Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 28

"Why are you here?" Joakim asked Alex went they arrived in his residence. It looked the same as his own. Alex had not yet put much effort into making it his own personal space.

"Same as you, there is something strange going on and I was not going to sit by and see the world go down by a virus. Most people just keep on going living as normal. It drives me insane."

"Lenny and Ford said you were on a cruise on the coast of Patagonia."

"That is what I said, and it is what I did. But then I applied for a maintenance job here. Believe it or not, in these times many returned from this base to spend time with their families. Meanwhile, I was trying to get the hell out of there."

He poured himself and Joakim a drink from a cupboard, making a bit of a mess of it.

"Thanks," Joakim said. "So you are after the same guys as I am."

"They are hiding something, everyone on the base knows it, but most don't really care."

"I am told they are operating a very large-scale computer model in there," Joakim said.

"Makes sense, they are using up a lot of power. I found out they have their own geo-thermal power supply outside the base."

"Where is that?"

"You can't simply walk to there, it's a few minutes by snow quad. There is some kind of maintenance tunnel, that is why I have access to it. I checked it out last week and there are some strange devices of which I have no clue what they are supposed to do."

"They might be random number generators," Joakim said, parroting Piran's words.

"Whatever they are, they are connected to their research containers. Tell you what, if you drop by tomorrow morning I will take you there and you can see for yourself."

"Won't they notice us. Did you see what they did to that man who wanted to get in?"

"I don't know who that was, but yes, they are dangerous so we will tread carefully. I have been trying to keep track of their movements. In the three weeks that I am here, I have only seen one of them visit the tunnel once."

Joakim talked to Alex about his trip up the mountain and his escape from the crow people with Julian.

"So these, crow people mentioned they stole something?" said Alex. "And you think these are the men who failed to break into the research containers today?"

"I do believe that, and he saw me. Now that he knows me to be here I feel much less than very safe."

"I understand. I understand," Alex said. "All the more reason to sort this out as soon as possible. Maybe you should not go about it on your own anymore. Something bad could happen to you among these structures, and nobody would see or hear it.

"Can I call other residences from here?"

"Sure, I'll get you the operator."

Joakim got into contact with Tessa and he told her he had witnessed something scary and felt unsafe to go about it alone. Tessa promised to send her colleagues around to pick him up, and so they did.

After dinner and a drink, Joakim went to bed, but he felt uneasy. He had locked the residence extra tight so nobody could break in. There was no television or radio to keep him off his mind, and he had forgotten to pack any books or other reading material.

The next day, after breakfast, Joakim headed back to Alex. He told Tessa he would help her with her research the next day, but that he needed to get settled a bit more on the base.