew he was wrong. Charles was the next clue whether he wanted to be or not. It was something to do with the Zeppelins, it had to be. Whoever was running this little end game could manipulate them like that, why not? They'd already employed an impossible plague to their advantage, a psychic cabbie and who knows what else Fenton didn't know about. Maybe they were even the ones responsible for the fall of the Bearers and the rise of the Assigners.
[sidenote, this is supposed to suggest bringing the Authors (us) into the story a little. Not quite animal man level breaking the fourth wall, but just a hint]
He turned to Charles.
"I believe you. You aren't working for whatever fates in charge any more than you're working for the Assigners as a cleaner right now." Charles winced at the mention of his job. "But you're the next clue. What does this red stamp here on the cover mean?"
Charles looked at it for a second, and then pulled out his standard-issue Assigner communicator device. Fearing he was on the verge of returning to his job, Fenton eyed the piece of shelf he'd set down, but Charles simply fiddled with it and brought up a small display.
"The Andover Holding Facility... it’s a top-level security clearance building. Not far from here actually. It probably hasn’t been used in year. For that matter, it probably hasn’t even been thought of in years. One of those forgotten buildings, you know?"
Fenton nodded.
“My guess would be it’s an information storage facility leftover from the Bearers. You think the next part of your scavenger hunt is there?”
“Alright, if you want to do this, then I’m in, Fenton.”
ReplyDelete“You’re wha-?”
“I’m in. I’m going to help you with this little scavenger hunt and maybe it’ll lead me to some of the answers I’m looking for.”
“We’re going to this Andover place?”
“We’re going to this Andover place.”
Charles stood up, towering over Fenton in a way that had not been apparent when Fenton had first seen him carrying the book from a distance. The man was easily a head taller than his balding compatriot. He led the way back towards the stairs and out of the library.
Charles looked around as they reached street level. "Umm... pretty sure it's this way." He pointed and held it as he looked at the communicator. "Yeah, this way." He started off down the street in the direction Hank had gone when he had dropped him off.
ReplyDeleteIt came about that Charles’s idea of not far and Fenton’s idea of not far were completely different things.
ReplyDeleteThey walked in silence for at least an hour, following the Volvo's tracks. Fenton found it difficult to keep up with the taller man. Although he looked to be in his forties, he was in excellent shape and walked with the long, confident, strides of military personnel. "What did you do before working for the Assigners?" Fenton asked.
ReplyDelete"I used to be a Marine, at least for a while. I had just finished combat training when the plague hit."
"I thought you might be ex-military. You walk like a soldier. You must have had a pretty hands on experience with the plague then? What was it like?"
"The bigwigs were still thinking 'plague,' as in piles of bodies and sick people everywhere. They sent us into some of the more affected areas for humanitarian aid, thinking we could help out. When we got there, we found people going about their lives as if nothing was wrong. We were supposed to prevent looting and whatnot, but it never happened. People just went about their business until they were all gone. Every day, the city would get a little less busy, the traffic less severe. There was nothing we could do. The invisible plague."
He was silent for a few minutes. The memories troubled him, Fenton could see that. Charles sighed deeply. "Anyway, the Corps kinda fell apart after that. We lost alot of people, like the rest of the population, plus there really wasn't anyone to fight. Everyone in North America was too busy licking their wounds to get in an invasion sort of mood, and there was no way the bigwigs were going to send us somewhere overseas with our numbers stretched so thin. Add that to the fact that with the population down as far as it was, resources were no longer something that needed to be squabbled over, and we pretty much became obsolete. The military slowly collapsed, just like everything else."
ReplyDeleteFour miles through the city on foot. Pre-plague that kind of distance would have been nothing, but without a population to maintain it or continued advances in technology to give impetus, travel had become a rarity. No one wanted to go farther than they had to for anything.
ReplyDelete"How did you get hired by the Assigners? It's not like they post 'help wanted' ads."
ReplyDelete"I didn't, actually. The Bearers hired a bunch of military people when it finally fell apart and I got scooped up then. I worked for them until the Crash, then I went to work one day and found out that I had new bosses. Pretty much the same job though. It's even the same suit, they just painted over the Bearer insignia." He pointed over his shoulder at the logo on between his sholder blades. "See?" Fenton could barely make out another symbol beneith the Assigner crest.
[Insert before Danny's last post] They continued walking through the dust, quiet for the time being. Fenton became increasingly out of breath. He became painfully aware of the distance they had traveled and how little physical activity he was accustom to.
ReplyDelete[Insert before my last post, after Danny's]
He thought of something to say, almost resentful of the larger man's quiet composure. There was no labored breathing or unsure steps, no sign that he was winded in the slightest.
Fenton almost didn’t stop when they reached Andover. It looked so much like any of the other run-down buildings they’d pass, gray and falling apart. For a top-secret storage facility of illegal information, it looked more or less like the abandoned café across the street, but when Charles changed direction abruptly, he had to consciously stop before he was able follow suit.
ReplyDeleteThe inside wasn’t any more spectacular than the outside. It felt desolate, empty, alone. There was nothing that would set it apart, but that was the genius of the design. No one would look for stolen information here. The best hiding places are always right in plain sight.
Inside, Charles led them through the deserted restaurant, past chairs and tables that hadn’t been touched in ages. Fenton didn’t know how he knew where they were going. Charles hadn’t let on that he knew anything more about this place than he’d said at the library, but here he was leading them straight through the kitchen to the walk-in freezer.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?”
“Not really, but it’s standard procedure to build these structures with a hidden entryway. Have the front be as blatantly open and non-secretive as possible and then behind the looking-glass you find wonderland.”
“Wonderland?”
“I’m pretty sure it was something to do with a spying back during WWII.”
“Oh.”
Fenton joined Charles as he felt around along the back wall of the freezer, searching for the switch or button or lever that would open the way. Electricity hadn’t been seen in this sector in years, so the room was comfortably warm, but he still felt uneasy. Something wasn’t right here. The wall was smooth, nothing was attached to it. It was just a wall. There was no secret doorway here. Finally, he turned to Charles and challenged him.
“I don’t think this is the right spot for the secret passageway. It must be somewhere else.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” For once, Charles didn’t have that take-charge, can-do attitude. He seemed cowed in his mistake.
They turned around to go try one of the other rooms only to find that the freezer door had locked behind them.
They shared a glance, more confused than worried. "Did you hear it close?" Fenton asked.
ReplyDelete"No... that's weird." He tapped on the door and found it solid and unyielding. "Look around, maybe there's some way to open this thing." The room was empty, lacking any shelves or any furnature of any kind. The stainless steel walls curved seamlessly at the corners and floor. Fenton bent down and examined the ground.
"Wait a minute, shouldn't there be a drain or something? There's no stains or anything." He stood and searched the walls. "There's no vents either. I don't think this was a freezer."
Charles was examining the wall near the door. "I think you're right. Here, take a look at this." Fenton followed his outstretched finger to small plate to the left of the frame, flush with the wall and nearly invisible. "It looks like it comes off or something..." He felt it's edges, tracing the thin gaps with his fingers. He pushed gently on the center of the panel and was surprised when it gave way beneath his hand, sliding half an inch into the wall with a loud click. "Score!"
Both looked around expectantly. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then the floor lurched downward with a deafening metallic shriek, throwing them off their feet. It shuddered to a halt and then freefell again, tilting the door-side of the room downward slightly. They slowed, something above their heads groaning under the strain. The room hung for an instant, bouncing softly up and down before plunging one last time and coming to rest with a loud bang. Fenton picked himself up from the corner where he had been thrown. The floor rested at a 45 degree angle and the dust light streamed in through door, which had been thrown open by the fall. "You alright?" he asked shakily.
ReplyDelete[We could kill Charles here if we don't need him any more. What do you think?]
ReplyDelete[insert after "Score!"]
ReplyDeleteIt slid to the side revealing: buttons. Twelve total, they weren't labelled or numbered. Set-up like a standard keypad, they were color-coded to look like a game controller. Yellow Red Yellow, Red Yellow Red, Yellow Red Yellow, Green Blue Orange.
The two men looked at each other for a moment, unsure of what to press. The resemblance to a gaming controller reminded Fenton of something from his childhood. He scrunched up his eyes in concentration, trying to remember.
With a trembling hand, he started to press the buttons: Top red twice. Bottom red twice. Left. Right. Left. Right. Blue. Green. Orange.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThere was no response. "Charles?" All he could hear was the settling of small pieces of debris. Checking himself for broken bones, he got uncertainly to his feet. Charles was not inside the elevator. A great fear gripped Fenton. "Hey, Charles, are you ok?" He scrambled over to the door and saw him immediately. In the dirty light, he could make out the cleaner's form laying facedown near a concrete pillar not far from the entrance to the elevator."Shit!"
ReplyDeleteHe rushed over and rolled him onto his back. A wave of terror, hot and sticky, washed over him, tickled the base of his spine. Charles's eyes were rolled back, his mouth agape. Blood trickled from his nose and ears, and his forehead, something was horribly wrong with the shape of his forehead. There was a large depression, just over his right eyebrow and extending back into his receding hairline. Fenton recoiled in horror, his eyes locked on that horrible dent. There was a little patch of white and pink, where his broken skull had pierced the skin. He could not look away. Charles's leg twitched spasmodically and Fenton turned and vomited, again and again, and when there was nothing left, he cried.
[There, how about that?]
He cried a long time, hugging his knees with his back against the wreckage of the elevator. Would Charles be dead if it weren't for him? It had been his scavenger hunt that brought Charles to this place. He pressed the buttons, he sent them crashing into the room below. He had never seen a person die before. Specters, yes, but they didn't count. Funny, he thought. 3/4 of everyone he knew "died" in the plague, but he was far more effected by the death of this one man he hardly knew. Charles would never get the answers he sought.
ReplyDeleteEventually, he fell into a restless sleep.
[Outline]
ReplyDelete-Fenton wakes up and discovers he's in a large warehouse filled with filing cabinets. He finds a large hole in one wall where the xyz section of cabinets is gone. A trail of loose papers leads out onto the countryside.
-Fenton follows the "papertrail," finding lots of XYZ themed things along the way. It is a long, difficult journey (physically and emotionally). At the end of the trail, he finds a farmhouse with an enormous barn out back.
-He knocks on the door, delerious. The Amish family takes him inside nurses him back to health. While undressing him, they find the zeppelin doodle.
-Upon waking up, the family takes him out to the barn and presents him with a zeppelin. (Do you think he should just figure out how to fly it, or should the amish family come with him?)
-Fenton, knowing what he needs to do, takes the zeppelin to Syt's (his old friend/client) secret library and tells him about Andover.
-Together they head to andover and load up the information, bombing it over the city during the decent of Simon Reefer.
The dawn light streamed in through his eyelids, waking him. For a long time, Fenton didn’t move, squinting in the unwanted brightness. He wished he were still asleep, wished the events of the night before had only been a horrible dream. But no, there was Charles, eyes glazed, every bit as dead as he had been when Fenton had gone to sleep. It had really happened.
ReplyDeleteHe looked around the room. It was huge, stretching off in all directions. It had assumed it was underground, but the light filtering through the still air seemed to imply otherwise. File cabinets were stacked floor to ceiling, side by side, seemingly filling the room. They bore labels, words in alphabetical order, with giant letters at the head of every few rows. He was approximately in the center of the warehouse, in front of the M section. The crimson morning light was coming from the Z side of the room, it seemed a section of the building in that direction had collapsed.
He opened the cabinet closest to him, labeled “mosaic.” The drawer slid out much farther than he was expecting, stretching a full 6 feet out of the cabinet. Inside were files, books, tapes. Fenton picked up a folder at random. It was filled with pictures; floors, ceilings, walls covered in tiny tiles arranged, on closer inspection, in patterns to resemble animals, shapes and landscapes. They were beautiful. Fenton had never seen anything like them.
He replaced the file and turned back to Charles, unsure of what to do. It wouldn’t be right to just leave him here, but he didn’t have the time, equipment, or place to dig a grave. He felt Charles would have liked to be laid to rest here, a man in search of forbidden knowledge and a building filled with it. Perhaps he would find the answers he had sought after all. The wreckage of the elevator shaft yielded broken concrete slabs, and Fenton began to drag them over. He laid Charles on his back and closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that seemed appropriate. After removing his communicator and, on second thought, his pistol, Fenton began stacking the fragments onto his body.
He worked for hours, piling the shards into a mound over the fallen cleaner, filling in the cracks with dust. He found the encyclopedia and placed it over the head of the mound. He walked towards the light, only looking back once.
Q, R, S, T. As he neared the end of the rows, he could see that an entire wall and most of the ceiling starting at V had been ripped away, revealing sunshine and sky. He could see that many of the cabinets were collapsed, ripped from their ordered rows and strewn all over the floor. Papers were jammed into cracks and corners, apparently driven with enourmous force. The X, Y, and Z sections were missing enrtirely, replaced by a pile of rubble from the roof. He climbed the pile and was shocked at what he saw. The compound has been built into a hill, this end being the only above ground section. The scene was one from his childhood. This exact form of destruction had been what had driven his family out of Oklahoma, their home in ruins. A tornado had been here.
Everything protruding above the empty field had been torn away, exploded forth onto what had at one point been grass. The entirety of the hillside was covered in decrepit paper, plastered into a single mat by years of rain and sun, a paper-mache model of the landscape. A trail of paper led into the distance.
Numbly turning once more back into the darkness of the storage room, Fenton started walking.
ReplyDeleteThe debris itself trailed off and stopped a few hundred yards beyond the ragged opening, but he could tell the tornado had come this way. It had obviously been years since the storm, but trail of broken undergrowth, shorter than the surrounding shrubbery, was still visible. This was a rural area, the edge of a suburb of section 35. There were no signs of human inhabitants at first, but as the day wore on, he began to see signs of settlement. A small circle of tents, ragged and apparently unoccupied at the moment, stood a ways off the path. Fenton gripped the handle of the gun at his hip and quickened his pace as he quietly passed them. The people who chose to live in these areas were rarely appreciative of unannounced visitors.
It was afternoon, the sun high in the clear sky. While it wasn’t particularly hot, Fenton could feel his face and receding hairline begin to burn. He hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before and the night had been emotionally and physically taxing, but he kept moving. The scavenger hunt was all that was important. What had yesterday seemed significant only as a means of satisfying his curiosity now became the sole point of his existence. Charles’s death was the clarifying moment for him; this had become a life and death struggle. He would follow this through to the end if it meant his death. He knew that now.
He was lost in thought when he found himself on a pathway in the middle of a large clearing. He looked around, shocked by the surreal stillness surrounding him. Sand stretched a few hundred yards in all directions, raked carefully into parallel lines. Large black rocks were placed here and there, each surrounded by concentric circles in the sand. There was something peaceful about the air here, lacking entirely the chaotic, broken feeling of most of the abandoned areas. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but there was soothing music emanating from somewhere nearby. A man in dark brown overalls and no shirt was sitting on a platform surrounded by the sand playing some kind of percussion instrument. A box supported several rectangular blocks arranged from small to large. It had a beautiful, hollow, woody sound. Fenton stopped and watched him, not wanting to break the moment. The man stopped and looked up at him, his eyes bright green. He did not stop playing. The man regarded Fenton calmly for a minute or so and then nodded to him. Something in the gesture conveyed great respect, and Fenton returned it. The man closed his eyes and turned his face skyward. Fenton continued walking, the music gradually fading into the back ground. The word “zen” came to mind. A Z word. He was going the right way.
The scraggly undergrowth eventually gave way to farmland, mostly untended golden fields stretching to the horizon over gently rolling hills. He came across a road. It had at one time been paved, but years of neglect and use had reduced the asphalt to rough, black gravel tinged with dirt. Funny, he thought. He had walked much longer today than he had with Charles, but he did not feel tired. He had not eaten, but his stomach did not growl. His body had given up it’s petty protests. The task at hand was more important, and it seemed his body had recognized that. There would be time for exhaustion later. He followed the road.
ReplyDeleteThe sun was starting to sag before he saw another person. A young boy, perhaps 10, was leaning his back against what was left of an ancient wooden gas station. Fenton saw something in the boy’s hand he had not seen since his childhood, since before the plague. The boy was playing with a yoyo, fashioned from wood and obviously handmade. It was crude, but unmistakable. Yoyo: Y. The boy watched as he walked by, mildly interested.
The further along the road he traveled, the more deteriorated it became. The sun dipped behind the folds of the landscape, splashing colors across the sky. He looked down. The road ended. Ahead was a wooden farmhouse with a hand hewn look. There was a massive barn beside the house, dwarfing it. He walked to the front door and knocked. There was a shuffling of heavy boots on a heavy wood floor and the door opened. A man with a beard, holding a lantern above his head stood there, seemingly confused. “Hello,” said Fenton. He collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
He awoke to a round, middle aged woman spooning soup into his mouth. He was laying in a large, soft bed in a room with painted wooden walls. The bearded man stood by the doorway with the lantern he had been carrying earlier. “Good, you’re awake,” the woman said and smiled. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better, thanks.” He sat up. “I had a long day. I’m sorry I passed out on your porch.”
“It’s our pleasure to welcome strangers in need. Besides, it seems we may not be as much strangers as you think.”
The bearded man spoke up. “There’ll be time for that later. You need food. Come, eat.”
Fenton got uncertainly to his feet. He was sore all over, his feet blistered and his face sunburned. He followed the man through the rustic house to the kitchen, where a place had been set at the table. The man motioned for him to sit. The man and his wife sat too, one on either side and took his hands. They bowed their heads and the woman started to speak. “Dear Lord, thank you for the bounty which you in your infinite wisdom and mercy loved us so to provide. Thank you for our health, our fortune, and our guest, and may you guide and protect him on the journey to come.” She paused and raised her head. “Alright, dig in.” She passed him a plate piled with food. “Don’t worry, we’ve already eaten.”
Fenton thanked them profusely, feeling his strength returning with each bite. It was simple but very good. Corn, beef, bread. Things grown on farms and prepared with love and hard work. The couple looked on, pleased at the positive feedback. When he finished, the man and the woman shared a pregnant glance. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and slid it across the table to Fenton who looked down at it and then back to the man, confused. It was the drawing, the Zeppelin. “We found this in your pocket. We know why you’ve come. We have something to show you.”
They led Fenton silently out of the house and to the barn. It was even larger up close than it had seemed from the road. It stretched hundreds of yards back and was several hundred feet tall.
The man extinguished his lantern and opened a small door off to one side. It was dark inside but Fenton could tell that the room was massive. His footsteps echoed around the interior, coming back metallic and strange. There was some equipment near the door, inconsistent with the simple house, the handmade clothes of the couple. The woman went to a panel near the door and hit a switch, bathing the room in a halogen glow. "My God..." breathed Fenton.
ReplyDeleteIt was larger than he could ever have imagined. A massive silver shape loomed above them and stretched to the far wall. He was in awe, unable even to register his surprise and confusion. It was just like the pictures, giant and yet weightless, lightly resting on enormous scaffoldings. The floor was white painted concrete and reflected the bright wall mounted lights underneath the rigid body, displaying it's details. Fenton stared for five whole minutes before regaining his composure enough to stammer "How?"
ReplyDeleteNeither answered for a moment, then the woman spoke up. "It was 2015 and the doctor had just told us I was sterile, that the Lord had not seen fit to bless us with children. I was inconsolable. All my life I had wished to be a mother. 'Go fourth and multiply,' the Bible said, but here I was, unable to do His work. There was a tornado that night. We hid in the bathroom, holding eachother, ready, expecting to die. But we didn't. The next day we went out to survey the damage and there it was, sitting on the porch; a folder, filled with technical drawings, blueprints, everything you needed to build what it called an 'airship,' a 'Zeppelin.' We took it as a sign, a different way for us to do God's work."
ReplyDelete"Do you believe that?"
"This wasn't the first time He had told someone to build a ship. It may seem strange to you, but to us it was a blessing, a way to channel our grief."
"How did you build it? Where did you get the parts?"
"It was easy enough to scrounge what we needed, especially after the plague. People just abandoned their technology, and we scavenged what we could. It's not perfect. The engines are mostly from cars and they don't, the frame has alot of wood bits, but it flys after a fashion. The real question is what do you plan to do with it?"
Fenton didn't know what to say. "What do you mean?"
"It's yours. We knew when we built it that we would never have a reason to use it. Someone else would be sent to us, someone with a mission. And then you showed up, a traveler in need of aid. You are possibly the only other person in the world who would recognize the ship for what it is. Is that a coincidence?"
He thought back to the past few days. "I'm starting to very much doubt that. The will of God, maybe not, but it's definitely not a coincidence."
"I understand. Tell us, what is it you plan to do? We are at your service."
An idea was blossoming in Fenton's mind. He thought of his friend and former colleague, Syt Candella, rotting away in his dungeon-like "library," dreaming of a way to restore knowledge to the people. He thought of Andover, a tomb of information waiting to be brought to life. "I don't know that I believe I was send by God, but I do have a use for your ark."
"We do not ask that you believe, only that you act."
Syt Candella stood with his back to a mirror, transcribing a portion of the Rosetta Stone onto the back of his freshly shaved scalp. His hand moved with practiced precision, etching the tiny letters in steady lines stretching from ear to ear. He squinted and paused as the mirror started to vibrate. His goal lost focus, all detail blurring. What was happening? He could hear a rumble. It grew to a roar, the unmistakable thunder of engines. He grabbed an old rifle he kept by the door and peeked outside. A blast of air, sound and light greeted him. A spotlight was trained down on him from some sort of platform above the house. A rope ladder dropped down and a ragged form descended. He squinted into the dark, recognition beginning to form. No, it couldn't be... Fenton?
ReplyDeleteThe figure was running toward him now, shouting something lost in the sonic bombardment. He was nothing but a silhouette against the blinding light until he reached the doorway. "Syt!" the figure yelled and embraced him.
ReplyDeleteSyt was stunned. "Fenton? What are you doing here?"
"Come on, it's time to do bring the people back what was taken from them."
Fenton explained the situation to him once they had boarded the vessel. They stood in the makeshift gondola, Syt still unsure of whether or not he was dreaming. Fenton introduced him to the couple, explaining that they had built the Zeppelin at the request of a higher power. He described in detail his journey up to that point. When he mentioned Andover, Syt began to get excited. An entire storage room? How much information was there? Did Fenton realize what this could mean for the world? Where was this place?
ReplyDelete"We'll be there in 5 minutes," he said, with a touch of a grin.
Syt was like a child in the holding facility. He literally sprinted from cabinet to cabinet, rifling through the hoarded information, grabbing huge armloads and carting them to the airship with zealous fervor.
ReplyDeleteIt was only once they got airborne again that they realized the gravity of their plan; the Bearers would not allow them to get away with this. They were preparing to threaten the superiority of the worlds most powerful organization in a flying bag filled with flammable gas. There would be no second chances, no additional trips. If the citizens of the world wanted more information, they would have to get it themselves.
"Are you sure you're ok with this?" Fenton asked.
ReplyDeleteThe wife turned from where she stood at the yoke and said "We have made peace with our God. I was taught that to give one's life doing His work is the noblest thing a person can aspire to. If I am to be martyred, so be it."
No one spoke. The time for words had gone. They could see the outskirts of the city now, a lonely cluster of light in a predominantly dark void. The sky ahead was rosy around the edges. Soon it would be morning. The engines changed pitch as the couple wordlessly coaxed more power out of them. There was no need to be frugal now, each acknowledged there would be no return journey.
Fenton looked back to see Syt writing frantically on the backs of some of the papers. "What are you doing?" he asked.
ReplyDelete"I'm drawing a map to Andover. I'm hoping what we're going to drop will be enough to whet their appetite. Once they get a taste, they'll want more, and I want them to be able to find it."
The sun broke contact with the horizon, bathing the interior of the gondola with peach colored light. "Sunup. How dramatic." Fenton paused. "It looks like we're getting into a populated area, let's take it down a bit."
The young boy always liked to get up before his family. This was the only time when he had the house to himself, without anyone expecting or wanting anything from him. He would have to go to school in an hour, but for now he was free to do as he liked. And what he liked to do was doodle. He went to his shoebox of paper scraps and picked the one with the most empty space. The other side had some boring grown up writing on it, but this side was blank. He sharpened his pensil and started on one end of the paper. Today felt significant, splendid for some reason and a single corner would not do. This one had to be BIG.
ReplyDeleteHe carefully drew one long, curved line, followed by another one below it, so they met on the ends to make a cigar sort of shape. With a practiced hand, he drew the fins on one end, the place for the people on the other. He drew a few engines here and there and touched up the envelope, adding lines to indicate frame spars.
He had never liked any of the things they let him draw at school; he wanted to draw something exciting! The old scrap of paper he had found in an abandoned building while playing had delivered just that. It was a picture of a flying tube-shape with people inside, bigger than any cars or even busses. He had drawn them ever since, on whatever paper he could find.
His mother had found one of his doodles once, and she had burned it in a fit of rage, so he didn't keep them any more. Every morning before anyone woke up, he threw them into the wind, imagining they could fly away. He hoped someone found them, enjoyed them, saw that they were something fantastic and magical. He knew it probably was not true, but it made him happy to think about.
He added the finishing touches and surveyed his work. He nodded in self-satisfaction. Not bad, not bad at all. He could hear a little wind outside too; this was a good day for flying. He put on his jacket and walked outside.
Just as he was about to release the drawing to the breeze, he heard a sound he had never heard before. It was loud, louder than anything he knew. A buzzing, rattling, thundering sound, shaking the rooftops with it's fury. Then he saw it, a huge shape, clearing the rooftops by only 10 feet or so. It's engines roared with a venomous rage he had never witnessed and the sight of it sent a shiver of excitement down his spine. Someoen had found his drawings! He threw his drawing as hard as he could and took off down the street after it screaming "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!"
The papers began to rain down.
Fenton and Syt shoveled the papers out of the rear hatch as fast as they could. "Good morning world!" shouted Syt, his glee returning. "Time to wake up!"
ReplyDeleteThey could see people begin to come out of their houses, aroused by the unfamiliar din of the engines. They stared, slackjawed at the spectacle unfolding and, Fenton noticed with a leaping heart, started picking up the lost information and puzzling over it. It had worked, the plan had worked. The scavenger hunt was over.
He was snapped back to reality when something ricochetted off the door frame near his hand and punched a small hole in the gas bag. Searching the street below, he saw an Assigner patrol officer leveling a pistol at him. Without thinking, he grabbed Charles's gun from it's holster, pointed in the man's general direction and fired three times. He had never used a gun before and was surprised by both the recoil and the noise. He had missed, but evidently struck close enough to push him into cover behind a parked car. "Fuck you!" he shouted as they passed. So it begins, he thought.
Suddenly, the air was filled with bullets. They pinged off the metal gondola, blasted large holes in the windows. He could hear a dull 'thump-thump' as they punctured the canvas of the envelope to bounce around inside the superstructure. Syt dove to the floor and continued shoving the papers out by the folder and Fenton leaned as far out as he dared. He saw a small knot of soldiers and an armored car blocking an intersection a few blocks down the street. The Assigners rarely even admitted they had a military; this was serious. He shot at them until the gun was empty, more as a statement than a defensive maneuver. He hurled the useless pistol at the troops and hit the floor.
ReplyDeleteOne of the port engines screamed and shuddered to a stop with a sickening bang, inky black smoke pouring out of it's exhaust pipes. Fenton turned to see the couple, their hands clasped, brazenly holding their ground despite the deadly barrage. They stood their ground, standing defiantly as the bullets whizzed around them. A jagged hole appeared in the metal floor near his right leg and, without warning, he gunfire stopped. He looked through the door to see the troops retreating down the street, firing at something behind the airship.
He and Syt shared a glance, both confused and worried. Slowly, they got to their feet and looked out the rear window. Specters. Millions, billions of them, an undulating, colorless mass covering the sky in writhing, billowing clouds. They seemed to be following a bright point, human in shape but glowing with a strange, pale light. Terror dripped down their necks. Although they could not pick out any features at this distance, there could be no mistake. Simon Reefer had come back.
ReplyDelete