The Unlicensed Consciousness

by Travis Borne

  “What went wrong? Why did you log out so quickly?”

  “Ted, we were gone for several hours,” Rico replied, “couldn’t you track us?”

  “We had you in at a little under thirty minutes,” Ron said, “then oddly, you went off map. A moment later you returned and called the director. And Rico—we almost lost you.” Standing next to him, Devon corroborated with a post-bombshell countenance.

  Rico and Jim met each other's gaze. Wordless, with a mutually understood look, they agreed to keep the adventure between themselves for now.

  “Never mind that. Here’s the rundown,” Rico said, vivifying their attention. “Yes, Jim and I were successful in retrieving the code and it might just allow us to take back control of our facility—hopefully before David causes chaos or destroys anything. Now, here’s the plan. Ted, I see you took Abell out, excellent thinking. Ron and Abell—I want the both of you to head to the control room. Stop in the hallway before the bend and wait. If all goes well, the door to the control room will open momentarily as the system resets, if not this code should work while the system is rebooting, a momentary window. David has to wait for the reboot to complete in order to switch the status back to yellow alert, which hard locks the door. It reboots quickly, you’ll have ten seconds at best.” He wrote down the code and handed it to Ron.

  “Why don’t we just try the code on the door?” Ron asked. “It’s a universal access code I assume.”

  “Ron, if David sees us he might start smashing things, and that would be the end for all of us. Besides, with any status lower than green he can quickly override it from the inside. We’ll try this plan, hoping he’s just depressed and confused. A sort of sneak attack. That door opens, you surprise him and bolt inside like lightning.” Ron and the others nodded. “Abell, charge in like a bull and restrain that perfidious rat. Ron, you should know enough about the controls to get things back on track. Now go, grab a flack vest from security supply and get moving.”

  “David participated in the plot to kill Amy,” Jim interrupted bluntly, before Abell could roll out. A reminder, and he wanted everyone to know it; they needed to know why, and remember who they were fighting for. He also wanted to further foment Abell’s mood, moreover, the barbarity of his attack on David. He envisioned Abell with his mighty gorilla-sized hands, lifting skinny David high by the neck, and squeezing; he wished it was himself that would have the opportunity. In his mind, he saw the word squeeze, and he dragged it out, squeeeeze, taking a deep slow breath of hatred right alongside it.

  “Jim!” Rico said, then turned to the agitated giant. “Abell, do not kill him, just restrain him. And both of you, remember not to round the corner or his camera could spot you, which would make him suspicious. We don’t want him doing anything crazy—hopefully, he’s just passed out drunk. Sit tight, wait and listen for the door, watch the lights. Jim, you and I will head down to that fusion room. Ted, Devon, Twins, keep things running smoothly here. Okay, good luck, everyone. Let’s do this.”

  Ted carried Lia to the break room then everyone rushed away following orders. Ten minutes later power flickered in the broadcast room—and the hall, everywhere. A moment later everything went dark, then the emergency lights dully illuminated the interior of the facility.

  73. The Big Stink

  “Oh no!” Rico said. “We’re too late. The broadcast room has a backup battery but it’s very old. Our last tests, it only lasted twenty minutes—unless... We must go back and tell Ted to signal the lenders for emergency logout.”

  Broadcast feed status: high green.

  “No,” Jim said, grabbing his arm. “There’s no time, Rico. Ted knows exactly what to do. Let’s just get some lights from the supply room and head down. We need to get that power diverted before it really is too late.”

  “Okay, Jim. You’re right, let’s move.” Rico followed and they rushed to a supply room and grabbed a toolkit. Rico took a crank lantern and Jim took a crank flashlight and a crowbar. Before heading out Rico paused, he had a thought.

  “What now, Rico?”

  “I’ll catch up to you, Jim. I need to alert the town. Remember the code?”

  “No, you said you would.”

  “Ah. Dang—just follow me then,” Rico said, “I have to give the order. Everyone needs to get to the safe room!”

  Jim tailed him, sprinting. He’d hoped the feed buffer would prevent the need to take such extreme measures, but Rico was right, things had gotten out of hand. There would be no buffer after the emergency power was exhausted. It would be an instant red status. All defenses would drop. Calming the lenders for a proper logout would buy some time and make use of the buffer. A topped-off buffer would last up to an hour, plus a diminuendo of the feed due to a gradually depleting buffer would drop defenses slowly, one by one, intelligently, rather than abruptly plunge everything at once. And, many systems could be shut down, conserving the emergency power after a complete logout. It would also prevent discombobulation among the lenders in case of the sudden power loss.

  Rushing back through the hallway, Rico and Jim reached the facility exit door. The two stepped down onto the cement bay floor, turning right to the security office. Ed was on duty, midway through an early lunch, chowing down on a pizza roll under a single dim emergency light. He’d swapped gate-guard duty with Jose. Most of the town and many off-duty lenders were still likely to be at Jessie’s trial.

  “Shit, Ed, don’t you see the fucking lights?” Jim yelled. Startled, Ed fumbled with his food.

  “I didn’t—”

  “Ed, get up now. Get on the line with Rob Price. Give him this code.” Rico wrote a short row of numbers and letters on a notepad on Ed’s cluttered desk. All board members and security knew—were supposed to anyway, but things had become so lax, safe for years—the town’s emergency codes. This was one nobody wanted to see and it carried a few meanings: one, get all citizens into the safe room, and two, all lenders and security are to report for duty—immediately. Important items: seeds, books, the Meat Master, even chickens if possible, among other things, are to be saved without wasting too much time. Only one other code succeeded this one, its meaning, far worse: no time for chickens, attack is already underway. Ed’s already bulgy eyes popped out even further when he recognized the code. He jolted. And turnip juice splotched his crotch. Jim impatiently shook his head.

  “It’s an emergency, Ed, so move quickly,” Rico exclaimed in an orotund voice. “We’ve lost the control room and the town could be in serious danger. If we’re lucky we’ll have about an hour before—” He didn’t want to say it. Somehow saying it would make it sound even more imminent. Ed ran over to the phone. “And Ed, the safe-room door will have to be opened manually, so round up a few strong citizens. Now hurry!”

  After departing the security office, they rushed back into the facility. Rico secured the door, sealing off all inner sectors from the bay area. With flashlights on they ran down the hall and went to the old cafeteria, which hadn’t been used in years. Rico used his keys and unlocked the door.

  “Woo, musty…” Jim looked around. “…smells like an abandoned…”

  “Hospital?”

  “Yeah. Something like that, but maybe one for farm animals, not people.”

  “But it is somewhere in here. Remember, Jim?”

  “Yep, in the back,” Jim replied. He recalled the diagram clearly. He wasn’t great with numbers and calculations like Rico but had made a visual memory of the schematic and knew it was someplace in the back, possibly near the freezer. “Over here.”

  Rico followed, cranking his lantern a few times; it grew brighter. The cafeteria had been abandoned, but left relatively clean, chairs on tabletops. It was eerie and dark, a large pie-slice shape of a room with at least twenty dust-coated tables under mix-and-match chairs. The cafeteria-style kitchen looked like it had been pieced together—albeit efficiently—with mostly stainless counters, but also whatever else could be scavenged at the time, long ago. They headed to the back and
looked around. Nothing in the kitchen.

  “It must be inside the freezer,” Jim said. He heaved on the old freezer door but the rubber seal stuck like glue. Together they pulled and the rubber ripped; half of it snaked to the floor, dangling. A draft equalized itself between the two rooms. Then—hack, gag, SHIT! The smell was so revolting it stopped all thought processes and keeled them over at the door.

  “Fuck. Oh, gawd—” Jim said, dragging out his last word in a hacking manner. The smell was a chain-smoker’s lungs blended into a shake, swallowed along with burnt rubber bands and porta-potty juice.

  Jim pulled up his cotton shirt easily enough but Rico’s button shirt wouldn’t stretch so he grabbed an old towel from the kitchen. It had too much dust and sucking it in made him a hack-spastic whooping-cougher. So, he tossed it and did his best to block the stench with a hand. Neither attempt helped, much, but they had to move forward. Just deal with it. Jim went first. He held his flashlight as if he was entering a haunted swamp.

  The place hadn’t seen light in at least a decade, and there was surely no sign of any door or entranceway, just a smelly ol’ walk-in freezer with rotten rations scattered everywhere. It had two five-foot-wide aisles between a large center shelf and went back about twenty feet. Doing their best to function with the smell of rotten cabbage, maggot meats ’n’ cheeses, and organic tear-gas derivatives, they continued on. Rico took left. Jim the right.

  “Why was all this left here?” Jim pondered out loud, moving boxes of oozing black eggs to get further inside.

  “It—” Rico nearly vomited while trying to respond. He’d just moved a box of lettuce and the bottom fell through. Illuminating the spectacle was his second mistake. A moldy science experiment gone nuclear. Radioactive wads, Martian pubes. Purple and green hairy orbs, alive and well, as terrible to the eyes as the smell was to the nose. And the pizzas on the shelf to his left. He was in a haunted swamp all right! The pepperoni were shriveled little black bowls floating on petrified innards, what used to be cheese. It seemed as though they had once oozed to life, now corpses that had almost escaped their boxes. He turned away, dry heaving. His breakfast was an enraged prisoner, frantically yanking on the bars of his stomach, a thousand rats trying to escape the flooding, hydrochloric cell. Enough was enough! And he removed his white shirt, wrapped his face, then re-donned his brown vest. Muffled like the mummy, he responded, “We spent some time in the safe room, Jim, before you arrived—” Aahk, huaack. “—they really hit us hard. The power was off for too long and it all, all of this…it went bad.”

  Jim’s mummy voice said, “No shi—”

  “Aahk! Sorry… Yeah, Jim, it was—aahk, huaack—dang. Jim it’s, aahk, burning my—lungs.” Cough attack. “Gee-eez—huaack!”

  “Fuck, you okay, man?”

  “Yeah—huaack, kuh, ahk—just…gimme a minute.”

  It took him two. Then Jim finally said, “Felix?” And he stopped to face Rico through a gap in the middle shelf.

  Rico, almost recomposed, nodded; he knew his father’s death had a huge impact on him and his future, but his memory of the event was fuzzy. But the memories, as blurry as they were, did take his ruminating mind off the smell. After a pause, he continued, “A support ship dropped supplies and with them we were able to get the restaurants in town working. There were other priorities. So, we removed what appliances we could, sealed this off and forgot about it. Henceforth, we kept all of the town in the dark about what goes on here and made the already very strict rules more strict. Just like this mess we’re in now—you think you can trust everyone, but there’s always that one. Never fails—”

  “Darkness!” Jim interrupted. He had a flicker of an idea and clicked off his flashlight.

  “What?”

  “Turn off your light.” As if he was suddenly deer hunting, he whispered it loudly. Rico clicked off his lantern. The room was pitch dark now. It made the smells feel like tongues slithering up every sleeve, into every—

  “Look, there!” Jim exclaimed. He thought he’d seen a glimmer! Lights off confirmed it. Yes! A sliver of light in the back corner, far right.

  “I see it!” Rico said. Jim clicked his light on so they could get closer without tripping on petrified, calcified, liquefied, or zombified food. In spots their feet stuck to the floor. Spills were the goo of flytraps. But there it was. A sliver of light went from floor to ceiling, vertically in the back corner.

  “Quick, let’s move this shelf, Rico.” And together they carefully slid the heavy thing aside, trying not to spill any more of the perished or living perishables. Across the sticky floor it rolled easier than speculated—luckily it had wheels. Now, flicking the light on and off they inspected the trace of light coming from behind the wall; it wasn’t a wall at all!

  “You found it, Jim!”

  “No handle,” he said, feeling around. Closely they inspected the area for clues and soon enough found the entire seam—only a few millimeters thick—and a large rectangle bar cleverly disguised as molding around the ceiling. In comparison to the rest of the trim encircling the freezer, Jim noticed it looked different directly above the door. He tried pulling it, sliding it. Nothing. Then he used his crowbar and the molding broke away. Beneath it were latches. He took the one on the right and Rico the left. It was stuck, didn’t budge, so he tapped the latch with his crowbar and it made a cracking sound through the side of the door all the way to the floor. He went over to struggling-Rico and took care of his latch too. Crack. And more light flooded in through the vertical seams, as well the top. Next, he pushed on the sides of the door, kicked the bottom. Damn! And he got impatient. “Stand back, Rico.” Jim took a few steps back then barreled forward, crashing his whole body into it. The wall gave way from the top. Whoosh! And the air whispered in. It was hinged on the bottom! Together they pushed the top and the wall fell slowly. They jumped on and rode the adventure to a dusty metal floor.

  It was a cube-shaped room not much bigger than the eight-by-eight-foot drop-down door itself. It had a single dim emergency light and another deeply inset door. Beside it was what seemed an off-duty keypad, dust layered and dead. And the walls in this place, they looked as impenetrable as those of a bank vault; Jim thought of his post-war home.

  “If it wasn’t for this cracked seal,” Rico said, kneeling down. He examined the door. “Finding this could’ve been a lot more difficult.” The crumbling seal had allowed a hint of light to seep into the freezer. Then he noticed another similar door on the right and went over to inspect it. He blew the dust to expose a seam and worked his way up. “This place is full of secrets,” he said, seeming a tad more curious than usual. “We must be right behind the control room and I’ll bet this door goes to the back of its supply room. Would be one hell of a shortcut.” He turned to Jim excitedly.

  Jim tried his crowbar on the inner latches but they didn’t budge. With a flattened a smile he said, “No such luck. Latches on the inside, look, same as this one, looks exactly the same. It probably has to be unlatched from the other side first. No time to mess around, Rico. Enter the code, we have to hurry.”

  “Right.” He shook off his newfound wonder and rushed over to the keypad. The panel appeared lifeless but he blew off the dust and entered the code anyway. Nothing happened. They waited a little longer, still, nothing. He tried it again.

  The look on Jim’s face: anger, disappointment, and he thought of Felix. The whole thing really was just a fantastical dream created by Rico and his own pent-up mind: life in the boring control room, logging in after such a long time, an imagination finally liberated, and a map with less boundaries and rules—that’s all. Fuck! “We’ve just fooled ourselves,” Jim said. “Now we’re all doomed. Felix wasn’t your father. The entire thing was all in our minds—your mind mostly. This proves it—that damn code is made up. We fucked up royally and now the entire town is going to pay the price. Special fucking map, jeez.” Jim vented, like his old self, seething with anger.

  But Rico wasn’t totally convinced
. It had felt so real to him, and now he was somewhat entranced by a newfound curiosity. It was there like a feather falling onto him, gently teasing his mind. And he barely heard Jim’s frustrations. He looked up, and around, thinking, curiously, abstractly. Then, coming back, noticing Jim’s ongoing rant, a faint sliver of doubt crept into his mind. His subconscious hadn’t completely turned a deaf ear to the idea, as terrible as it would be. It leaked into his thoughts for a fraction of a second. Maybe Jim is right. He looked around with diluted hope. He knows the dream world better than anyone. Maybe we did fool our— And then he spotted it.

  “Wait, Jim, look here!” Rico announced, squashing Jim’s tirade. A steel tube ran along the edge of the dusty old box of a room. Rico noticed it led to the base of the steel freezer door: a switch! “It makes sense. Jim, help me lift. Basic security, the builders didn’t want both doors to be open at the same time.” They heaved.

  “This thing made of lead?” Jim strained. Veins popped and their faces flushed red but after the halfway point it got easier. It clicked shut and there were inner locks. The locks slid the opposite way. “I bet these locks prevent the outside locks from moving. Smart builders.”

  After sliding both locks the keypad illuminated. And although they’d gotten used to it, the putrid smell dissipated with the freezer sealed off. Untainted, they could now enjoy the dusty stale air.

  “Look,” Jim said, seeing the panel come to life. “Now try it.” Rico sped back to the door. He felt a little dizzy from the lifting and darkness feathered the edges of his vision, but he shook it off and entered the code, this time on a bright-green backlit keyboard. And this time, something! A moment later a grinding noise could be heard on the other side. Motors. Another second and the steel door began to slide into the wall, very slowly. It was twice as thick as the hidden freezer door, at least a foot wide. And the walls were at least three feet thick.