Xenoman

38 The Vat

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38 The Vat

"Once the door closes, there's no turning back," Malcolm said, peering down a gloomy concrete tunnel, just beyond the transporter room. The ceiling lamps provided just enough illumination to get from point to point in the shadows, until falling off into darkness at the other end.

"You mean, you won't let us turn back?" Xeno said, peering into the tunnel as well.

"No. You can come in and out as many times as you like, but you'll always come back, and back again."

"You're not coming with us?" Trianne said.

"No, this is where I get off . . . again. That much I'm starting to remember."

"Why don't I remember walking down this path before?" Xeno said.

"It takes a few repetitions. Like waking several times, and each time you wake, something becomes more and more clear."

"What becomes more and more clear?" Xeno asked.

"That we all have some form of amnesia. Like being stuck in a groove on a scratched record, with no knowing how many tracks the record has, or the size and quality of the turntable. Some days I feel like things are clipping away at seventy-eight RPMs, and other days are just a bog of the thirty-threes, moaning through cheap plastic speakers. What this universe really needs is a good set of woofers. Ciao." Malcolm backed away from the threshold of the corridor. He waved his hand over the motion sensor, and the entry door slid shut, separating him from Xeno and Trianne.

Xeno and Trianne continued down the shadowy corridor, until they reached the open entry of a deserted underground facility, with a massive water tank, about three stories high and wide, hazily visible in the slate gray gloom. They activated their black box flashlights and climbed the winding steel grate staircase, following the ascending steps in the illumination, until they reached the catwalk at the top.

They crossed onto the catwalk, walking over the top of the vat, peering over the rails, seeing nothing in their flashlight beams but a black liquid surface, with faint lapping ripples. A school of small glowing amphibious creatures swam to the surface, attracted by the light, looking like translucent spiders, propelling themselves with long tender tails. When Xeno and Trianne moved in closer with their flashlight beams to get a better look, the creatures scattered, descending out of sight into the dark depths of the vat.

"What were those?" Trianne continued scanning the vat surface with her flashlight. "Tadpoles?"

"The beginning stages of Blackware," Xeno said, "before they turn it into solid state putty . . . I think we're home."

"Home? Home where?"

"Fluke's home. The thing that lives in the black box."

"What do you do now? Push a button? Take another drug? Merge with his mind?"

"I don't know . . . I just took it for granted . . . that the narrative would hold my hand the rest of the way, like characters in comic books having everything mapped out for them by the penciler and the inker. Maybe all the voices in my head are really just the product of my imagination." He turned to Trianne, anticipating her response, but she just looked at him for several seconds without blinking.

"Trianne?" He waved his hand in front of her face. There was no change in her expression. She just faced him in tableaux, as if in a posed coma.

"She can't hear you," Fluke telepathed.