by Kris Shamloo
Black Tie
By Kris Shamloo
Black Tie
Kris Shamloo
Copyright 2011 Kris Shamloo
Chapter 1 – Lost
The light was uncomfortably bright; I just wanted to sleep in for a few more minutes. I kept fidgeting to get into a more comfortable position. Shortly after I had to concede defeat, I was awake and I was going to stay awake. I sat up from my bed to find there was no bed at all. I was lying on terra firma. The hell? I thought. Growing amounts of panic started their drip into my skull. Where am I? After a few minutes, or maybe it was hours, (but who can say really?) I calmed down and began to study my predicament.
Well... I'm definitely isolated. Around me was a flat desolate landscape, part desert and part wasteland. Not too much made sense at the moment. I knew somehow that using the sun and a stick one could find your bearings. The terrain offered up nothing of use to this end, the plain was utterly devoid of anything remarkable in anyway. I removed my shoe and propped up it vertically with some small stones. I marked the tip of the shadow with another stone and waited.
Waiting for a few minutes to pass I reined in some of my panicked emotions and began to analyze my situation. Oh man I feel terrible. I began hacking and coughing. I had ejected an inordinate amount of spittle, no bile, no stomach acid, just vast swaths of spittle. Gross. The suffocating sensation of choking passed and my nerves once again settled. The longer I paced around my sun-compass the more I began to realize the severity of my situation. I have no idea where I am, I have no idea what the hell is going on, and I don't even know who I am.
There it is isn't it? I hadn't yet even considered my own identity; I was too taken aback by the rest of the situation. Think dammit! Nothing. Blank. No name, no social security number, no address, nothing. I could feel the hollowness in my brain where my memories had once lived. Where'd you go?
After this troubling inner monologue I returned to my makeshift sun-compass and felt that tingling, paralyzing feeling of fear. No that's all wrong. It wasn't wrong, it was as obvious and as inexplicable as gravity. The scale of the problem I was facing increased dramatically with this discovery. The shadow hadn't moved a millimeter. What the hell does that mean? I knew it was a sloppy set up but the shadow still should have moved, I was walking barefoot for some time, waiting. I went limp.
After the tidal surge of terror had ebbed in my veins I got a loose grip on myself. OK I'm in a shitty situation but if I can stay calm, I can figure this out. Alrighty, I'm still alive, small steps right? I'm still breathing, double down. My heart is still beating; three for three, life can't be that bad, right? I could see the storm cloud of a painful realization forming in the back of my mind.
The gears were turning, how do I know I'm still really alive? I guess it doesn't really matter does it? Everything I define as being alive is there; even if I was technically dead it wouldn't really change my predicament. This thin string of reason was sufficient to quiet my fears but a twinge of doubt lingered in the fringes, a scavenger stalking a dying victim.
The urge to sprint came suddenly and I ran. Am I really running from my own thoughts? What the hell is wrong with me? After my panic sprint for about two minutes ended I was gaping for breath. While my physiology forced me to rest, I once again surveyed my surroundings. Almost imperceptibly, the terrain was sloping. Waiting until my chest had stopped heaving, I laid flat to the earth and studied this slope, I had an idea that heading downhill would be a smart move. Why does it look like that? That's so odd. The terrain wasn't a straight slope; it was just barely curved, akin to the curve of an enormous bowl or sink. I followed the rays of the curve towards where I thought their origin was; the bottom of the basin.
There it was, just a tiny black hair in the distance, barely below the horizon, something in the distance, maybe dark, maybe tall, you couldn’t know for sure this far away. I knew I must reach it. I set off immediately; there was nothing else to do anyway. The tiny object must have been tens of miles away, staring at it, in hopes it would grow in size faster yielded poor results. Eventually I became dizzy and frustrated with exhaustion and sat down for a moment to collect myself
I scanned the landscape once more with the hope that something else of interest would reveal itself, but only the dark object stood out. Resting my chin on my knees I sighed. That's odd. I reached down to two smooth, flat, tan stones. They're identical. Turning them over I could identify no difference between the two. I picked up another stone, similar in shape but smaller, and struck one of them to place an identifying mark between them. There you go, now you two can be yourselves.
There was an unsettling sadness for the two stone brothers, after marking one of them. As if somehow I had broken a bond they shared. Why do I feel emotional about some rocks? Feeling both recovered and a strong urge to separate myself from my two violated rocks I picked myself up and moved towards the object in the distance.
I was making good progress, or at least it felt that way. I took few breaks and every step towards my goal invigorated me. I was certain the growing object in the distance was the key to this place. Maybe it contained the reason I was stranded here in the unknown, or even better, a chance to escape. Escape from here? Where's here? Where would I escape to? The wasteland was my reality and I could think of nothing else. Every assault on my memory yielded less and less information. I kept walking.
Nightfall. Well, it should be nightfall by now. Only it wasn't nighttime at all, it was still midday; in fact I was beginning to piece together an irrational theory about my failed shadow-compass from earlier. The sun hadn't been moving, at all. I studied the sun in my periphery; it seemed to be almost completely overhead, with a slight lean towards the horizon. Wait a second. I felt the return of that terrifying surge of fear, every square inch of skin on my body tingled as my blood retreated to safety away from my extremities. For a moment I was paralyzed. Then I collapsed on hands and knees. I started coughing up spittle again as I came to terms with what was now unmistakable.
Unbelievable, how, why, what is actually going on? Where the hell am I? My eyes welled up as I tried to rationalize my latest discovery. Nothing could explain it, but I knew to my core that I was right. The fact that I knew the sun wasn't moving didn't bother me anymore, I had dealt with that. The truth was that the sun was pinned directly over the object I was heading towards. The inherent curiosity I had for that object was now marred by a twinge of the supernatural, the fear that some forces unknown and greater than you can imagine are at work and guiding your fate. Or the even more terrifying notion that your fate is merely the result of a stray ripple, a chance vibration in the pulse of the universe.
Ten, maybe fifteen miles closer towards the bottom of the basin I could outline my target; a large and mirage rippled tower black as obsidian. It stood there, beckoning me towards it, yet foreboding me against taking one more step in its direction. I felt the same way Pandora must have felt when she first saw her box, the knowledge that you must and simultaneously must not continue. In the monotony of the march towards the tower I reattempted the siege on my memory. Nothing distinct came up, sometimes the name of a city, or the vague description of an animal. One thing was certain; my memory was only getting worse. Whatever world I had stumbled into was rapidly becoming my own reality. The slope of the basin was imperceptible now, but the tower grew steadfast with each step.
As I continued towards the tower the desolate landscape began to evolve some strange peculiarities. The hard dirt I was walking on was littered with flat round stones. Every mile I progressed the stones became more and more similar. By the time I was five miles away from the base of the tower they were indistinguishable and arranged in what appeared to be a large triangular grid, perhaps one yard between each stone. The arrangem
ent pointed directly towards the tower. Every stone I mistakenly loosed filled me with the guilt of a child who knows he's done wrong but doesn't understand the rule he broke. I tread carefully.
The tower was around one hundred yards tall. Its surface was so black it seemed that it was absorbing the light from the sun that was perched directly above it. The triangular stone grid circling the tower ended another hundred yards from the base. The tower was an obelisk with four sides that gently sloped inwards towards a pyramidal cap. I knew the cap was there from walking towards the tower but it could not be discerned from the base of the structure. The material felt smooth, stone like but also metallic. It was covered with a very subtle embossing of something cross between a circuit board and the withered assault of a kudzu vine.
I inspected the tower for some time. First, I simply stared for hours trying to find some fault in the stone, some crack, a lever, anything. There has to be something here. It made no sense; a blinding sense of purpose filled me yet I could not identify my goal. I was driven, inexorably driven towards some final outcome that was as mysterious as the obelisk. The endless drone of the desert had faded from my mind. The tower filled my consciousness. I was struck with inspiration and immediately turned back to the desert. I used my shirt as a basket and carried as many of the identical stone discs back from the grid. I purposefully gathered only the inner most ring of the stones, it lessened the feeling of disturbing something sacred.
The twinge of upsetting the gods was lessened as I began executing my plan. I carefully stacked the stone discs adjacent to one of the corners of the obelisk. I dug my heel in the dirt and drew a single line. Don't surrender your logic, you can figure this out. I moved to the next corner and drew two lines. Each corner was numbered. I then lettered the faces from A to D. The stack of discs was as high as I could have reached.
I placed my palm flat against the surface of the tower. My fingers perfectly aligned with the top of the first disc. Be patient, you have time. I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and focused as intently as I could on the sensation of the contact between the obelisk and my hand.
The first length was the hardest. I lost focus countless times while slowly scanning the base of the tower with my fingers. After about thirty minutes the first pass was done and I removed the first five stone discs, the same width my hand had covered. I placed the discs at the second corner, and returned to the original stack. Hour after hour passed away invisibly under the stationary sun. The first two faces were completely scanned, nothing discernable could be felt. I started to worry that this might be a foolish plan. If I couldn't see anything why would I be able to feel it? I began tracing the third wall.
I had walked two full steps before I realized what I had touched. I froze. It was something wasn't it? I dare not open my eyes; I slowly etched my way back to the source. At first I thought I overshot it in my excitement. But then I felt it again. It was ever so slightly out of place from the shallow embossing covering the rest of the structure. I paused and narrowed my feel to my fingers. Yep, there it is. It was a bump, tiny, negligible, not the grandiose mechanism I was expecting to match the magnificence of the tower.
I lost the exact whereabouts of the bump occasionally, inducing slight panic at times. Only when I fully calmed my senses could I find it again, eyes firmly shut. The material the tower consisted of was just too dark to make out the bump visually. I pushed, turned, pressed, begged, pleaded, and insulted the tiny blemish on the tower. Nothing, not a damned thing. I lost confidence in my ambiguous quest, I had found something, only it didn't matter because I couldn't identify it or use it. I imagined this is how physicists feel when they witness incomprehensible phenomena, they know something incredible is happening and are given the ultimate punishment of being forbidden to understand their observations.
I sat directly in front of the bump; it was at about chest level when standing. I stared at the general area of it and began to pick the lock with my mind. What haven't I tried? I had thrown sand and dirt on it, spit on it, wept on it, attacked it with a disc. I got it! Before I could test my new theory I began giggling uncontrollably. Giddiness swept through me at the elegance of the solution. I knew it would work. I stood up, closed my eyes and with the precision of a surgeon placed my fingertips directly on the blemish. I leaned in, exhaled, and kissed.
The emotion of kissing held me there longer than I had expected as the image of a beautiful girl manifested and then vanished before my lips. I slowly backed from the obelisk staring upwards. Your move buddy. My thought was immediately answered with an unimpressive 'thud' that sounded as if it originated hundreds of meters below my feet. I felt the slow steady surge of some ancient power climbing unstoppably towards the tower. It took longer than I had expected but the whole tower became alive. Jagged and strangely shaped panels manifested on its surface, they protruded for a moment, expelled a large quantity of what appeared to be steam and then vanished back into the skin of the obelisk.
The initial surge flowed with a wave towards the pinnacle as hundreds of panels of varying sizes vented and vanished. Once the influx had stopped and the tower was receiving steady power only occasionally and at random intervals did a panel appear and ventilate. Steam means boilers, water, an engine! My brain couldn't piece the next revelation together fast enough. It seemed that my epiphany triggered the cataclysm of my fears. The obelisk does someth-
Darkness flooded the landscape like a crashing wave. The air ripped from my lungs. The sun was blotted out and the horizon was illuminated with erratic and fierce streaks of purple lightning. The haze was toxic, I choked through each breath. My instincts kicked in and I frantically looked for a way to climb the tower in hopes to escape this inky death that surrounded me.
I froze. A surge of paralyzing fear took me, my skin crawled and my breath froze. In the corner of my vision I thought I could see some grotesque silhouette. The moment I turned to examine the shadow it had vanished. Get a grip, there's nothing out there. I was trying in vain to push my back into the immovable wall of the obelisk. The lightning ceased and as the perfect dark sank around me I could feel death approaching.
Steam erupted from the panel I was unknowingly leaning against. The sudden movement and violence of the ventilation threw me down, I looked at the vent perplexed, not fully comprehending what had happened until the steam had dissipated and the panel returned perfectly flush into the tower.
The shadows! As I turned away from the obelisk and back towards the unknown haze a massive lightning bolt struck not far from me. In the same instant it struck the sun over the obelisk reappeared and swiftly lifted the veil of the toxic shadow. The animal fear of being hunted faded. In the distance near where the lightning had struck there was a new figure, a small black pedestal.
