Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Dwayne Carlisle: A Rough Morning

I tried to drag myself out of bed when my alarm sounded, but it just wasn't happening. It felt like I was trapped in the longest, most confusing nightmare ever. I kept thinking I'd woken up, only to get pulled back into this bizarre fantasy. The day before had shaken me up more than I realised, not just the change in routine, but the fact that I'd seriously broken the law for a girl, and I didn't really understand what was going on. My subconscious mind was trying to make some sense out of what was going on, so I kept going back, again and again, to experience variations on a dream. Tiredness could have had something to do with it as well, I hadn't slept well in a few days and now it was starting to catch up to me.

When something finally cut through the layers of fear and exhaustion, I was just staring at the ceiling for a good few minutes before I realised that the buzzing wasn't some part of my dream. It wasn't the alarm clock app on my phone, playing an unfamiliar tone like it always seemed to do after an update. It was the harsh sawtooth wave emitted by the intercom, which was normally piercing enough to cut through any attempt at sleep instantly. It buzzed with a steady rhythm, as someone took their thumb off the button every couple of seconds and then pressed it again. I knew that to get into a pattern, they must have been at it for some time. I leapt out of bed, wrapped the sheets around my ankles, and tumbled to the floor. Thankfully my piles of books and discarded clothes weren't too hard, though they weren't exactly comfortable either.

On a third attempt, I got to the intercom panel and pressed the button.

"Dwayne," the voice from the other side sounded concerned, and despite being half asleep still I could recognise Kris. The guy who had taken over from me as LUSARS president, but still let me make all the decisions that I cared about. Even among friends, that meant he was one of the people I respected most. "Are you okay? Your message said to meet at half past."

"Crap," I glanced over at my phone, which said it was nearly nine in the morning now. Late for meeting with the LUSARS, and way too late for my plan to get at the Box before they arrived. I quickly grabbed for my coat and a comb, brain not quite firing on all cylinders, and ended up in a pile of laundry again. I think the state of me within about a half hour of waking up is probably one of the reasons why, at that point anyway, I'd never gotten close enough to anyone to be comfortable waking up in the same bed.

"Are you coming?" his voice still came out of the speakers.

"Sorry, you go ahead if you want," I called as I somehow managed to find some clothes that were clean enough to pass in the company I normally kept, "What was on the agenda?"

"You're still asleep on your feet," he called back, "I'll wait here. Marco said we're meeting at Mendeleev ECA:217."

"The..." I stopped for a second, and the disjointed memories of last night snapped back into focus. That wasn't just a dream, at least half of it had really happened. This early in the morning it was still hard to tell how much was real and how much a figment of my imagination, but thinking about the Mendeleev Building elevator, locked in place with such a precious cargo inside, finally jolted me out of my fugue. "I got this, I'll be right there!"

He was waiting patiently when I burst out of the flat, and was kind enough to remind me to turn around and lock the door behind me. Still not quite with it, but coming closer every step, we rushed on towards the Box.

Arriving at Mendeleev, I was disappointed to find I wasn't the only one who'd figured out that the doors were on a separate circuit. I was the electrical engineer, that should have been something only I would spot. The fact that Monty had found it, and that opening our supposedly safe hiding place was as simple as pressing a big red button, was even more humiliating. But, nobody had touched the Box yet.