Nomad

by Jamie Nash

  A cackle echoes off the walls. My heart sinks. It’s that burnt-faced lunatic who almost ate my nose for lunch. Crazytown. I can’t tell if he's laughing at me or merely justifying his new nickname.

  “Is he a friend of yours?” Shaft whispers as the cackling intensifies.

  “I hope not,” I say.

  The wackjob keeps laughing. There’s nothing funny here. Only a psycho would be yucking it up at a time like this. A real Norman Bates. I slide up the wall, getting to my feet. The pitch blackness is disorienting. I run my fingers along the wall searching for a light switch. It’s all smooth and metallic. I blindly step into the nowhere in front of me, probing the pure abyss with my hands. “Hey,” I call to the ceiling. “Anyone! We’re trapped down here!”

  “Ugh,” Crazytown growls. “Come on.”

  Shaft groans behind me. He’s on his feet. He joins my cries. “There are four of us. We have serious injuries. We need an ambulance right away!”

  “Shut your pieholes,” Crazytown says. “At least let me die without a splitting headache.”

  Shaft keeps calling out. “Help! If you can hear us, let us know!” This is beginning to sound like the saddest séance. “If you’re out there.” Shaft pants between words. Even talking is a struggle. “Please!”

  A mechanical growl rattles the chamber. A dinosaur in a cave. Lights blink and blip. Control boards powering up. The room is coming awake. A square of green light bleeds through the gloom. At the far side of the room, a clunky thirty-inch television screen casts its glow on our surroundings.

  I get a better look at the place. It’s circular, about the size of a high school classroom. Intimidating switches, instruments, and panels dominate the decor. It reminds me of the control room at the local TV news studio, Channel 13 Eyewitness News. We went there on a field trip in sixth grade, Miss Munger’s class. Mean Miss Munger. How do I remember that evil witch but not my own name?

  “They heard.” Crazytown gazes at the shadowy ceiling. The left side of his charred face has settled into a melted goo of orange and yellow blisters. “Get me out of here! Save me!”

  Shaft and I join in. “Help! We’re down here! Somebody!”

  “Look at this.” Crazytown approaches a boxy security camera perched on the wall spying down on us.

  Shaft and I hurry to it and scream and wave like Gilligan’s Island castaways trying to flag down a passing airplane. But no one comes. Nobody ever came for Gilligan either. Maybe the Globetrotters. I think there was a reunion special. Stupid show.

  This yelling nonsense goes on for a full minute. The camera doesn’t give a crap. It might not even be on. I’m the first to bail. I turn back to Hero. His face lies flat against the floor.

  He’s dead. I know it.

  I should take his pulse or something. But I’m not ready to play grown up. Up until five minutes ago, I’d never seen anyone die. Although, I remember a dog … Yoda. I found her in the kitchen one morning—she’d pooped in her bed. She couldn’t walk. Her back legs had quit, otherwise, she was fine. She ate her biscuits, licked my hand, and stared at me with her sad brown eyes. She lay in my lap while Dr. Casey gave her the injections. It looked as though she was asleep. I didn’t want to let her go. She was my best friend.

  Hero groans. Thank God. He’s hanging on. My man. He’s still in the deepest of shit. It’s my turn to be the rescuer.

  I touch the door. It’s cool. It doesn’t feel like a door that’s sealing off a raging fire. I press my ear against it. The Klaxons and explosions have silenced. The fire must be contained, but we’re still not going back that way. I’ve had enough alarms, and death, and exploding bodies. Besides, even if we could exit that way, I’m not keen on seeing the damage the door wreaked on Hero’s legs.

  There must be something here, in this room. The place looks like R2-D2 barfed all over the walls. Capacitors, circuit boards, and meters cover everything. There’s another bulkhead on the opposite side of the chamber. It’s almost a mirror of Hero’s door except it’s made of dark red metal. The Red Door. It probably leads to a corridor similar to the one that brought us here. Maybe one less on fire.

  Centered above the wide bulkhead is a yellow placard with bold, black letters, “CR77,” probably a label or something—the name of this hell hole or at least this room. There are no knobs or buttons on it though. We’re sealed inside. Little sardines. My guess is these doors normally aren’t shut. They probably came down with the alarms to contain the fire. Now they contain us, too.

  I hammer my fist against the red metal. “Hello? Anyone?” I press my ear against the door’s steel, listening. “Bueller?” No response.

  A steel lockbox hangs beside it. It almost looks like a circuit box but smaller and closer in shape to a Kleenex box. It’s locked shut with a master lock. It might be the key to freedom but without a pair of wicked thick bolt cutters, we’ll never know.

  The last door is the most curious. Call it the Mystery Door. It’s smaller, with a seam down the middle separating it into two large, metallic puzzle pieces stuck together. I’d guess the halves slide sideways in opposite directions like a parting curtain. It’s a lot more Star Trek. I bet they even swish when they open. I wave my hands around the door’s frame hoping to trigger a motion detector like the ones at the entrance to the SuperMart. No luck. I’m a total goober.

  A clicking sound fills the chamber.

  Shaft and Crazytown are huddled in front of the clunky box that is held together with weathered patches of duct tape. Crazytown taps away at a keyboard. I shuffle over. It’s the kind of keyboard that’s thick in the back, hiding circuit boards and computer stuff, sort of an all-in-one deal. It’s a cheap machine, not one of those expensive Apple Macintoshes they have at school. The back end of the unit grinds and crackles, doing some nerd magic, but the screen is still a solid wall of green. A large crack runs across it diagonally, from left to right. I’m surprised it still works.

  Suddenly, the screen flashes. A chunk of gibberish fills it:

  ***** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 *****

  64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE

  READY.

  “I know this!” Crazytown puts his nose right up to the TV’s glass. Its green aura glimmers in his wackadoo eyes. He begins to sing. I don’t catch all the words. Something about winter and castles and dungeons. It’s the kind of song that invokes men in beards swinging frothy tankards to the beat. He flails his hands encouraging us to sing along.

  We don’t.

  The boy is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest crazy.

  Crazytown’s fingers dance across the keys.

  LOAD “*”, 8, 1

  It reads like nonsense, and given its author, it probably is. But the large box beneath the screen understands and responds with more grinds and groans.

  “What did you do?” Shaft asks.

  “I’m not sure.” He stares unblinking at the screen. “Something I remember. Instinctually.”

  Suddenly, a wave of solid green washes across it. New words appear:

  WELCOME BACK NOMAD …

  WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?

  A cursor winks beside the question, daring us to guess.

  “I did it!” His eyes widen in surprise. “I’m not crazy.” Hmph. I’m not going to go that far. His gaze narrows on the lingering question. His hands quiver above the keys. He’s about to do something. We wait for it.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  Crazytown storms away muttering to himself, “What? Am I supposed to do everything?”

  I sigh. This computer means something. It popped on when we were yelling for help. It must open the doors, or send out SOS messages, or boot up a game of Asteroids to occupy the time. Shaft leans against the panel the computer rests on. He’s pale, and perspiration dots his face. He looks like a thawing sausage.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sit?” I ask.

  He waves me off, seemingly all the reaction he can muster. I’m guessing sitting would put pressure on the pipe
sticking in his innards.

  I slide into the chair and stare at the cracked screen. A face stares back at me. My face. The blue eyes, the short blonde hair, the high cheekbones. The reflection is a stranger I saw once in a dream I barely remember. How can I not remember my own face?

  “Try some passwords.” Shaft stares over my shoulder.

  I peck away. I’m not an expert typist. I employ the slow, clunky two-fingered style. It’s obvious I haven’t logged a lot of time in front of a computer.

  PASSWORD. DENIED.

  OPENSESAME. DENIED.

  HUEYLEWIS. DENIED.

  Shaft grimaces. He braces himself, trying to take some strain off his injured gut.

  “Easy.” I stand and wave to the keyboard. “Here. You should try some passwords.”

  This time he doesn’t protest. He awkwardly slumps into the chair. Even leaning back is a Herculean effort. “I’m not sure I know any Huey Lewis songs.”

  “Yeah, you look more like a Barry Manilow type.”

  He laughs but even that much hurt. His gut oozes fresh blood. Red and wet, dripping off him like a leaky faucet. I pretend not to notice. I don’t have much to offer except moral support.

  “What’s this?” Shaft finds a tacky coffee mug sitting to the right of the keyboard. He tilts it my way revealing the words “Niagara Falls” emblazoned across its white surface. A wisp of steam rises from the dark liquid within. It’s about half-filled. The warm fumes fill my nasal passages. Hot chocolate. Swiss Miss. The little marshmallows are still bobbing up and down in it. They haven’t melted yet. Shaft scans behind us. “Someone was just here. Where’d they go?”

  “Probably to get more marshmallows,” I say.

  “They must be nearby. Getting help.” Shaft closes his eyes, stomaching a surge of pain. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  Crazytown snatches the mug of cocoa and chugs it wildly. The dark liquid spills down his cheeks. “Uck!” He spits the liquid back into the mug. “It’s sugar-free. Who drinks sugar-free hot chocolate?” He slams the mug down on top of a stack of magazines to the left of the computer. Their pages are tattered and frail. Crazytown lifts one off the top. A Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. I recognize the model. The blonde from the Vacation movies. Christie somebody. He sniffs the cover. “This must mean something.” He leafs through, perusing bikini girls on the beach. “Maybe this is a dentist office? Maybe we're waiting to get root canals?”

  The pages are ripped, yellowing, and faded. They remind me of a newspaper I once saw about World War II. “What happened to it? Why is the paper so ancient looking?”

  Crazytown fishes one from the middle of the stack. A Playboy. “Hello, Miss November.” He checks out the centerfold. At least he doesn’t sniff it. There are a bunch more—Redbook, Seventeen, Tiger Beat, even a Rolling Stone. In a fit of inspiration, Crazytown leans over Shaft and hammers out a burst of passwords.

  PLAYBOY. DENIED.

  NOVEMBER. DENIED.

  CENTERFOLD. DENIED.

  He drums his fingers—I recognize the rhythm—it’s Queen. It must be his thinking rhythm. He tries one more.

  BOOBIES. DENIED.

  Shaft shakes his head. “Idiot.”

  Crazytown leans back, then turns to Shaft. “You know you’ve got a metal bar sticking out of you, right?”

  Shaft rolls his eyes. I doubt he needed the reminder. Crazytown cracks his knuckles above the keyboard and then dives back in with a few more guesses.

  MYSECRET. DENIED.

  GOD. DENIED.

  “You should give it a name. Like a pet. Spike,” Crazytown says mid-guesses.

  LOVE. DENIED.

  1234. DENIED.

  SPIKE. DENIED.

  He growls and keeps trying.

  QWERTY. DENIED.

  LETMEIN. DENIED.

  FOOTBALL. DENIED.

  MONKEY. DENIED.

  FUCK. DENIED.

  YOU. DENIED.

  “Bah!” Crazytown pounds the keyboard and storms off.

  Shaft and I pay no attention to him, our focus staying on the computer. “Maybe the password is hidden on a piece of paper or something,” he says before leaning down and groaning. The radius of blood around his wound circles his gut and spreads down around his waist.

  I try not to stare. “Do you think we should pull that thing out?”

  “No.” Shaft shifts away from me as though I’m about to actually do it. “Everything might come uncorked and spill out onto the floor.”

  I nod, sighing. It’s his call. Spike stays. I turn back to the table and search beneath the keyboard, under the magazines, and around the monitor. No dice. No little piece of masking tape with a password on it. No magic words.

  “Maybe it’s your name,” Shaft says.

  Ouch. Maybe. If I could just remember it. I can summon up bits and pieces of the dumbest things, like when I got caught shoplifting from the Ross Dress For Less, or the time I had to get ten stitches because Roxanne Barth hit me on the head with a rock, or when gross Kenny Cooper kissed me in the sixth-grade cloakroom and he tasted like spoiled milk.

  Shaft is staring at me. Waiting for an answer. He wants a name. My name. Screw him.

  “I’m … Dorothy.”

  “Dorothy?” He frowns. “As in The Wizard of Oz?”

  I shrug. It’s as good a name as any. “Yeah, Dorothy.” Shaft is not buying it. “Try it,” I say, getting annoyed with his doubtful stare.

  He humors me.

  DOROTHY. DENIED.

  “What about you?” I ask in a bit of quid pro quo. “You got a name?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes stare out into space like he’s gazing beyond the walls and into his past, something coming to him. “I’m, uh …” His fingers poke at random keys trying to jog a memory. He taps out some names—JIM and JOHN and MARTY and MCFLY. He quickly deletes them and shoots to his feet. “This is pointless.” His face goes flush. He wobbles. I catch him by the arm and ease him back into the chair. His fingers squeeze his temples in deep massage. “Just gotta get my head straight.”

  He’s got bigger problems than memories. He’s probably got an hour or less to find help or die, which is probably more time than Hero has. It’s up to me to find a way out, and guessing passwords is getting on my last nerve.

  The area beyond the computer is dominated by a wall-sized rectangle of clear glass resting inside a metal frame. Everything seems arranged to face it, like a family room toward a forty-five-inch TV. It’s a window. On the other side of the pane, a series of metallic slats shutter us from the view. A red, plunger-style button protrudes from the wall on the far right of the frame. It must open the steel curtain. Outside there must be answers. We’re desperate for answers. I march up and push the button.

  The shutters flip open. Star Trek stares back at me. Not Spock or Sulu. I’m talking the real final frontier.

  Space.

  I’m in motherfucking space.

  Holy shit.

  I don’t blink. I can’t breathe. A mammoth celestial body looms in front of us. It’s purple. Grape Kool-Aid purple. It’s big and round, and while I’m not Carl Sagan—I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure I’m staring at a planet.

  We all stare, slack-jawed. Tears stream down cheeks. Lips blubber. A trio of idiots trying to comprehend the infinite.

  I reach out and touch the cold glass, needing to feel something I can understand. This is no special effect, no planetarium light show. I’ve gone where no man has gone before. Me. Whoever the hell I am. The girl who got a ‘D’ in trigonometry. I’m space girl. “Which planet is purple?” I ask.

  “None of them,” Shaft says.

  “Purple means people,” Crazytown says. I’m not sure if that’s a Soylent Green reference or just nonsense. He must sense my confusion, as he clarifies, “Purple planets are inhabitable. It’s something I learned in science class. Or Flash Gordon comics.”

  “Someone’s still coming for us, right?” I ask.

  “From where?” Shaft waves at the
light show before us. “We’re a long way from home.”

  No shit. We’re light years away. I think that’s a real thing. Maybe it’s from Battlestar Galactica. I can’t take it. I hit the red button again, and the shutters snap close. No more stars. No more Godly light in our faces. No more awe. I breathe and try to pretend I didn’t see any of that. Where’s amnesia when a girl really needs it?

  Shaft eases himself back down in front of the computer. His head falls into his hands, and he whimpers. Crazytown paces. “How long were we in those things? We’re in deep space. It must have taken years to get here. Decades.” He stops. “We were frozen. Like Walt Disney’s brain.”

  “That’s just an urban legend,” I say. “Besides, according to legend, he was dead when they froze him.”

  “Or maybe he’s here. Maybe he created this whole God damn thing.”

  “Shut up!” Shaft snaps. He can’t take it anymore. “Please. Shut the hell up.”

  “All of this is impossible,” Crazytown says. “The technology to get this far into space doesn’t exist.”

  “What about Neal Armstrong?” I say. “What about the space shuttle?”

  “Like the Challenger?” Crazytown asks. “The one that just exploded?”

  “Well, not that one. But who else could build something like this? It must be NASA. A secret program we didn’t know about.”

  “Give me a break. They’ve never gotten a ship past the moon. This is deep space. You don’t do that without dilithium crystals, and warp drives, and Wookiee pilots,” Crazytown says. “We’re not even in the same zip code as Earth anymore.”

  “Well, I don’t see any laser swords or ‘Beam Me Up, Scotty’ stuff. I see junky computers, and floppy disks, and these.” I lift a stack of magazines then slam them back on the table. “The future is Epcot Center, this is … Radio Shack.”

  “What’s your point?” Shaft asks.

  “My point is, some asshole built this. A human asshole.”

  “Who?” Shaft asks. “IBM? Boeing? McDonald’s?”

  “I had a history teacher in high school who showed a movie that said the government kept the atom bomb a secret—the whole damn thing. Nobody knew until kaboom.” I mime the explosion with my hands. “Maybe this is like that.”