Chapter Six: Goner
Day four of the survey. I am going live with this. At 4:00 this afternoon Windy brought all of our sensors completely up to full power. It is now 4:05. I am in the tiny industrial city of
McCook
. Per our sensors Sulfur has triggered his mind device less than a minute ago, less than 1500 feet from my current location. I have parked Stan Goodman’s Dodge Magnum in an alley across the street and am proceeding on foot.
The target location is a three story, brown brick building. It is on a broad side street. Its southern face abuts a rail spur. The building is unmarked. There are no cars parked in the thin ribbon of blacktop separating the building from the road, nor does the building seem to have a parking lot. Truck doors and a small office are on the building’s northern face. I am approaching the eastern face. There is only one door evident. It is steel. A small sign with lettered stickers is beside this door. The letters spell out ‘A UA Q’, which I can make no sense of.
I have reason to believe that this building houses Green Glass Recycle Limited, a firm with contracts from several municipalities. I am unclear as to what the firm does. At present, I have absolutely no reason to suspect that this firm has anything to do with Sulfur’s activities. All I have is a sensor reading stating that the device was activated, now six minutes ago, from a point somewhere near the northeast corner of this structure’s first floor.
Windy believes that the structure only has one floor, despite its size. Or at least I think that is what she said. It is raining and my numerous cell phone connections all have interference on them.
I am in full Captain Meteor garb, but am wearing a human face. It is not Cody’s face, but a slightly improved version of the undead Nascar driver’s. Reason? I am having a bad day. This break, I am hoping, will improve it.
I have seen no traffic down this street during the two minutes it has taken me to get to the door. No one has come out of this door. Windy now entirely out of contact.
This augurs poorly. What’s the rush? What would I possibly do if he was here?
Break his stinking neck and vanish, feeling rather satisfied with myself, I would think. It’s worth a shot.
Rather dramatic lightning just flashed, rain now increasing. This may explain my communications problem, but I am not entirely certain of any explanation at this juncture. The steel door is locked. Assuming that the problem is with my helmet--and not the UHF broadcast equipment that the cell communication is based upon (which should not be this badly affected by electromagnetic activity)-- then I will not be able to unlock the door. Door clicks unlocked. I am mystified. Lowering blast shield.
Two steps in. It’s a recycling plant. They are recycling green glass bottles, as the name suggests. Five feet to my right is a two tier conveyor line, currently in operation, which is racing rows of bottles up a story or so into a large white rectangular enclosure. Possibly a sterilizing unit. No. Just hot water. Several stages of washing going on here, I think.
Taking a telepathic survey, which also should not work. But it is. Contact Windy again, via cell phone. Maybe she hung up on me? Call is rolling over to an exchange routed to a cell in my helmet. The problem seems to be on her end. It could be technical or Dr. Pierre Colbert having another of his screaming and crying fits. Windy will not slap him. I do not think her presence is much of a comfort. The doctor has concluded, not without reason, that Windy is a ghost.
Telepathic survey indicates twenty-two persons, all with abnormal brain functions. Not sure how it’s reaching that conclusion. The closest one is fifteen feet away from me, to my right. I am seeing no one.
To my right are several rows of red plastic skids, stacked eight feet high, containing green bottles, possibly finished product. Seemingly clean bottles, at any rate. These twin lines of skids extend another twenty feet to a truck door, which is closed. Still seeing no one. Advancing right, through the isle between skid rows.
Note: I do not like the hue of these bottles. Eyesight not being a sensory strength of mine, I can say only that the color resembles that of the tubes Sulfur used to exterminate the population of Tiamore. Helmet confirms that glass gauge is exactly the same. Given that glass is a malleable product form, this may mean nothing.
Temperature inside is about eight degrees higher than outdoor ambient. Noise level three times outside. Several conveyor lines running, some of them above me. Seems to be several systems running in parallel, some of them connected to another process. As per Windy’s information, area is a mostly open, three story space. Catwalks and narrow causeways are interspersed amidst the mostly grey and green machinery. There is an elevated second story office loft with windows facing the production floor across the room from me. Other such details. Seeing no one as yet.
Hello. Almost ran into him. Middle aged man, with grey to white skin and thinning hair. He is wearing all white, a lab coat. Currently he is bent over, examining one of the skids.
Note: Light here is rather uneven. Discounting the clutter of machinery, the ceiling lights seem randomly placed. Many shadow areas. Doesn’t seem proper for a production environment.
Telepathic contact made with bending man. He is hypnotized—or in the condition Stan Goodman was. Currently he is looking for another open space to place skids of finished products, which are actually clean pop bottles to be returned to their original manufacturer. The factory also gets money for sorting out broken bottles. And they get money for plucking these bottles from the recycle trash of several municipalities. Per him, actually rehabilitating the bottles is the least profitable portion of the process, almost an afterthought.
This man is an accountant. He is 62 years old and retired from a big eight firm. Not that he is being used in that capacity. Right now his capacity is determining if this line of skids is finished product to be shipped off or flawed product to be returned to the recycle yard.
Rather complicated operation, it seems. Not at all aided by the lack of light. He spots my shadow over his shoulder. It doesn’t snap him out of it. I say softly “Henry Gleason, when was the last time you went home?”
He heard his name but that was it. It’s enough to make him look back at me. He’s so deep under that my presence doesn’t startle him. I now have a proven way of bringing him out of it instantly, but I don’t think that this is a good time.
Henry stands fully up. He’s off to ask someone what this line is. As for me, I am beneath his notice. Just as well.
I spot two more men, fifteen feet to my left. They are bent over a stalled conveyor positioned at floor level. Both are in grey overalls with matching blue shirts. It’s almost a universal for mechanics. You could see the same sight in nine galaxies.
And they had tools in their hands, so I am the master of the obvious. Both men are in this country illegally, whatever that means. They have been working at this building since before this current business set up, which was about four years ago. Both aided in the construction of the lines here. I am not sure if either is actually hypnotized. There may be levels of oblivious going on here. Neither has noticed me yet.
Ten feet beyond them, tending to the intake of a line is a middle aged, slightly heavy set blonde woman. She has halted the conveyor in order to pluck out a flawed bottle. Seems to have a sharp eye for detail. Prior to coming here, she owned the Moonquest tavern, the same tavern Stan Goodman has been employed at. It does not seem that she knows Stan. On the other hand, she is rather out of it. Slightly further down the line is a middle aged man, whom she vaguely recalls is her husband.
She can not seem to recall her name. She is recalling that she can’t recall it, however. Annoying her to no end is that the man down the line cannot recall it, either. As for him, I am getting no signs of mental functioning in the language centers whatsoever. Presently he is reading a gauge on a white panel of a rectangular washing tunnel.
He might be out of the helmet’s range. He shouldn’t be, but I am discounting nothing at this point. I am heading down the conveyor line the blonde is tending.
I have the attention of one of the mechanics for a moment. He’s trying to guess what function I perform based upon my uniform. Best of luck with that.
I approach the blonde, who is leaned over the line, plucking out a fragmented bottleneck. Her hands and wrists have small wounds all over them. The white coat she wears is dotted with blood around the cuffs. Having snagged the errant neck, she drops it into a blue plastic box on the floor. Tapping the button, she sends the line back into motion.
I am now behind her. I whisper “Nancy Volkman.”
She looks over her shoulder at me, seemingly having instantly snapped out of it. Or mostly. I am not what is confusing her or causing her to go back under. It’s some other condition.
Nancy
turns and looks at the man down the line.
She won’t leave without him.
Nancy
seems rather strong willed. In a way, that may have made her more susceptible to the process Sulfur used. She starts for the man down the line. I am not sure this is such a good thing and thus follow her.
“George!” she says. The man is not responding. Still not getting anything off his language centers. He is writing something down on a clipboard. Seems like normal numbers being transcribed.
“George!” she says again. He turns to her and smiles. Now he is looking straight at both of us. He turns his back to us and goes back to his writing.
Nancy
is now infuriated.
Pneumatics in my right arm have pressurized. Baton is now loaded. Beyond not functioning, it seems that some of my equipment has gained a mind of its own.
George has a slug thrower in his right lab coat pocket. Or so the helmet says. I can visually confirm that he does have something bulky there.
I take three strides past George and Nancy. There is another person further down the line. At the place the conveyor heads drastically up is another middle aged man with a brown complexion and a close crop of grey hair. He is making sure the restart of the line doesn’t get snagged in the typical place. Rather attentive for someone who cannot bring to mind today’s day and date.
Behind me George says “Naoteen” which means Privateer Captain. It’s an easy mistake to make. Several generations ago the Shadow Fleet were privateers. The uniform hasn’t changed much.
I aim my right arm back at George. The baton fires across space with a hiss.
My helmet would like to inform me that George has raised his slug thrower and is pointing it in my direction.
By the time I turn fully, the baton has rebounded off the floor in front of me and I catch it. George is now sprawled on the floor, blood gushing from his jaw. I would guess that he is unconscious. I am still not getting any mental readings from him. The baton is sucked through my palm and back into its housing. Pressure is again building up.
Nancy’s eyes are wide. Her hand is over her mouth. Since when does George have a gun. George hates guns. Guns are for people with small penises. Something tells me George’s mind has been entirely changed.
‘Naoteen’ is a corruption of the word ‘Naroteen’, itself a slang derivative. I am drawing a bit of a blank after that. I am sure things will come to me in a rush.
Sans George, of the twenty-two people in this building, there are three others whom I am getting no mental readings from. Besides the mechanics, there appears to be one other person who is not hypnotized—or all that hypnotized.
I lie to
Nancy
“Just leave. It will be ok.”
She is a bit torn. It seems George is a second husband. I’m not sure if this means that she has a spare.
One of the mechanics heard George’s gun clatter to the ground and has taken note of the situation. He is now headed off to find an anglo who may be in charge. The person he is headed for is in the above office. This person happens to be one of the other people who is reading as not hypnotized.
The lights go out. I am not sure what the point of that was. Plenty of light still coming in from the skylights. At least for me. It has disoriented a forklift driver, however.
There is a slug thrower being brought into range. To my right. In the hands of someone with no mental readings. Large bore. Two barrels. I hate scatter guns. Pointing arm. Difficult shot. The baton hits the machine behind him, bounds off the back of the man’s head, goes straight to the wall and arcs high. I take two steps and catch it as it comes off the conveyor line above me.
The scattergun goes off. Only bottles are hit, but enough is enough. I trigger my helmet and the words ‘Auzeuth neoni ontran’ go reverberating from the walls. That’s ‘the jig is up’ or something like it. I hope.
Our disoriented forklift driver has now hit something substantial: a support post for one of the washers or one of the pylons that seem to be randomly propping up the ceiling. Many bottles take the plunge.
Someone shouts “Gonor!” which is ‘damn cyborg’ in several languages.
Nancy
thinks it’s ‘goner’ as in ‘we are all goners here.’
Henry Gleason has just tripped on wet, broken glass. In his current state, he was unable to use his arms to break his fall. Normal motor functions are seemingly not affected by whatever Sulfur has done, but reflexes and blink functions are slowed. Given that I have a method of bringing them out of it, this seems like the time to deploy it, if not the place.
While I am at it, it is time to halt these lines, break the lenses of the video cameras, shatter the disks in the computers upstairs, cut the motor of the forklift, unlock all of the doors and turn the lights back on. Overdid it. Got that and more. Shattered the computer monitor upstairs and splintered some of the glass in the skylight. I got the truck dock doors to lift. Good enough.
“He’s dead!”
Nancy
screams.
I didn’t hit him that hard. Most of the people are staggering, looking as if they have just been awakened by a bright light. (That is how Dr. Colbert described it.) Henry Gleason has picked himself up and seems none the worse for wear. He is fully awake and functioning.
George Volkman is doing a very convincing job of not breathing. He hasn’t bled that much. He should just be stunned. My other assailant is also not moving. I start in the other man’s direction, weaving my way through machinery. ‘Please leave through the nearest exit’ I cause to boom from the walls.
Windy would like to inform me that the readings she reported were from yesterday. And the placement may have been in error. I thank her for the correction and disconnect the communication.
Nancy has rolled George over. She’s shaking his shoulders.
Converging on my position from the catwalk is our non hypnotized man from the office. At 36 he is the youngest person in the building. He is tall and lean, sandy haired with a half day’s growth of beard on his round chin. The man’s eyes are bloodshot, a result of continual wake and bake bong applications. He has a gun, but he hasn’t drawn it. In truth, he’s never shot the thing. What he intends to do when he gets to me is anyone’s guess. Right now, he just wants a good look.
Before he can say a word, I cause the following to fill the room: “Mr. Armstrong, the odds do not change. By your arithmetic, each of your multiple failures in judgment has somehow been a contribution to an inevitable success, payable in wealth and infamy. Each stepfather beating, the prosecutor demanding five years for simple possession, the DUI bust that ended your limo driver career—all were down payments on what you would earn. It’s a universe of users and losers and you’re finally on the right side, big time. What we see here is evidence of what has haunted you so dimly all the while: that your sense of entitlement in no way conveyed a qualification. What would anyone really need you for? Brace yourself for a whole new league of consequences. I am justice and I have come for you.”
Needless to say, he ran for it.
Chapter Seven: Only If You Lick It
Greg Armstrong had not run this fast since he tried out for the relay team freshman year in high school. He always could run. At one time, he had thought about going out for football. That was back before he met all of those stoners at the bus stop. It was one of those odd chance meetings which sadly affected his entire life.
So far he had dodged or vaulted over the debris on the factory floor. His choice of an exit was deliberate. He wanted out the way nearest to where his car was parked. For a panic, it wasn’t bad.
Somewhere behind him was a mysterious being in a blue and gold biker’s outfit. He suspected that I was a DEA agent, of all things. I hadn’t pulled a gun. That was good. I hadn’t yelled for him to halt. That was disturbing. He half anticipates that there will be more like me outside. Does he have his lawyer programmed into the phone?
My baton hit the door ahead of him a blink before he went out. This gave him the impression that I was somewhere RIGHT behind him. Once he is out, he sees nothing. Just a blank alley. No flashing blue lights. No sirens. He’s lucked out!
The necessary and sufficient quality of a loser is that he lose.
Now is the time to run willy nilly down the narrow alley and then halt at the end. No blue lights. No sirens. Really!
(If he had waited another five minutes, this would not have been the case.)
Holy crap, this might be a hit. Another gang has moved in on the ‘front’. Which is to say that his understanding of this portion of Sulfur’s operations is rather pedestrian. He’s going to get away and then call Mr. Nick.
It would be nice to know who Mr. Nick is. Greg’s recollection of Mr. Nick is that he seems to be calling from underwater. That’s how Nick sounds on the phone.
Greg gains the door of his grey Altima. Has he left his car keys back in the office? That would suck. He has another set under the front seat, which he fumbles for upon getting in. His keys are in his right front pocket, but I am not of the mind to remind him at the time. Instead, I just sit up from my position in the Altima’s back seat.
He nervously slides the ignition key into its slot. I wrap my arm around his neck.
“Going somewhere, Greg?”
Now he wants to go for the gun. I touch my fingers to his cell phone, which is really all I wanted to do. He perceives that my hold on him isn’t quite leveraged firmly. (Greg has an alarming amount of experience in having people wrap their arms around his neck.) With a quick lunge, he sprawls out the door. Again, he thinks about the gun, actually drawing it. Then he recalls his own skill with firearms (or in doing anything when he’s nervous, for that matter) spins to his feet and runs for it.
I catch his ankle.
At ten feet up, the car keys from his right front pocket fall out, narrowly missing the back of his head. At twenty feet up, his wallet and cell phone slide out and plummet through space. At thirty feet up, Greg decides to drop the gun. By that time I have laterally moved us directly above the factory. The gun lands next to a shattered skylight. We are so far up he can’t hear it land.
I say to him “Remember what your cell mate told you that first night you were in Stateville?”
Eventually, I leave him in a tree.
“Information gained through torture is notoriously unreliable, Captain,” Dr. Colbert commented, a little after I had explained my adventures of the afternoon to him. For the moment, he is no longer blubbering.
I have removed the Nascar Driver’s face and placed it down on the counter. “Torture combined with telepathy is very reliable, doctor. You may, of course, question the ethics. Please note that I did not hold him captive for any length of time. Nor did I physically harm him.”
“I am fairly sure that you are on the side of angels, Captain Meteor,” Colbert said. He can’t be sure. He’s projecting. He’s hoping. He continues with “I hope you’re not blaming poor Windy for this.”
I am back at the bank. The bank will need additional chairs or furniture of some kind if Dr. Colbert is going to join me here for any time. Stan Goodman may also be taking up residence. He has called me from
Florida
. Neither his ex wife nor step daughters can be found.
The girls never enrolled in college. His ex wife abandoned her job without notice—four years ago. Both of the condo units have been sold. If Windy were present I would have had her use her skill with the data sewer to send Stan return plane tickets. But Windy was unavailable. Getting her back required my begging and making cooing noises, neither of which I was up for at the moment.
I told the doctor “You have full blown Stockholm Syndrome, you know that?”
“It has crossed my mind,” Colbert said. The bespectacled doctor was sitting on the mattress in the vault, still in the light blue lab coat I found him in this morning. He is heavy set with prematurely grey and thinning hair. He had combed his hair and shaved, but still looked a little disheveled.
“Of course it crossed your mind. It certainly would not have crossed mine. I am only vaguely aware of where
Stockholm
is.” I removed my helmet, which at that point needed some recalibration. And my neck wanted to resume its normal bird like rotations.
“Is that how the telepathy works? You just read speech centers?”
“Speech centers is automatic. Searching down context is the art of it. Took me years to learn how to use this thing.”
The radio was reporting that four people were dead at the scene of the factory. Or have been taken away in critical condition. Or are non responsive at the scene. Preliminary reporting is portraying this as a work place shooting incident.
“Come, doctor,” I said, pointing at the steaming, greasy sack I had previously placed on the teller’s bowl. “We must eat. And you are going to have to lead the way.”
He hadn’t eaten all day. Just hasn’t been in the mood. I was off to get this at the time that Windy first started tracking what she thought were Sulfur’s current signals.
He headed to the teller’s counter, still attentively listening to the radio. “You said that there were four people whose minds you couldn’t read. And that at least one of them spoke in an alien language. That could be the four people that they are talking about.”
“It doesn’t make them any less dead, doctor,” I said, pulling the paper wrapped mounds from the sack and spreading them out. He started disassembling the paper. I was utterly at a loss as to how this mix of hot and cold components were meant to be aligned.
Colbert picked up a tubular thing in a bun, which was piled high with red, white and green vegetable parts. The encased brown tube beneath was slathered in yellow sauce and bluish slurry. “These beings who said these things, would they have the same speech centers that humans do?”
“Probably not. It depends on what they are. It’s either Meteor Beasts or Corona Surfers, neither of which are particularly human looking. And those races aren’t related to each other. They just speak somewhat the same language.”
“How’s that?”
“I speak a language which is not native to my people. It’s fairly common. A more advanced race exchanges its culture with a discovered group of primitives on another planet. In this case, I think it was the Corona Surfers who discovered the Meteor Beasts.”
“You mean colonized.”
“That’s rather rare, doctor. By the time you’re up for intergalactic travel, the desire for colonies has subsided. It’s such a thrill to find anything that can remotely think that it’s more like playing Santa Claus. My race was rather less developed than your Neanderthals at the time we were discovered. What we have, we learned from our friends, over hundreds of years of contact.”
“And they didn’t want anything in return?”
“No, poor devils. Not to be alone in the universe. That is typical. Atypically, they wiped themselves out. We have what’s left of them in our museums. By contrast, the Corona Surfers discovered several races.” Having plucked up my tube, I pointed down at the brown things left in the paper. “I’m lost. What do you do with these things?”
“The fries. You just eat them. Did you get any catsup?”
“You said that if it had catsup on it, it’s wrong.”
“On the hot dogs, yes, but not the fries.”
“But they’re bundled together…”
“It’s just a custom.”
Lost, I offered “I got the cheese cup instead.”
“So you did. Never mind,” he said, fishing the container out of the bag.
He opened it and I had to comment “That’s not cheese. Another custom?”
“More of a euphemism,” he said.
“Euphemism. Yea! I am feeling more at home all the time.”
After I had pushed the hot dog past my scruff and into my throat for a bite, he asked “So what do you think?”
“I think I am going to belch a lot.”
I set the hot dog down and he examined the bite mark. “Vertically aligned cartilage, at the front of the throat?”
“More of a beak.”
“You don’t seem to have a voice box. All of your kind talk out of your belt?”
“The vestigial gills, which you examined, produce clicking. Mine did, before they atrophied.”
“Forgive me for saying this, but you don’t seem to be in the best medical condition.”
“Glowing eyes. Missing right arm. What gives you that impression, doctor?”
He leaned forward. “The eyes are absolutely fantastic. More like photoelectric cells. And these are entirely natural?”
“Except for the glowing, yes.”
“We covered this this morning. They have no idea what causes it other than it’s typical.”
“I’ll get your spare kit when I retrieve your back up records. Then you can really go to town.”
“Beyond being the first scientist to have a crack at you, I would like to help if I can.—How did you lose the arm?”
“Small weapons fire. Sort of a concentrated x-ray pulse”
“Oh.”
“Acute radiation burn on the talon, which became cancer and spread. I lost it in stages.”
“Is that when they replaced your heart and added the circulation pumps… and lung assist?”
“No, that was later. I’m not sure if it was related. It’s fairly typical to people in my trade.”
“The plate on the back of your neck?”
“I broke my neck when I drowned.”
“The first time or the second time?”
“The first time.”
“And how long were you technically dead before they revived you the first time?”
“Four months, but most of that was supervised suspension. I think they got to me in a day or so.”
“Absolutely fantastic. My only concern here, Cap, is that you have had a lot of work done and have not seen a doctor in twelve years. And from what you’ve said, your diet has consisted exclusively of whatever you could find during that time. I’m not sure how well you are going to hold up. What did Moms Meteor feed you?”
“I’m more concerned with why I killed four people. And why they were speaking Meteor Beast before they died. And why they are calling more ambulances to that scene.”
The radio had just reported that hospitals were being put on alert to take in up to twenty victims.
“I see. Windy told me that was a touchy subject.”
I wondered what else Windy had told him. Not that I was about to snap at her. This morning Dr. Colbert was a basket case. That he is functioning this well is a credit to her. I remembered to mention that when I cooed again to ring her chimes.
I had been going non-stop since last night.
I drove Stan Goodman to
Midway
Airport
this morning. Windy had booked him on a flight to
Miami
. Neither Windy nor I thought this was a good idea, but you have to trust your allies to have allies.
Stan Goodman has been conditioned by years in his trade to keep his head in emergency situations. One would expect him to go through all sorts of emotional phases, given his situation. And he did. But he kept a focus on what he could do, what was actionable.
Or he at least kept moving. Stan helped Windy and I install the circuit breakers in the bank. He even went and got the light bulbs for us. The moment he left, I half suspected that he was going to go to the police or just freak out. Or he might have snapped back into a hypnotic state.
I chanced it. I let him go.
When Stan returned he said he wanted to call the police, the FBI, the CIA, DEA, NSA, NASA, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, WLS AM, Fermilab and the Chicago Sun-Times. I put him in contact with Miles Nasus, who perhaps wasn’t all that convincing. He essentially told Stan to hold off for twenty-four hours. Then Stan handed me the phone.
“Keep it to just him and Colbert, right?” Nasus said.
“Do you know anything yet that I need to know?”
“You’re beautiful, Elvis. Stay that way. The Goodmans and the Colberts.”
“How very mildly disturbing of you, Mister Nasus.”
That was the end of that conversation. Once I hung up, Stan rather casually asked me “Who was that?”
“A person with access to all of the alphabets you wanted to contact. Someone whose interests are aligned with our own.”
“Not that I don’t think the world of you, Cap. And I’m very thankful. But what exactly is your interest? From outer space.”
That’s the way Stan said it, too. Perhaps he was wondering what authority I had? In Chicago they don’t want nobody nobody sent. My answer was “I am here to stop whatever it is that ruined your life.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Good question, Stan.” It was instant, but I did reevaluate my objectives. “I suppose I will try to locate and liberate the living victims.”
He didn’t say anything—and I didn’t say that just to placate him—but I believe Stan liked that answer.
We then went back to work on the bank’s fittings. While we were putting the finishing touches on the electrical, Stan recalled something stunning: “You know, this bank has a basement.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. I had scanned the entire area. This floor was it. On the other hand, why was I arguing with him? He owned the place.
“Yeah, there’s a ladder to it in the bathroom janitor’s closet.”
“I checked it with my ship’s instruments. There’s no other floor.”
“I mean it’s not a full basement. It’s got like a six foot ceiling and a dirt floor. I think they were storing beer in there during the thirties.”
“Are you sure you aren’t confusing this with the building next door?”
“I’ve never been in that building. It’s crawling with rats.”
“Is there a reason they haven’t torn these buildings down?”
“About forty thousand reasons. Here, follow me. I know it’s here.”
We went to the door of the janitor’s closet, which unlike everything else in this building, seemed new. It was the only remaining internal door in the bank.
“I didn’t put this here,” Stan said, yanking at the new doorknob. “Locked.”
“Not anymore. Try it again,” I said, having triggered my helmet.
What we discovered inside was a perfectly empty janitor’s closet with new and clean white wall boards. Stan scrunched up his face and said “What the hell.”
“Perhaps you were mistaken?”
“I sure as hell didn’t hang all this new drywall. There was a ladder, a metal ladder at the back of this closet.”
“The closet does seem a little shallow, doesn’t it?” I said, triggering the helmet. The right portion of the back wall popped forward. “You don’t generally put drywall on hinges, do you?”
“No.”
I stepped into the closet and swung the wall inward. Revealed in the space behind the wall was the metal ladder, which was mounted into the brickwork. A deep blue glow was coming from below. I heard familiar, distant device chatter.
Stan was looking at the back of the wall-door, which was covered with a cake frosting looking substance. “Some kind of blown fiberglass?”
“Exactly like it, Stan. Hull shielding. Repair grade. Comes in a can. Shake it up and spray it like whipped cream. Don’t touch it. Sharper than glass and stronger than steel.”
“I know I didn’t hang any lights in the basement.”
“Not lights, Stan. An assembler collection battery.”
“
Battery
? Why would a battery be down there?”
We were about to find out. I was fairly sure it wasn’t dangerous. It was a very low powered type of battery, incapable of projecting distended mechanical force or powering weapons systems. In all probability it was a commercial system, something Sulfur had salvaged from his last ship.
Stan followed me down the ladder. It appears Sulfur had several cans of hull shielding. He had covered the ceiling and walls of the basement rather thickly.
“Like a cavern made out of stucco,” Stan commented.
At the center of the space was a ten foot long, four foot thick ceramic cylinder lying on its side. Off its right end was a motionless mist of luminescent blue vapors, which was the battery itself. As for what the tube was, I had to whip out Toovy’s tool to read the markings on the side to find out. I knew it was an engine system.
Stan was looking over my shoulder as I was reading the sides. There was a quite Earth-bound knife switch jury rig mounted above the instructions I was trying to decipher. Whoever had written the instructions, rather recently and in grease pencil, was simply guessing at my language. Sadly, it was a horrible guess. He had the conjunctions right, but that was about it.
The fact that Sulfur was seemingly leaving me notes should have planted a seed in my head, but at the time it didn’t.
“Am I in your light?” Stan said, backing up.
“That’s alright, Stan. Whoever wrote this picked up all their Spanish at Taco Bell.”
Stan pointed at the mists and asked “Is that dangerous?”
“Only if you lick it.”
“Ok. Not tempted. What’s this stuff doing?”
“Nothing. It’s an assembler drive, or rather, a disassembler drive. Something like a hard drive for matter. Normally it’s used to store a plasma variant which retards antimatter explosions.”
“That’s what’s in there?”
“No. It’s empty.”
It’s empty because I’m no longer in it. That solves the mystery my missing four years. And my reappearance was entirely unplanned—at least by the idiot who jury rigged this thing. I owe my continued existence to an engineer long ago in some faraway place who was a little touchy about having living things stored in this device. Either due to the duration of time in which I was stored or some other factor, my pattern was about to degrade, thus triggering a failsafe which put Honey, Windy and I back together in the nearest open space. Otherwise I would be in this thing, in this self powered object, in the hull shielded basement of an abandoned bank for all freaking eternity.
That, by the way, pretty much shot all of my operational theories as to why I was here. Sulfur hadn’t let me out. The device had simply been triggered. He wasn’t leaving me clues. From what I could tell, Sulfur probably didn’t even know I was here.
As for the message in grease pencil, it seemed to read: A Nacho Belle Grande with a Coke would now like to have its hot sauce use the mommy bathroom, please. It wasn’t even that coherent, although it was stressing urgency in a polite way. Windy thought he might have been mixing in symbols from intergalactic navigation language. The problem here is that my language uses the same characters as that language.
Or it could have been wiring instructions. That was the Toovy wonder tool’s summation. Thanks to the Toovy wonder tool we were able to get to the assembler drive’s actual instructions. Oddly, the service log indicated that the device had previously been installed in a library—an improbably set up structure resembling a large diamond. Per the log, the drive was working fine. Within an hour or so Windy and I were putting the unit through some tests.
Stan left us in the basement and went back to playing around on his lap top. He knew a store in
Schaumburg
where we could get furnishings cheaply. Moreover, everything we needed could fit in the back of his Magnum. It seemed the store specialized in selling disassembled furniture which laid flat in its shipping boxes. Stan was trying to be a help, trying to keep moving.
He had furnished his step daughters’ condo with goods from this store. That brought Stan back to thinking about them. He kept making cell calls to them. Windy and I knew from the data sewer that his calls were going nowhere. No towers could locate their phones. One by one, their voice mails filled up. Then Stan started calling his ex wife. Same result.
What apparently kept Stan going was that the numbers had not been disconnected.
We didn’t tell Stan his calls were going nowhere, that the phones were either off or had ceased to exist. I didn’t want him to melt down. It was inevitable. But I didn’t want to prompt it.
I didn’t know what to do when it did happen. First, Stan needed some air. Then he thought he might get us the furniture. Then he thought that he didn’t want to drive. Our pretext for leaving the bank was that Stan wanted to give me some driving lessons, which I did need. That lasted about two hours.
At some point, Stan stopped barking orders and started staring into space. He was trembling. I ran over a curb and then flung the Magnum into park, with a shudder.
“What do you want me to do, Stan?”
“I want to see my kids.”
“I can’t make them appear.”
“I have to get to
Miami
.”
I could have said a number of things. Instead, I just agreed. “Then that is where you will go.”
Windy hadn’t quite figured out the assembler drive as yet, otherwise I would have flown him there in Honey. We booked him on a 6:00 AM flight. Since we didn’t want to chance returning to his apartment for clothes, we set him up with some money and a cell phone. It took us some time to recreate the contents of what should have been in Stan’s wallet.
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