The End of Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  ‘The handle! Press the handle down!’ Siiri whispered nervously, even though no one was listening except for the rats, whose scrabbling carried at an agitating volume from the other side of the door. The creatures must have been hungry and impatient, since Mika had kept them in the locked cupboard for so long.

  Neither pushing nor pulling served to open the door, regardless of whether the handle was up or down. An irritated Irma gave it such a swift kick she hurt her toe, but the door stayed closed.

  ‘Dratted drat! Is this how it’s foiled, our audacious plan?’

  Siiri looked around nervously, pulled her fob from her bag but couldn’t figure out where to flash it. There was a keypad next to the door that didn’t react even though Siiri presented her fob to it imperiously. But wait a minute! The keypad was the kind they used to have on landline phones and at the entrances to apartment buildings. It needed a code, some secret combination of numbers. Of all the codes in the world, which one could be right?

  ‘We’ll never make it into the Holy of Holies,’ she sighed in dejection.

  But Irma refused to be daunted and dug into her handbag. She pulled out her wallet and from one of its compartments the slip of paper containing her important numbers. Unfortunately the PIN code to Irma’s expired debit card didn’t unlock the door. A message appeared on the screen above the keypad: ‘Code incorrect. Try again.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn to try your luck,’ Irma said, as if they were playing bingo.

  Siiri remembered the door-buzzer codes of the past. They were often derived from the year the building was built. If Sunset Grove had been built in the 1970s, say, 1974, it might be that, or 7419. She tried the latter.

  ‘Code incorrect. Third incorrect attempt will set off the alarm system.’

  ‘Only one more chance? How on earth will we survive this?’ Irma was really getting nervous. She paced the corridor, babbling nonsense. ‘Hells bells and heavenly days. Jesus Mary and Jehoshaphat, what I would give for one reassuring Bible phrase to pop into my head . . . Shuffle and cut!’ Irma suddenly cried. ‘Of course those blockheads have taken the code from some Bible verse! I know a phrase or two by heart, but now we need numbers. If only Anna-Liisa were here, she knew how to spout everything between heaven and earth—’

  ‘Anna-Liisa! That’s it! You said it!’ Siiri cried so loudly the rats stopped scratching inside their locked chamber. Irma looked at her in bewilderment, but Siiri was absolutely certain she had struck on the solution. Anna-Liisa had investigated everything involving the religious fanatics’ activities, and surely she had managed this for them.

  ‘What on earth are you babbling about, Siiri?’

  ‘The hymns. Anna-Liisa’s hymns, Irma. They’re the key to the Holy of Holies.’

  Irma instantly cottoned on and started rummaging through her bag, even though both of them remembered that the hymns were ‘Spirit of Truth’ and ‘Walk with Me, Lord’.

  ‘Here, look, I still have Anna-Liisa’s note. It reads first 484 and then 548. And make sure you enter it correctly. We only have one try left.’

  Siiri could feel her heart beating at a lethal rate and focused furiously so her hand wouldn’t shake too much and her breathing would flow smoothly. She carefully pressed the six digits from Anna-Liisa’s slip of paper into the keypad. An approving click rang out after each one, accompanied by a flash of the green light on the edge of the box, and when she pressed the final 8, the lock clunked open and text appeared on the screen: ‘Code OK’.

  ‘Open Sesame!’ Irma squealed, yanking the door open. ‘Siiri, you’re a genius!’

  ‘Not me; Anna-Liisa,’ Siiri said and felt a warm sense of well-being in her upper abdomen, for Anna-Liisa’s masterful guidance from beyond the grave. Without their friend’s help, they would have remained crying in the corridors and perhaps themselves ended up as food for the ravenous rodents.

  To their disappointment, the Holy of Holies was rather banal inside. All the room contained was a tower of skinny ugly boxes stacked on top of each other. Each one had breakers and holes and tiny yellow and green lights. The tube running along the ceiling ended at the Holy of Holies, and cables from it led to the boxes. But only one cable led from the stack of boxes in the other direction, to the outside world. That was their cable.

  ‘Aha! There it is, the handsome devil,’ Siiri muttered.

  ‘What are we waiting for!’ Irma said, attempting to squat. ‘That’s where we put our snacks for the pet rats, then.’ The squat proved unsuccessful, and she rose, panting and red-faced. ‘You try.’

  Siiri had an easier time bending down, so she got to do the spreading while Irma did the handing over. The jars of baby food made a fun pop as Irma opened them one at a time, accompanied by cursing, and passed them to Siiri.

  ‘Dratted dratted drat! Pop, there. And the next one!’

  ‘I think two jars is plenty. Don’t open any more. We only need enough to lure the rats to the cable.’

  They hadn’t brought a spoon or knife. Siiri slopped the yellow-orange muck around by flicking the jar. The loose liquid splattered with a convenient randomness on the cable and in the vicinity. In the end, Siiri emptied the jar with her finger and spread one more layer of sauce on the surface of the cable lying on the ground.

  ‘This is really rather good,’ she said, licking her finger clean. ‘Would you like to taste?’

  ‘Maybe later. Next you get to taste mealworms,’ Irma said cheerfully and handed the unopened bag to Siiri.

  ‘Why didn’t you open the bag? Do I have to do everything?’

  ‘I can’t. Worms repulse me. I could never help my darlings, either, when they wanted to go fishing.’

  ‘But you gobbled these down as happy as a clam at the supermarket sample stand!’

  ‘Those were breaded and fried.’

  Siiri tore the bag of mealworms open and sprinkled the stubby brown worms on the cable. They were plump and firm, a little shiny, and at a closer glance had three pairs of legs and some sort of thin carapace. Siiri emptied all the bags on the ground and placed the worms on top of and beside the cable, so it was basically covered in a mountain of rodent delicacies.

  ‘That’s quite a sight,’ Irma said, raising her hand to her mouth in horror.

  ‘Let’s go. Mika will be here in fifteen minutes, and when he comes, we’ll be sitting in the communal area playing solitaire.’

  They still had to solve the problem of the door. It had to stay open, because it was unlikely that Mika had the correct code. Irma had the bright idea of retrieving one of the abandoned wheelchairs from the corridor. They placed it in front of the open door to prevent it from slamming shut.

  Chapter 38

  A restless mood filled the lobby at Sunset Grove, which manifested in a greater-than-average apathy. No one was doing anything. Aatos paced back and forth in the A-wing corridor, the Somali woman hung around the entrance to the B wing, Margit at that of C wing and Ritva kept an eye on the elevators. One elderly resident was dozing in an electric wheelchair near the main door.

  Their scheme worked like a charm. A little before noon, nearly everyone moved into the dining room to eat. Just then, Irma and Siiri marched out of the basement, and when they saw the others wandering off to their last supper, they joined the procession. It felt like Christmas in the dining room; the residents were like children who couldn’t think about anything but the presents under the tree. Food was moved around plates, uneaten, and no sensible conversations arose. Aatos wondered where the waiters and maître d’ were. Ritva was so nervous she spilled food on her top. In the meantime, Mika came and went as if nothing were going on, right on time, and the residents paid no particular attention to him.

  After eating three-dimensionally printed nutrition for the last time in their lives, Siiri and Irma started playing double solitaire at the baize-covered table in the communal area. Margit sat down with them and appeared to be praying. She folded her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and swayed silently on the spot. No
ne of the other members of the strike team were in evidence.

  The smartwall communicated actively: ‘Did you remember to take your midday medicine? To call the AGV, press #4.’

  ‘And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them. Isiaiah 1:31.’

  ‘Remember, prayer circle in the dining room today at 6 p.m. If you can’t make it in person, you can participate via Twitter @awakennow #prayercircle #dailyscripture #elderly!’

  ‘Have a fantastic day! From the folks at Awaken Now!’

  The elevator called out its status updates, the scouring device scrubbed the vestibule, lights flashing furiously, and two caregiving robots entertained each other, as no one else was interested in their efforts. For a long time, nothing happened. Time truly had seemed to come to a permanent stop. Machine and resident alike repeated the same movements over and over, waiting for the next command.

  Irma won the first round of double solitaire. She and Siiri gathered up the cards and divided them into two packs, each of them shuffling one before placing the cards back on the table and starting a new game. Siiri got to make the first move. Margit lowered herself into the massage chair – one last time, as she put it. Four women in wheelchairs were parked next to the sofa, and it was impossible to determine whether or not they were awake. Aatos had drifted away to his apartment, and Ritva emerged from the elevator. There was no sign of the Somali woman. A cantankerous old soul with a horrifically tangled thatch of hair had asked a companion robot to dance with her.

  So there they were, apparently, the remaining occupants of Sunset Grove. New residents hadn’t appeared in place of those who had died or moved away, and no one knew why. This suited Siiri and Irma’s plot better than well, as the intention was not to cause the residents harm, but to free them from their technological penitentiary. They believed their tiny deed would open the floodgates. People’s eyes would be opened, and everyone would gradually rise in rebellion against technology. Around the world, everywhere.

  Margit’s massage chair was the first to give out. Its kneading super-fists stopped in Margit’s lower back, digging so deeply into her kidneys that Margit let out a louder-than-normal howl. Then the smartwalls started flashing. Their screens mutated into an agitated chaos of tiny coloured squares before going completely black. The elevator fell silent, the cleaning robot froze in the middle of the floor, the refrigerators started giving their owners the silent treatment and unidentifiable splashes and splutters echoed from the dining room as the MealMat belched up eternally preserved mash with the last of its strength. The swill that just a moment ago had been served to the residents for lunch formed cheery, brightly coloured patterns on the walls and the floor. The DishGullet rattled a few times, collapsed in on itself and smashed a mountain of dishes with an ear-splitting crash. The AGV spun around on the spot, spitting out coloured pills; it almost looked like fireworks. After shooting out all its medicine, the trolley drove itself into a wall and dashed itself to bits. The game machines in the Fitness Console Centre whirled in a wild death dance, where Alpine vistas melded with the turf of football stadiums and the crushed clay of tennis courts, virtual balls whooshed through the air, rackets flew into dartboards and non-existent scullers pulled their last row. The sleep sensors fell into eternal slumber, the VirtuDoc wrote itself a letter of discharge, the self-service emergency first aid machines silently committed ritual suicide and the soothing seal pups were freed from their responsibilities. A tiny whimper echoed from the main door, and then nothing. The place was dead.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Irma whispered, when the silence had lasted an eternity.

  ‘Will the rats come here?’ Margit asked fearfully, still contorted in the grasp of the massage chair. The bewildered Somali woman was gaping at the ruins of the AGV, Ritva collapsed onto the sofa, and there was still no sign of Aatos. Their strike team wasn’t exactly keeping up.

  Tanglethatch struggled and cursed in the embrace of the companion robot that had expired in the middle of the dance floor.

  ‘Help me, dammit! This damned contraption is strangling me!’

  She was genuinely panicking. The row of wheelchairs, the monitoring team that was supposed to ensure that no one was in contact with a robot at the moment of doom, stirred but continued dozing. Irma and Siiri rushed over to the dancing couple to free the old woman from the cyborg’s clutches, but it was impossible. The creature was stronger than they were, even in death, and its limbs were stiffer than an arthritic rheumatic’s. They couldn’t free her, and instead tried to soothe the aged foxtrotter, who simply grew more hysterical as a result.

  ‘Where’s Mika?’ Irma asked in a fit of pique, as if Siiri were answerable for Mika and Mika were the only one who could be counted on in a crisis.

  ‘He couldn’t stay; you know that. He has that strap around his ankle, and he has to stick to his assigned schedule.’

  Siiri and Irma started singing, and Tanglethatch calmed down. After quite a few songs, she fell asleep with her dancing partner at her side and looked peaceful but alive. Ritva was snoring on the sofa, and the Somali woman had disappeared. It seemed to Irma and Siiri that the time had come to withdraw to their apartments to see how things stood there now that rats had liberated the world from the vice of health care and information technologies. But then they heard a horrific howl, consisting of the sirens of at least three emergency vehicles wailing at micro intervals from each other. They grew louder as they approached before the dreadful screaming contest came to an abrupt end. Two fire engines, a police car and an ambulance had pulled up outside Sunset Grove.

  ‘Who called them?’ Margit wondered, still stuck in the massage chair.

  Sunset Grove’s automatic door wouldn’t open, as it had been deprived of the scintilla of intelligence it had once possessed. The firemen smashed the door with an axe and marched in in full regalia. It was a handsome sight. The troop of young rescuers fought their way to the old residents fearlessly and professionally, without exchanging a single word, as they had been trained to work as a team in extreme emergencies. One of the men was black as night and had beautifully gleaming white teeth.

  ‘It can’t be . . . they all look so much alike . . .’ Irma stammered.

  ‘It’s him! Goodness, Muhis! Oh, how I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo, Muhis!’

  ‘Siiri Kettunen! And Irma . . . what was your last name again? Loimenlieri?’

  ‘Lännenleimu,’ Irma said, a little hurt, but melted quickly when the black fireman wrapped them in an enormous embrace. It was their fellow food enthusiast from the Hakaniemi days, the cheerful young Nigerian they had met buying innards for stews at the market. Muhis even smelled the same in his handsome uniform, a mix of salty and sweet.

  ‘I almost didn’t recognize you without that beehive-hat on your head,’ Siiri said. ‘It is so good to see you. I’ve been back to Hakaniemi, but I haven’t ever seen you or Metukka.’

  ‘You’re a fireman now?’ Irma asked, eyes full of admiration. ‘Can you do six push-ups in a row?’

  Muhis laughed his lovely laugh and was genuinely sorry he didn’t have time to chat. It had never occurred to him that the alarm the Haaga fire station received from a retirement home in Munkkiniemi could bring him back in contact with his old friends, and he was clearly flummoxed.

  ‘We received several automatic alarms from here. Haven’t you noticed? We have to check all of the apartments, because the alarm system indicates that none of the automated functions are working, and that means the lives of the residents are in danger. Are you two all right?’

  ‘We’re doing just fine. Why don’t you go and free that dancer from her robot’s loving arms,’ Siiri said. At the same instant she remembered Aatos, who had in all likelihood wandered to his apartment and couldn’t get out. It was also perfectly possible others were caught behind locked doors somewhere in the building. ‘It’s a good thing the firemen showed up. At least the au
tomated systems are good for something, seeing as they knew to call Muhis in.’

  The lobby was swarming with men in uniform, which was a pleasing sight. Even Ritva woke up and swayed there for a moment until she fell into the arms of a passing fire-fighter and was carried aside to await first aid. Siiri and Irma sat on the uncomfortable Jugendstil sofa to enjoy the efficiency of the rescue team. It was the only couch Tauno had been able to rest on in any way with his badly twisted and hunched back. They now missed Tauno, since they knew that of all their friends, Tauno would have appreciated the moment the most. The rats had gnawed apart every connection slithering between the basement and the outside world, and as their final deed before falling, the chips, sensors and electrodes had called for aid. Finally someone was worried about their machine-controlled existence.

  Muhis gently woke up Tanglethatch and confidently extracted her from the arms of the robot, and two medics with a stretcher strode up to check on her condition. She was taken to the ambulance just to be sure. The fire-fighters ran up and down the stairs and cleverly forced the elevator doors open; no one was discovered languishing behind them. The police officers examined the machines and devices and couldn’t understand why not a single one was working. A few officers chatted with the wheelchair brigade, while another two yanked Margit up and out of the massage chair, but no one disturbed Siiri and Irma. The residents unearthed from their apartments were brought down to the lobby one by one, as the emergency crews felt that each and every one of them required a health check and no one could be left at Sunset Grove now that the systems had crashed.

  ‘Will we be staying in a hotel?’ Irma asked in excitement, but the fire-fighters and police officers couldn’t say where the residents would be evacuated.

  ‘I see, evacuation. Well, it’s not like we’ve never stayed in bomb shelters before,’ Siiri said blithely.

  Aatos was led into the lobby in his nightshirt and checked slippers, a dirty toothbrush in his hand. He was utterly disoriented; he tried to order a double whisky, neat, from a police officer and demanded one of the medics play roulette with him. The seasoned rescuers led Aatos to the ambulance, which drove off to conduct Ritva, Tanglethatch and Aatos to one of the nearby hospitals in siren-free non-emergency mode. They were in no danger. As a matter of fact, no one’s life appeared to be at risk, which was an enormous relief to Siiri and Irma.