Silverstein laid down pulling the hardhat over his eyes for a few moments. I watched him breath heavily, his chest rising and falling in time with his tapping fingers, like he was listening to music only he could hear. I pulled my sweater around me a little tighter and cozied up next to him attempting to leach whatever warmth I could.
“Silverstein?”
“Taylor.”
“How long are we going to stay here?”
“Until my lungs don’t feel like a blast furnace.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault there wasn’t a work suit that would fit you back there. I don’t think they make ‘em in plucky pint-sized anyway.”
I slugged him playfully and looked over at him. He smiled slightly, his teeth barely visible between his lips. I had to wonder at that precise moment why every guy I met had to be so weird.
Silverstein could be an axe-murderer, a secret agent, or the prince of some tropical country far away. He couldn’t remember, though, which made it really hard to get to know him. Why he wanted to help me, just because I was nice to him, was awfully strange. Even with no memory, he seemed so genuine and good.
Maybe that’s just how people are, if stripped away to their core.
When we got attacked in the concrete plant he threw himself on top of me. No one had stuck their neck out for me like that, even if it was all his fault I was there in the first place. I grabbed his arm by the wrist and sat up, gazing at his hand.
“What?”
“Do you think you’re married?” I asked. I looked in vain for a pale band of flesh on his ring finger.
“God, I hope not. She’d be pretty worried about me by now,” he said in earnest, pushing the hard hat back up to the top of his head.
“What if she’s a he?” I asked.
“I’m sure the degree a spouse worries doesn’t depend on their gender,” he said, smiling slightly.
“We have to find out who you are,” I replied holding his hand.
Silverstein squeezed my hand and nodded giving me his signature half smile. Lifting me back up to his shoulders, we grabbed our gear and began moving down the tunnel once more. It was getting cold as we climbed down further and further. Silverstein said we had to be getting close, because he could remember the cold last time they ran into Drones down there.
We walked for another hour, the cold getting more and more intense until we could see what looked like the glow of fluorescent lights, reflecting off the mist flowing around a corner. Silverstein stopped, shushing me while he listened intently. We could hear something moving in that direction.
The pipe wrench at the ready, Silverstein proceeded forward carefully, turning the last corner to find a small delegation of Drones standing on a raised concrete precipice, each holding a lantern. Behind them was a locked blast door with a strange symbol painted onto it. I recognized Ezra standing there among them.
Front and center was a female Drone wearing a rubbery looking cowl and goggles, clad in a dress that looked to have been made of the inner tubes of truck tires. It was adorned with bits of chrome and a she wore a small jeweled pendant. Whatever people whispered about Drones on the surface, no one mentioned they knew how to dress so smartly.
“Annabelle Five, I hope we aren’t dropping in unwelcome,” Silverstein said as he lowered his pipe wrench.
Ezra was there too, and I could see he seemed genuinely relieved to see us.
“Hi, Ezra!” I bellowed almost unable to contain my excitement.
The woman, Annabelle Five I assumed, smiled as she removed her goggles and cowl. She was sheet white with light grey eyes and ink black lips. She gestured for us to follow her as they turned back toward the huge blast door.
It took them several moments to open the door from the other side. When it opened, it sounded like a vault door, complete with loud clicks, creaks, and groans. I remained on Silverstein’s shoulders until we got inside their dry, well lit, and blessedly somewhat warm abode.
The whole of it was extremely functional and industrial in design. Every walkway, pipe, panel, wall, door, and button in the place seemed artfully placed. It was clear that it was painfully drab in spite of a very utilitarian design.
“I apologize. Ezra assured us we could meet up in a couple of days and make the exchange, but I was getting uneasy after what happened at the concrete plant,” Silverstein stated meekly in Annabelle Five’s direction.
“We would have waited for you to come to us regardless,” she remarked handing her goggles and cowl to what must have been her assistant.
The small Drone put the goggles away and handed her a scroll of rubber inscribed with white chalk. She unfurled it and gazed at the contents. I watched as Silverstein and Annabelle Five stepped off to one side to have a private conversation.
Pouting, I opened my bag and began going through it to make sure none of it got wet. Ezra sidled up next to me and gazed down into the bag of goodies I brought.
“I wanted to guide you guys down here, but Annabelle Five wanted to test Silverstein,” Ezra said crouching down next to me.
“I’m sorry, what?!”
“Apologies. Annabelle wanted to see how determined he was to see his deal with us completed. We wanted to know if Silverstein was an honorable man,” he said somewhat abashed.
“You could have just asked me,” I said with a wink, unfurling a bolt of pink balbriggan, covering Ezra from the neck down.
Ezra looked at me somewhat perplexed and swallowing noisily, probably at the prospect of being dressed in a bright color. I smiled and flung it over at a nearby wall, the fabric grabbing on to conduit piping, switches, and utility hooks. It hung there limply while I gauged the color’s impact on the rest of the room.
He stood silently beside me as a small crowd of Drones began to gather nearby, each looking over the latest addition. I walked over and held up a turquoise scarf next to it, and a piece of yellow construction paper. Given that most of the room was painted either white, or that green you see at the bottom of swimming pools, getting good contrast wasn’t going to be difficult.
“Are you going to leave those up there?” Ezra ventured, running the back of his clawed hand against the fabric.
“No, silly. These are just color samples to get us started.”
Ezra looked disappointed, which I took to mean he approved of the colors and was loathe to see me take them down. Glancing over my shoulder I could see Annabelle Five and Silverstein having a pretty heavy discussion. I pondered momentarily what combination of verbal harassment and physical abuse would be required to get him to spill his secret talk with Miss Queen of the Underground.
Wandering about the first few chambers of the Drones’ lair, I checked the lighting and tried different things to see how the room looked. The place was larger than I thought, and I hadn’t brought enough to decorate more than a couple of rooms. I did have my paints though. It was a few minutes later that Silverstein came looking for me.
“Taylor, there you are,” Silverstein grumbled, putting his hands in the pockets of his coveralls.
“You like?”
Silverstein gazed up at the colors I’d arrayed on the wall and smiled peacefully, some of his grumpiness subsiding. He probably couldn’t remember his favorite color if he tried, but wherever he came from, it must have been pretty drab. He seemed as glad for the contrast as Ezra, maybe more.
“I don’t think these guys knew what they were getting into, unleashing you to decorate the interior of this place,” he remarked, looking back over at the Drones gathering near a doorway.
“What did you and Princess Sewer Pipes talk about?”
Silverstein laughed and made no move to defend Annabelle Five from my jab. Last thing I needed was my new friend turning into a romantic martyr with a biologically engineered beauty living dee
p underground.
“She started in on me about the dark portents surrounding me, and that I shouldn’t just take payment and leave. She wants me to wait a day and talk to their Tribe’s mystic.” Silverstein said, raising his eyebrows and nodding.
“Right, well, I have some pretty serious work to do down here.”
“She told me I was being tested to see if I were an honorable man.”
“That’s what Ezra told me.”
“Yeah, well, I asked them if they had been serious about the redecorating or if it had been just an excuse to get me down here. She assured me it wasn’t an excuse and that they genuinely want the place given a touch of color.”
“What would you have done if it had just been excuse?”
“Well, I’d have been angry that they made me carry you and your gigantic bag of stuff all the way down here for nothing, taken their assurances relative to our bargain, and been on our way,” Silverstein said in his serious, sort of earnest voice.
I hated smiling, but I couldn’t help it knowing Silverstein wouldn’t have put up with someone jerking me around. I turned around so he wouldn’t see, and set about unloading my huge bag of awesomeness. I felt a warm glow after what Silverstein said to me.
I was really getting to like him. I didn’t want to, because it wasn’t my style. For the most part, I don’t like anyone. Most people are not as good as their word, don’t do what they say, and think I’m just in the way. Silverstein treated me with respect, something that his strange way of seeing numbers could never put a price tag on.
I spent the next couple of hours giving the place a much needed makeover. The Drones watched me intently, their faces breaking into shy smiles as I gave their central chamber and the adjoining corridors some paint, a bit of contrast, and some new shapes to adorn the walls. I wished I’d brought my beading stuff, but it would have killed poor Silverstein to carry it down here.
Word traveled quickly, and pretty soon the central area of their hovel was filled with Drones coming to appreciate my work. Some of them still carried the tools they used in their day to day work, their faces smudged with grease. Each one took their goggles off and looked about in wonderment, then come over and thank me awkwardly.
It struck me pretty quickly that they had their own language, and speaking with me was reasonably difficult. Sometimes they would just give up on verbal communication and hug me, which should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. For Drones, Ezra and Annabelle were remarkably well spoken, while the rest spoke mostly broken English with a thick accent I couldn’t place.
I couldn’t have known at the time how much it meant to them to be able to have someone come down and dress the place up. It wasn’t long before I found out they believed their world was about to change. When the Drone Mystic arrived sometime later, I could only marvel at how utterly odd the whole arrangement was.
It was like something out of a cheap fantasy novel, where the spiritual leader tells the protagonist he’s the chosen one or some crap. What she told Silverstein wasn’t to be that dissimilar, except that she knew things that were a little beyond a vague prophecy. She wasn’t all done up either, and she didn’t look any older or anything, no long white hair or magic staff. She was a Drone like the rest, but she spoke remarkably well and stood a bit taller than the others.
“The surface world, as it is currently known, is to end because of you,” the Mystic said, gazing at Silverstein.
“Um, alright.” Silverstein folded his arms.
“You aren’t a clone, or a thing fabricated in a laboratory like us. However, you have been cloned, your essence fragmented by whatever lies obscured in your past,” the Mystic continued calmly.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Your clones must have been designed to age more rapidly, to expire when their purpose had been fulfilled. I can sense that one passed away recently, and not far away from here, either. Somewhere on the surface.”
Silverstein went white as a sheet and began rubbing the stubble on his chin nervously. I had never seen him like that. The Mystic’s assistants set out some stools and crates for us to sit on, and sit we did. Silverstein held his face in his hands for a moment before looking over at me.
“How can I stop it?” Silverstein asked the Mystic, even though he was looking at me.
“Stop it? Why would you seek to do so?” the Mystic replied, squinting at Silverstein as if to discern the weight and direction of his desires.
Silverstein looked away from me and back at the Mystic. I could tell he was more than a little pissed at this point. The Mystic was like any Drone, but it was difficult to discern her age except perhaps by her voice. Most, including Annabelle Five and Ezra, looked to be my age, a little younger than Silverstein looked now. The pecking order in Drone society was decidedly different than among humans, and the Mystic didn’t seem to be more in charge than anyone else, she just had a different role.
“I can’t let the surface world be destroyed. I mean, are you referring to just Port Montaigne or do you think this thing is global?”
The Mystic looked at Silverstein for a few moments, ignored the question completely, and continued to speak.
“One of your clones was designed to have psychic potential and I can feel him through the concourses of the Void, a null conduit as it were. The intent of the remaining clones is clear to me, even though he was put in place to block all but the most powerful psychic intrusion into their affairs. They mean to put an end to the various contrivances and systems in place that maintain the surface world.”
“What does it have to do with Silverstein?” I interrupted timidly.
“Everything,” Annabelle Five said and patted me on the arm.
“Silverstein, it sounds like all you have to do is not do whatever it is that brings about whatever it is they’re talking about. You probably can’t even remember what you’re supposed to do, right?” I ventured, feeling somewhat panicked.
“If I understand the Mystic correctly, this isn’t something I’m meant to do,” Silverstein replied, again with his serious voice. “This is something I’ve already done, and there may be no way to stop it.”
The Mystic nodded somberly rising to her feet, then turned to leave, aided by her many Drone assistants. We watched as the chamber cleared, and only Annabelle Five, Ezra, Silverstein, and I remained. Silverstein sat there lost in thought as Ezra and Annabelle bowed their heads and looked at the floor.
“What does the Underground want to see happen out of all this?”
Ezra and Annabelle looked at each other intently for a moment before Ezra responded to Silverstein’s question. I wasn’t that surprised by the answer.
“Most of us don’t much care. They think things won’t be all that different for us down here.”
The next bit did surprise me a little bit, as I didn’t take Annabelle for much of a thinker.
“Ezra and I, and a few others, believe that when the surface is cast into chaos, people will run to the underground for shelter. They might even try to break into our homes and take what little we have by force. Our Mystic, Chelsea Six, only sees what is to try and determine what was and what will be.”
“I can’t let that happen, I’ve got too much I care about above, and below ground,” Silverstein whispered quietly.
“You barely know us,” Ezra remarked quietly.
“You guys are all I’ve got, and if I’m the one who set this unknown catastrophe into motion, I’ve got to find a way to stop it.”
“I’m in,” he said. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes.
“I’ll do what I can down here. Maybe this potential catastrophe has roots somewhere down here as well,’ Annabelle replied, much to my relief.
Don’t get me wrong, Ezra was cool, but I barely knew Annabelle and didn’t really want her tag
ging along mucking things up. It was then we decided we’d set out to find out who Silverstein was, what he’d set into motion, and try to stop it.
We couldn’t have known at the time what we were getting into. The whole thing, even at the time, was scary. What kind of person was Silverstein before he lost his memory? The kind of guy who dreams of tossing a gigantic monkey wrench into everything that makes the world work?
Even as I pondered my own place in all of this, I hoped I wouldn’t get in the way. I grew up in the Downtown and knew everyone, where everything was, and how to get there. I knew where to get stuff, and how to avoid trouble in a place known for it.
I was glad Ezra was coming. Taking what we already knew, it was unlikely we’d get to the end of our journey without finding a fight here and there. It goes without saying, I would have preferred to avoid all that. We don’t always get what we want.
Silverstein, Ezra, and I gathered up what little I deemed unworthy of the Drone’s hovel, and prepared to make for the surface. Ezra chuckled a little as I took up my traveling accommodations astride Silverstein’s shoulders.
“Scared of a little muck?” he quietly teased.
“You only wish you had a Silverstein to ride around on,” I replied, blowing Ezra a raspberry.
“You want a rubber suit like the ones the drone wear?” Silverstein said with a laugh.
“Only if I get some snazzy goggles to go with it.”
You know how the journey to get somewhere always seems longer than when you’re going back home? I think it’s the uncertainty in our minds that makes going somewhere we’d never been take longer. When we know where we’ve been, we can take some comfort in the knowledge we’d already seen the path once. Such is life.
The walk back to the surface took almost three hours of climbing ladders, wading through mucky water, and listening to Ezra correct our route. Silverstein wasn’t nearly as annoyed about being told where to go as I was. He just listened intently to Ezra’s extremely boring dissertation on underground geography, absorbing every word.
Uroboros Saga Book 1 Page 9
