"Ghost lines?" she whispered. She didn't think those were real.
"Yes, they're real," Mac said, sighing in exasperation. "I'll show you where to get started. Most of them are hidden in the closed tunnels, so you'll need some keys and a nice big wrench. Follow me."
She fumed as she followed Mac through the corridors of the ship. She didn’t do anything! It wasn’t her fault! Logger was the jerk—he was the one that was harassing her! All she had done was try to stand up for herself, but apparently it was her job to let big, ugly louses make unseemly remarks and grab at her whenever she walked by. She wished desperately that she was braver, that she could work up the courage to stand up for herself. After all, wasn’t she a bit old to be behaving like a cowardly child?
Mac led her to the brig, hidden away in the deepest corner of the ship. White Rabbit rarely came here. It wasn't part of her rounds, and she didn't like being near the prisoners. Rowdy, crude, and unkempt, they had a nasty habit of yelling obscenities as people walked by. Some people argued that the prisoners didn’t deserve to be here—that their sentences were too harsh for their crimes or that they hadn’t done anything wrong at all. But White Rabbit felt that if that were true, they wouldn’t be so awful and rude when people (like her) needed to walk through.
Down here, her arms and head felt heavy and tired. Gravity was stronger this deep in the ship, as the design of the gravitation magnets were calibrated to simulate ideal gravitational conditions in the living quarters on the higher decks. As a result, the gravity increased in the lower parts of the ship, just enough to be noticeable.
"Line runners, here for maintenance," Mac said to the guard on duty.
"IDs, please," the guard said.
White Rabbit pulled her ID out and handed it to the guard, keeping her eyes averted towards the floor.
"Thank you." The guard wrote something down in a book, and then unlocked the barred door that blocked entrance from the brig into the rest of the ship. He waved them through.
White Rabbit kept close to Mac's heels as he led her deeper into the ship. The cells started almost immediately past the main gate, and angry prisoners began to call out on either side.
"Got any food?" one woman asked. "They make us eat rats down here!"
White Rabbit had heard of this before. Prisoners tried to make out that the conditions were inhumane, to get more people advocating for their release. They said awful things, but they were really just making their situation sound worse than it was. She kept her head down.
"Hey there, pretty lady," a man jeered as she walked by. "I got a nice soft bed you can hunker down in, if you're so inclined.”
White Rabbit swallowed nervously and kept her eyes focused on Mac's shoes.
"Where ya'll off to so quick-like?" another prisoner hollered. "Us prisoners, well, we just get a mite lonely from time to time! What'dya say to a quick conversation?"
Talking—this was another strategy. Rumors up top said that prisoners would try to get you to talk because they just wanted to shove propaganda down your throat, to convince you to help them escape. White Rabbit closed one eye, and kept the other trained on Mac's heels. The fabric on his shoes was red, dirty, and well-worn.
"You up-toppers think you can come down here and ignore us? We are people too!" Someone reached out of their cell and grabbed White Rabbit's sleeve. She gasped and pulled away, walking even closer to Mac's heels. Despite how furious she was with Mac, she preferred his proximity to theirs.
"Yeah," another prisoner chimed in. "We're people too! We're people too!"
This seemed to be a mantra among the prisoners, for almost immediately, they all began to chant as if one: "WE'RE PEOPLE TOO! WE'RE PEOPLE TOO!" Then guards swarmed in from nowhere, banging on the bars of their cells and yelling back.
"YOU AREN'T PEOPLE," one of the guards yelled. "YOU'RE RATS."
Almost without realizing she was doing it, White Rabbit reached up and stuck her fingers in her ears. The noise around her dulled, and she felt an immediate sense of relief.
Then, Mac turned down another hallway and the shouting of the prisoners faded behind them.
She kept her head down and eyes focused on Mac's shoes until she ran smack into him.
"Watch where you're going!" Mac barked. "You'll start here. The tunnel will take you down to the bilge, and you'll come out underneath the rudder." He pulled out a wrench and loosened a nut on a panel covering a hole in the prison wall.
White Rabbit frowned. This seemed unsafe. If a prisoner got out of their cell, they could escape the prison through this one stupid hole.
"The ghost lines are mostly painted white, although they're so dirty at this point that they're difficult to see. Your job is to make sure firstly that they're not live, and secondly, that they are disconnected at every junction. But make sure you check both ends of a cable before you disconnect it. We don't need any explosions by removing power from a piece of machinery that hasn't been shut off."
Of course this made sense, but White Rabbit felt her stomach drop. This meant backtracking any time she found a live wire. Just the walking back and forth could take hours and hours, not counting the process to determine the state of the wire and to disconnect it. If she got lucky, there wouldn't be any live wires at all, so maybe it wouldn't matter.
"You got all the equipment you need?" Mac asked.
White Rabbit opened her work bag and let him look inside.
"Solid," Mac answered. "Take this wrench, so you can get out when you reach the end of the bilge. You understand?"
White Rabbit nodded.
"When you're done down there,” Mac continued, “I expect you to apologize to Logger. Can't have you treating other members of this ship like, well, like prisoners. Especially ones as well-respected as Logger. Got it?"
White Rabbit nodded again, a small, red hot bubble of hatred beginning to glow somewhere in her lower abdomen. It wasn’t fair!
"Alright, get going! I'm going to have the guards seal this door up after you go down it. Don't need no prisoners managing to slip out of this place." He chuckled. "Wouldn't want you to get stuck down there with one, eh?"
White Rabbit gulped again, eyes wide. She certainly hoped not. A brief wisp of fear flashed through her mind—what if she got stuck down there?—but she quickly decided that she would rather be stuck down there alone then have to come back up through the prison or be near Logger for any amount of time.
She reached up and turned her headlamp on, moving slowly towards the gaping black hole. Then, taking a deep breath, she crawled in. The light illuminated a short tunnel and then another hole in front of her with a ladder sticking up from it.
"Adios," Mac called, and placed the panel back on the opening, plunging her into darkness.
The ladder creaked and groaned as she made her way down into the bilge tunnel one rung at a time. A few of the rungs hung loose, and she gasped as the rung moved beneath her weight, or sometimes, as her foot hit empty air. The light from her headlamp made a small pinpoint on the wall in front of her, and as she moved down, she could see lines of graffiti drawn centuries before, when the population of the vessel was far less, and the people had more freedom.
After what felt like an eternity, her foot hit the ground. She slowly turned, and the light spanned out over the room in front of her. Much larger than she had imagined, the room echoed as she stepped forward; the harsh metal walls boasted colourful artwork covered in a thick layer of grime.
A junction box with a big yellow X painted on it jumped out at her from the other side of the tunnel. She moved forward slowly, turning her light towards the ground.
Junk covered the floor. Empty cans, old shirts, what looked like shiny silver disks—trash from centuries past littered the length of the tunnel for as far as she could see. She carefully avoided the unrecognizable items, kicked a few of the harmless items out of the way, and made her way to the junction box by finding the floor one step at a time.
The ghost wires began in this junctio
n box, indicated by a large white triangle painted at the beginning of any run. That is probably why Mac had made her access the bilge through the prison entrance—unless, of course, there were only two entrances, in which case she was glad he had not made her arrive in the prison. Talk about a horrible way to end the day.
She pulled out her screwdriver, loosened the junction box cover, and peered at the wires connected to the power cell: they were grimy, rusted, and clearly worn down by years of use followed by a lack of maintenance. She decided it was a good thing Mac had sent her down here. If any were live, they could cause a serious fire when a rat dragged in an old t-shirt across one to make a nest.
Next, she examined the power cell. Power cells had their own system of networked cables that led back to the engine room. Next time she got promoted (if she ever got promoted), she would be able to focus on maintaining these in addition to running wires. She pressed the ON button. It flared up in a blaze of tiny neon lights. It hadn't even been off, just sleeping.
"Huh," she whispered to herself. Then she sighed. If the power cell was on, the chances of a live wire were very high, and if the live wires started right here, at the beginning of the run, then she was likely going to have to go all the way to the end, and then come back to the beginning to shut the cell down.
"Damn."
She stared into the dark abyss that made up the rest of the tunnel. This could take days, and all she had to eat were a few granola bars. On the other hand, maybe it would be easy and only take a few hours. Then she could have the rest of the day to herself.
She turned back to the wires with renewed focus.
"White Rabbit."
White Rabbit shrieked and then coughed as she inhaled a piece of dust. "Ghost? Is that you?" she asked when she caught her breath.
"It is me," the voice said, "Imamu."
"Imamu," White Rabbit whispered, her eyes widening. "Imamu is your name? I've never been able to hear your name before!"
"I've tried to tell you many times," Imamu replied. "Why can you hear me better now?"
"I don't know," White Rabbit said. "Do you live down here?"
"Where is down here?"
"In the bilge," she answered.
"I don't think so," he replied. In front of her, a white figure blazed into view, much clearer and stronger than she had ever seen it before. "I used to live in a cabin, but now I don't know where I am. I don't know where I am. I don't know where I am."
This happened sometimes. He would get caught in some sort of loop and repeat the same words over and over.
While she waited for him to self-correct, White Rabbit pulled out her multi-meter and placed the two pins on the screw holding the first wire in place. It read 0 amperes. So did the next three. But the final one read nearly 80 amps. White Rabbit frowned. Whatever—or whoever—was using this power was drawing enough electricity to power a large kitchen appliance, like an oven.
"...don't know where I am. I don't know… White Rabbit?" Imamu suddenly and abruptly stopped his loop. "Why are you in the bilge?"
"I got in trouble for talking back to Logger," she answered, the feeling of humiliation and hatred flaring up again momentarily, "and so I have to work down here. Working the ghost lines."
"Shouldn't he be the one getting in trouble?" Imamu asked. "For harassment or something?" He had no features that White Rabbit could have described, even in his new, clearer state. Instead, he simply had a clearer, more solid outline with a sharp edge.
"I don't know," she replied. "I guess I could've been politer."
"No, don't say that!" Imamu argued. A blob that could have been an arm emerged from his figure, almost as if he was gesturing angrily. "You should never apologize for standing up for yourself."
"I don't. Maybe if I kept quiet, no one would bother me," she said.
Imamu sighed. "I've been trying to tell you this for months. It doesn't matter how quiet you are, how good a job you do, or how often you go unnoticed. Someone you don't like will notice you eventually, and your only other option is to stand up for yourself."
White Rabbit shrugged and disconnected the dead wires before beginning to walk down the tunnel. She kicked at the cans, bottles, and other trash scattered about the floor and the sound echoed all around her. "I will think about what you said."
"Promise?"
"I promise. Cross my heart."
"Okay, good."
White Rabbit walked in silence for a while, keeping the beam of her headlight fixed on the cable that ran along the wall. Beside her, Imamu glowed, but not brightly enough to shed any additional light on the tunnel. The live wire was encased in a rubber tube, which, along with all of the other cables, had a plastic pipe wrapped around it. These protected unfortunate passersby from an unpleasant shock, and protected the wires from being damaged.
She paused for a moment as the light from her headlamp illuminated a particularly colourful piece of graffiti. It depicted a woman being lowered from a great height, wreathed in halos of light. All around her, people reached up their hands to touch her feet and legs, and around them, colourful tents and boxes sat lined up against a wall made of jail bars.
As the last echo from her trash kicking faded away, she heard another sound in the distance.
"Do you hear that?" she asked Imamu.
"What?" Imamu asked.
"It sounds like…." she closed her eyes and zoned in on the sound, similarly to when she was listening to wires, "...like humming." White Rabbit opened her eyes and frowned. "Humming? It's not electricity, I know that."
"Oh, those are just the Hippos," Imamu said. "You'll like them." At that moment, he disappeared.
White Rabbit turned to look down the tunnel, suddenly more terrified than she had ever been in her life. She was alone, in the dark, in the bowels of the ship, possibly about to die. The noise got louder but all she could think of was being trampled by giant Earthan livestock with strange, shiny hides and enormous teeth. Then, torches appeared in front of her, held by people dressed in strange clothing, all humming at the same time.
From what White Rabbit could see, at least 20 people stood before her. Her fear, far from receding, filled every inch of her. Their clothes, clearly made from scraps of fabric, were woven together and almost looked pretty. Most had long hair falling around their faces and were extremely thin, and White Rabbit found it difficult to tell who was male and who was female. She could, however, tell that her own hands were shaking uncontrollably.
One woman with a line painted across her forehead stepped forward, flanked by two others holding a torch in one hand and long canes in the other.
"Who are you?" she asked.
White Rabbit couldn’t speak. Her eyes felt as if they had been pinned open and her mouth was so dry, she could have started a cactus farm inside it. She tried to push air through her vocal cords, once… twice… when she finally succeeded in making words, they came out as a hoarse, guttural stutter.
"Wh… Wh … White R… R… Rabbit," she stuttered, gripping her bag so tightly that her hands hurt.
"Why have you come here?" the woman continued.
"T… t… to check the g… ghost lines." White Rabbit gulped. She could feel herself panting, like an excited dog, but unlike an excited dog, she was paralyzed with fear.
"Are you not afraid to be here?" The woman leaned forward, peering at White Rabbit's face. "The uppers—they never venture down here."
"I… I… I am a… a… afraid." She figured admitting it was simple enough—not that it wasn’t obvious or anything.
"That's hardly a good description though," Imamu’s voice chimed in. His glowing form was still invisible. "She's afraid of everything. She's a wire runner, no need to fear her."
"You know her, Oh Great One?" the woman asked.
"Yes. We are friends," Imamu said.
"In that case, you are welcome and I offer my services to complete your task." The woman turned to face her legion of people. "You may return to your tasks. I am safe, you are sa
fe, and White Rabbit is our new friend. Say thank you to Imamu, the Great One."
"Thank you, Imamu," they all chimed.
"You're welcome," Imamu replied.
Then, one of them handed the woman a torch before following the rest down the tunnel.
"Wh… wh … who are you?" White Rabbit asked as the woman turned to look at her. White Rabbit’s hands were still shaking and she felt an overwhelming need to hide. On the other hand, one Hippo was far better than twenty.
"My name is Achieng, named for the Great One's mother. I am the leader of the Hippos."
"Wh...why are you called Hippos?"
"It comes from an ancient word—hypogeal—which was used back on Earth to mean underground. There is no underground on a spaceship, but we are below all other decks. We are the Hypogeans and Imamu calls us Hippos."
Imamu chuckled. This joke seemed to amuse him for some reason. He began to flicker back into view. Achieng smiled at the ghostly figure, and then pulled up her sleeve to show a tattoo of a hippo, striped with all the colours of the rainbow. "It is now the symbol of our people."
White Rabbit nodded, her mind whirling. Her hands still shook, but Achieng seemed nice enough, with just one Hippo and Imamu, she felt a little safer. Now she just had to quit stuttering.
"Now, Wire Runner, how can I help you?" Achieng asked.
"I… I need to get to the next j… junction box." Only two stuttered words! Progress.
"Follow me."
Achieng's torch lit up the tunnel in all directions, in a way that was much more helpful than White Rabbit's head lamp. Every inch of the walls boasted colours and lines making up massive images. White Rabbit thought they might tell a story.
"Wh… what do those mean?" she asked, pointing at one depicting a man hanging from a ladder by one hand, and a speech bubble pointing upwards with the words, "You can die down there!" carefully lettered on white.
Spectral Tales: A Ghost Story Anthology Page 11
