House of the Galactic Elevator

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “So is this fish or chicken?” Zachary asked. He still hadn’t touched his food.

  “This is the tilapia in lemon butter,” one of the others at the table said. He looked younger than the rest, maybe the youngest in the dining room. Jeff would be surprised if he were older than eighteen. Must have just made the age cut to be sent here. “The tilapia in lemon butter is served on Wednesday of the third week. Chicken breast in butter sauce is the Thursday of the first week. It’s a five-week rotating menu.”

  “What, are you in the food service industry?” Zachary asked.

  “No, the menu is posted in the rec room on the bulletin board,” the kid said.

  “Well it all looks the same.”

  Jeff leaned down to smell the tilapia. It didn’t smell like fish. All Jeff could smell was the butter. He wasn’t hungry. The room fell into a low murmur of chomping, snorting, slurping, gulping, and chewing. A few held low conversations, while others spoke to themselves as they ate.

  “What’s your name?” Jeff asked the kid, but the kid didn’t answer, just slowly ate his fish.

  “That one’s The Hammer,” Zachary said. “He’s almost as famous as you. Maybe he would be if he had actually killed his –”

  “Shut up,” the kid said, without looking up.

  “You’re okay, kid,” Zachary said with a smile. “You fit right in with the rest of this crowd. Too bad you couldn’t blame an alien for your crime, unlike some of us, eh, Jeffy?”

  “Shut up!” the kid shouted.

  The dining room went quiet. Big Albert made a beeline for their table. “Zachary,” he said. “Only warning. Eat. No more talk.”

  Zachary gave a hand to God and nodded solemnly. He unfolded his paper napkin and made a show of tucking it into his shirt. He then cut a small chunk of the entree, dipped it into the sauce, and popped it into his mouth with a broad smile. He nodded as he chewed. Made a yummy sound. Big Albert continued his vigil as Zachary finished his plate. He then looked over at Jeff’s untouched food. Zachary raised a hand as if he were in grade school.

  “Mr. Albert, sir? May I have some of Mister Space-man’s food if he’s not going to eat it?”

  ***

  On a purely aesthetic level, Jeff noted the rec room’s paint, furniture, floor, windows, and touches of decor looked tasteful, clean, and painfully institutional. The wall color matched his dorm, the hallways, and the doctor’s office. All were the same sage color that must be prescribed by the APA for the betterment of the mentally bereaved. The rec room had more ferns, a large television, couches, tables with more plastic chairs, and a bookcase full of books, puzzles, and games.

  The serving staff had mostly gone, leaving Big Albert and one other shorter and leaner attendant to watch over the fifteen remaining patients. The rest of the patients had been taken back to their rooms or to group therapy or some other after-hours activity. Those still in the room were mostly quiet, attentive to the single large television filling the air with the stilted dialogue of a firehouse/hospital/cop drama where doctors moonlighted as law-enforcing firefighters during their off-hours, wearing tight t-shirts over well-formed pectorals and curvy breasts.

  Jeff sat at the table with Zachary and the kid. The kid was drawing with markers on a large piece of paper. Zachary leaned back, clearly bored. Jeff focused on the comings and goings of the staff. A male nurse came in with a cart, making his rounds, handing out paper cups of pills and bottles of water. He entered information into a tablet with each doling out. The patients each took their medicine without any fuss.

  “I can’t wait for Friday night,” Zachary said.

  “What happens Friday night?” Jeff asked.

  “The exact same thing.”

  The nurse arrived at Jeff’s table. He gave Jeff a cup of pills from a labeled tray.

  “Abel, Jeff,” the nurse said. He made his entries into the tablet, placed a bottle of water in front of Jeff.

  Jeff looked into his cup. He saw five pills of different colors and sizes. He put the cup aside.

  “I’ll take them later,” Jeff said.

  “I have to watch you take it,” the nurse said.

  “Come on, man,” Zachary said. “Bottoms up. It’s good for what ails you. Don’t you want to be cured?” He snickered with the last word, a joyless sound that bounced around the back of the man’s throat and through his nose.

  “What are they?” Jeff asked.

  “They’re the medicine Doctor Carol prescribed,” the nurse said. “He can review what you’re taking tomorrow morning. So please take them.”

  “Is there a problem?” Big Albert said.

  “No,” Jeff said. “No problem at all. It’s just I want to know what you’re giving me.”

  “It’s your pills,” Big Albert said. “End of discussion.”

  The nurse put the tablet down and crossed his arms.

  “Jeffy, why don’t you just do what you’re told,” Zachary said. He took a sip of his own water bottle and swallowed his own pills. “Otherwise Big Al here will have to get Nurse Ratched, Doctor Frankenstein, and Igor to hold you down and force-feed you those things. Come to think of it, if one dose of pills can help you get better, why not two?”

  With that, Zachary reached over, grabbed Jeff’s cup, and popped them into his own mouth. He began to chew and laugh at the same times, pills crunching, bits of white medicine popping from between his teeth. He got up, maneuvering around the table opposite of Big Albert.

  “In fact, I’m feeling currrrred already!” Zachary said.

  “Zachary, sit!” Big Albert said. “Now.”

  Zachary grabbed the kid’s pills. The kid said, “Hey, those are mine,” but did nothing as Zachary put the next batch of pills into his mouth. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  Big Albert rounded the table, reaching for Zachary. The nurse backed away and spoke into a radio. The second room attendant closed in. Zachary just stood there, holding up his bottle of water. He poured some into his mouth, most of it pouring down his face. He dumped the rest on his head and splashed it about, sprinkling it on Jeff, the kid, and the table.

  “Eureka!” Zachary shouted. “I’m saved!”

  The two attendants grabbed him and expertly put him on the floor. The rest of the patients in the room just watched. A few didn’t even look away from the television set.

  Two more attendants appeared in moments, and Zachary was taken from the room. The nurse only stood back and watched, his back turned to Jeff. Jeff looked back at the dining room. No one was in there. He could make it there in an instant, but what then? No doubt there would be locked doors and windows and hiding would only buy him a limited amount of time. He looked back at the nurse. The man was still distracted. Then he saw the cart with its pills, water bottles, and tablet computer.

  Big Albert was back shortly. He handed both Jeff and the kid a towel to dry off with.

  “The nurse will bring you your pills,” he said. “Take them and discuss them with the doctor tomorrow.”

  The nurse took a moment to compose himself. He took pills from five bottles and refilled another paper cup. Jeff sighed, took the cup, swallowed the pills, and drank the water. He didn’t show any reaction when the nurse asked, “Has anyone seen my tablet?”

  ***

  It’s easy to do the numbed patient shuffle when you’re actually numb. That’s what Jeff did. He barely lifted his feet, content to push them along the floor with a resounding shfff-shfff-shfff. Making the walk all the more difficult was the tablet stuffed down his pants, held awkwardly by the drawstring and the elastic of his underwear. If he walked too fast, the tablet would slip out. If he walked too slow, the attendant might nudge him along, and his grip on the tablet would be compromised. Whatever drugs worked their way through his system made him feel thick, ready to sleep, and strangely interested in firefighting doctor detectives.

  The attendant followed him to his room and closed the door behind him. The ceiling light was already off. A single fifteen-watt bulb in a sconce
above the toilet kept the room from complete darkness. There was no wall switch. The light in the room would probably stay on all night, which wasn’t an issue. The fog in Jeff’s head threatened to plunge him into a coma any moment, something a thousand-lumen spotlight couldn’t prevent. Jeff turned to see if anyone was still there. The fog in his brain forced him to stare at the door for a moment to confirm that it was indeed closed and that he was alone. Jeff reached down his pants and produced the nurse’s tablet.

  The search for the tablet no doubt continued in the rec room, and it would spread to the patients present during its disappearance. Jeff didn’t see anyplace to hide something like the tablet except for on his person. Even in his addled state, he knew the bed was the obvious and worst place to hide something. So he would have to take advantage of the short time with the device to learn what he could.

  So tired.

  Jeff hit the power button. The tablet came to life. He saw a lock screen with the numerals 0–9 arranged in a keypad configuration. Four dashes told him there would be four numbers to the combination. Ten thousand possible combos. Jeff took a deep breath. If he entered each combination and went at it from 0000 to 9999 with one second per attempt, that would take almost three hours. That’s if the machine allowed him to keep entering numbers as quickly as he could. That worked with a cheap briefcase. But this type of tablet? It would lock him out after several failed attempts to keep wags like him from accessing the data within. Even without the lockout, the staff might be here to search him and the room for their lost device any minute.

  Jeff got up and got as close to the sconce light as possible. If the daytime overhead fluorescent light had been turned on, this would be easy. He examined the tablet’s face, turning it at angles. He saw hazy fingerprints all over the screen along with other mysterious smudges that looked like dried milk. The nurse or nurses that used this device had never heard of microfiber cloth. There. At a steep enough pitch, the screen showed exactly two spots with prominent finger marks that corresponded with the keypad numbers: 0 and 7.

  Sixteen possibilities with a four-numeral combo. If the lockout came after four attempts, he had a one in four chance of guessing it correctly. He then remembered to subtract two from sixteen, as the number had both 0 and 7. So no 0000 or 7777. His odds just improved to one in three. Jeff just wanted to give in to the mental fog and catch some z’s. No more maths, and maybe he’d wake up from this weird place and be back in reality.

  Reality, in his case, was being a space cop in an alien city where his boss was a sentient mold colony and the only other human he knew was playing mother hen to a tiny tentacled fogbank with teeth. And his best friend was a hairy mechanic pickpocket with a prehensile tail.

  He heard footsteps outside the door.

  He entered 0007. Four small circles filled in as each number was entered. The thing vibrated once and the dots cleared. Wrong number. But what else would a male in his thirties enter? Who didn’t like James Bond?

  He entered 0070. Wrong.

  The footsteps outside stopped. He heard voices speaking softly. Jeff looked at the toilet. The top of the tank was sealed and there was no seat lid. Besides, sticking the tablet into the toilet would defeat the point of taking it in the first place. Jeff saw lights outside. He leaned close to the window. Yellowish sodium street lamps cast their glow on the lawn, walkways, and bushes, as well as the side of the building’s other wing.

  High in the corner, half in shadow, was the building number. 7070. Not everyone is a James Bond fan.

  Jeff entered 7070 and the tablet’s home screen appeared, replete with hospital app icons, none of which Jeff recognized.

  He went to user settings and saw the device was registered to Ross County Psychiatric Hospital. Internet connection went through a router address named RossHospital1. He opened the browser for the internet. It needed a password. Also, a badge popped up indicating a proxy server. Not terribly difficult to bypass the hospital’s proxy, as with time he could download a secondary browser and run that within the primary, or just use a defiltering site that would access forbidden web addresses. This would be like browsing the web from within some oppressive government. Easy stuff.

  Yet if the web admin wasn’t an idiot, he or she would see what Jeff was doing. Also, wasn’t this how the Grey had tracked Jeff before abducting him? If being stuck here in this hospital was part of some Grey alien plot, this step would no doubt be anticipated. Or was that all paranoia? Maybe the very existence of the Grey and Jeff’s past three months in an alien city was a lucid dream.

  He tried 7070 to open the browser and received an incorrect password message.

  Without the password, getting caught by the admin was a moot point. He couldn’t get online. So what could he learn with just the tablet?

  He opened up each app. Read through patient data. While actual medical records weren’t there, he did see attendance sheets, medication logs, dietary records, and meal plans. He saw staff schedules and patient appointments. Jeff noted his own name and clicked. He had another date with Doctor Carol tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.

  The footsteps outside receded and then came back, closer than before and joined by another person. There came a knock and a male voice said, “Jeff Abel, we’re entering.”

  He had about three seconds. Maybe two. Toilet? Ick. Under or inside the mattress? No time. On sink with a towel over it? Just stupid. Jeff put the tablet on the floor and sat on it, knowing as he did that he may as well just hand the thing over and be done with it.

  Big Albert came in with the other attendant. One of them shined a light in Jeff’s face.

  “Bed check,” Big Albert said. “You should be sleeping in your bed.”

  “More comfortable down here,” Jeff said through a thick tongue.

  Big Albert leaned close. The flashlight backlit the big man, reminding Jeff of the Grey’s old body servant and bully Whistle.

  “Suit yourself.” And they left.

  Jeff almost asked, “That’s it?” but controlled himself. What kind of hospital lets its patients sleep on the floor? He then tried to get up. The room spun. His legs and arms all rebelled, and Jeff flopped to the floor. The groggy feeling doubled and redoubled. There was a time in Jeff’s life when he might have paid good money for this feeling, but having given up drinking for the past two years made the sensation both unwelcome and overwhelming.

  He went down to the cool tile floor, focusing on breathing and not passing out. He abandoned the tablet, fought with all his strength to get up to his bed. He made it, mostly. His legs hung over one end. Darkness overwhelmed him, and he succumbed to drug-induced sleep.

  ***

  “When did it all start?” Doctor Carol asked.

  This time the doctor sat on one of the chairs in the semicircle before his desk. Jeff sat across from him, slumped, tired, the drug slag in his brain replaced by a weariness, like he had been running a marathon during the night rather than lying passed out on his bed. The tablet was still there in his cell, tucked under the mattress, waiting to be found during the most cursory of searches. Yet no one had found it yet, and no one asked about it when Jeff was taken from his cell and brought to breakfast. Zachary had been there at their table and so had the kid, yet neither had spoken much as they went through the motions of eating their eggs and potatoes and sipping their coffee like a bunch of workmates before the morning shift, grumbling under their breath about the boss man before obediently shuffle-stepping to the factory floor. Or maybe they were just riding out their own side effects from the brain-peening of the previous evening.

  “Jeff, are you with me? How are you feeling?”

  The doctor had a new tie on. At first, Jeff thought it was an abstract. With blocks of black, white, and a whitish-orange skin-tone color, the one the people that made the crayons used to call “Flesh” before realizing the offensiveness of their ways and revising it to “Peach.” So black, white, and peach. But it wasn’t abstract, upon further examination, but rather a close-up of a
cowled face from a cartoon.

  Hanna-Barbera’s Space Ghost.

  “I’m fine,” Jeff said.

  But ready to pass out, ready to bust out of this place, or ready to take the Doctor Carol mask off to reveal old man Irving the Grey sounded more truthful.

  The doctor waited. Jeff waited. He didn’t rise to the occasion to fill the void of silence.

  “Tell me why you think you’re here,” Doctor Carol said.

  “I don’t know. You mentioned aliens.”

  “You did. When you first arrived. You said something about an abduction experience.”

  Jeff didn’t have any such recollection, and said, “If you say so. I don’t remember any of that. Am I here for my own protection, did someone have me committed, or did I commit a crime?”

  “It would be good for you to recover those memories on your own. Confronting you with them could be detrimental. Tell me about what you do remember. How about your family?”

  “I’m divorced. My wife and I separated some three years back. No children. No surviving parents. No siblings.”

  “Close friends, then.”

  Oliop. Alien. Best mechanic and hacker in the Galactic Commons.

  “One friend,” Jeff said, “but we’re not that close. A woman named Jordan.”

  “A girlfriend? Ah good. Tell me about her.” The doctor continued his studious gaze. Jeff was used to winning staring contests, especially once people got a good look at his off-kilter eyes. But that didn’t faze the doctor. It was Jeff’ who broke contact.

  “She’s not my girlfriend, just a friend. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “Why not?”

  She’s a caretaker of an alien nature preserve and babysitting a monster with long, pointy teeth.

  Jeff cleared his throat. “She moved.”

  “So do you have anyone we can contact for you?”

  “Not really. Maybe you just need to release me on my own recognizance.”