by Eric Lahti
Russ shakes his head, “No, sir. Just a half second blurp at about 2am.”
“Have your forwarded the data?” Hapablap asks.
“Yeah, it went out a few minutes ago,” James says.
“Well,” Hapablap sighs, “let’s keep an eye on things. Maybe it won’t happen again.”
“Yes, sir. We’re kind of keyed up right now, so we won’t miss a thing,” Russ tells him.
Hapablap nods, “Keep up your analysis. Keep me in the loop if you figure anything out.”
The Nerdery nods and goes back to bickering about the data on their screens. Hapablap watches them for a moment before deciding the guys know their jobs and he’d just get in the way. He grabs his coffee and heads back to his desk feeling slightly ill at ease.
*****
If he did it once he can do it again. Centuries, millennia of existence have taught him the power of perseverance. He focuses first on his finger. Logic indicates the last thing that broke her spell should be the first place that should be able to do it again.
No good. His body remains fully stuck, just like his mind and his power.
His mind takes a deep breath and looks for the edges of his prison for the umpteenth time since it went up. This time he finds something that wasn’t there before. It’s not much, just a small breach in her magic but it’s enough. The King of Dreams pushes on it gently and feels it give just a bit.
Fear, he thinks, is about to find out what happens when she messes with the dream world. Dreams do not follow her rules. If he wants to experience the delights of Minerva that’s none of Fear’s concern. He was done with her anyway and she had no right to demand more of him.
His finger moves slightly. Not much, but it’s an active, intentional movement. He keeps working at the problem, pushing gently but firmly at the crack in Fear’s prison.
*****
Russ is so focused on going through his logged data that he fails to notice the live feed twitch slightly. Nothing much, a tenth of a second, but a hundred numbers scramble across the screen and disappear in the waves of zeroes and nulls.
Something about the data feels strange to Russ. The numbers he’s seeing from the xrs3a looks strange. Except for the 100s or so that happen when the guy flickers, Russ has never seen numbers other than zeroes on the log. He doesn’t know what the calibration is set to, but the numbers shoot from 0 to over 10,000 and drop off again in half a second. The microwave sensor shot from 0 to over 15, which is probably no small change, but, again, he doesn’t know what the numbers mean other than some kind of microwave signal peaked and dropped. Without knowing what each sensor is looking at it’s difficult to assess, but the difference between 15 and 10,000 is pretty damned huge.
And why would a simple finger twitch generate a microwave signal, let alone whatever signal the xrs3a is looking at?
Another blast of numbers streams across the live feed and, again, no one notices it. That’s the problem with boredom, at some point in the past someone got to futzing with the signal interpreters and accidentally triggered an alarm. The alarm was the most excitement this lonely place had seen in years. Everyone showed up, guns were drawn, exits sealed. It was a huge mess. The guy that was playing with the alarms was chastised severely and decided, for whatever reason, that the alarm itself was to blame. So he disabled the alarms and never told anyone. Nothing ever happens right? Nothing ever will, so what’s the big deal? When the guy who disabled the alarms left, it never occurred to him to tell anyone.
Russ stares at the screen, peering at logged data and pondering the information with the limited knowledge he has. He never notices the numbers blasting across the screens. Sometimes, he secretly wonders exactly what it is he’s supposed to be doing down here. No one gives him the information he needs to do his job. All he can do is watch and wonder.
All the watching and wondering grates on him so he pushes away from his desk and stretches in his chair. His eyes are unfocused, the result of staring at a computer screen for hours trying to suss out information that doesn’t want to be visible. Russ is nothing if not tenacious when it comes to figuring out problems.
*****
He pushes away at the crack with increasing force and feels it start to give. His finger twitches again. With this twitch the King of Dreams sends a message to his shadows. There are humans here and he needs one of them. Any of them will do. Draw one of them in and control him. Shut this prison down.
*****
Russ’s bleary eyes and numbed brain only barely manage to catch and process the next burst of numbers flying across the live monitor screen. It takes a few seconds for the message to hit his brain and a few more seconds for his brain to realize something just happened. Russ is tired and desperately wants to write it off as an optical illusion, but he’s thorough and decides to check it out.
He loads up the log on his computer and runs a quick search routine. What he finds wakes him up immediately: whatever the sensors recorded last night has been going on, in increasing frequency, this morning. His first pass through the data from xrs3a makes him think his search routine is borked. After a quick check of his logic and a quick check at the timestamps Russ is convinced the problem is not on his end. There have been no less than ten more signals this morning, starting at 8am and continuing more and more frequently over the past couple of hours.
“Shit,” he says out loud.
“What’s up?” James asks him, looking up from his own data.
Russ ignores him and spins to look at the guy on the pedestal. The man looks the same, still and quiet as a grave.
“There have been ten more signals this morning,” Russ tells James.
“What?”
“Check the live feed,” Russ says.
Both Russ and George grab their own copies of the fresh data and run their own searches on it. George’s routine finishes first, which helps inflate his ego. The data deflates his ego immediately.
James just stares at his screen.
“Why didn’t the alarms go off?” James finally asks.
“What alarms?” Russ asks.
“All of this stuff is supposed to trigger an alarm when anything strange happens,” George says.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” James says.
“Yeah, me neither,” Russ says. “Where are the alarms?”
“Back there, behind the servers,” George says, pointing toward a shadowy part of the cave.
They all stare at the dark shadows and shudder a little.
“We need to find out what’s up with the alarms. Hap will want to know,” James says.
“Maybe if we all go together…” Russ says.
They’re spared from having to face their fears when one of the armed guards suddenly spins and points his gun at the shadowy area behind the servers. “Who’s there?” he yells.
His partner whirls around and simply says, “Status?”
“Definitely saw movement, sir,” the first guy responds.
The other armed guard immediately brings his gun up to his shoulder and points it where his partner is aiming. Without hesitation, the first guard flicks on the flashlight under the barrel of his gun and cautiously steps forward, leading with his weapon.
Everything stops while the guard is moving forward. Russ has to force himself to breathe.
The guard steps into the area behind the shadows and shines his light around. Not seeing anything, he steps into the darkness and pauses slightly. Russ can’t be certain, but he thinks he sees a shadow brush the guard.
The guard’s eyes are black when he comes out the other side. He doesn’t hesitate before shooting his partner twice in the face.
Russ and George immediately duck. James freezes like a deer stuck in the headlights of an oncoming semi. The guard calmly shoots him. Blossoms of red explode from James’s chest and he dies with a stunned look on his face, falling into his desk and scattering papers everywhere. George screams and Russ desperately tries to pretend he’s somewhere else.
&nb
sp; The guard ignores them and heads toward a large electrical box in the back of the room.
“Shit!” Russ yells, “He’s going to shut off the electricity.”
*****
The crack in the prison is large enough to look through now and he smiles as he sees the chaos unfold. These pathetic humans sought to understand him? What a laugh. Humans are good for one thing and one thing only: ruling. His domain has been restricted to the land of dreams for far too long. He obeyed the rules, kept to the treaty, and look what it got him. They all turned against him for a dalliance. If they want to ally themselves with Fear, let them.
The truce is over and the land of dreams is about to be expanded.
He reaches out with his mind, pushing through the crack in his prison and smiling as it expands. For the first time in decades his amber eyes open. He still has trouble moving his body but control is returning. He reaches out and finds a shadow. Information floods between them. If only he could use a shadow to shut down the field he’d be home free, but the shadows are insubstantial things.
The humans are panicking now. It won’t be long before they bolt for the door. Just in case everything falls apart, the King of Dreams quickly builds a backup plan. A shadow slinks across the floor straight at one cowering human.
*****
George is crouched beneath his desk and doesn’t notice the shadow crawling toward him. It touches him and his mind is filled with a single message: A God of Dreams needs a prophet. George finally understands what they’ve been watching this whole time. It was never a man, it only looked like a man because, well, why the hell not? What does a dream look like? Why can’t it wear a suit and hang out under Albuquerque? It’s a dream personified, it can do whatever it wants. It was held in place, falsely imprisoned and needs to escape. The prison walls are crumbling and the God of Dreams has chosen him.
A prophet, George thinks to himself. I’ll be a prophet. Someone important.
Quietly, George Smith creeps out of the cave and yells for General Hapablap before sneaking to the elevator and quietly disappearing. He knows he has a lot of work to do to prepare for his new master. A church must be built. A new church for a real God. It will take time, but he will sweep away the old, false gods and build a mighty temple to the one, true God.
A shadow has wrapped itself around George’s leg, quietly feeding thoughts and ideas to the new prophet of the Church of the Holy Dreamtime.
General Hapablap sprints into the Nerdery and finds chaos and blood. At least two people are dead. The remaining guard’s hands are almost on a large lever on the box when General Hapablap shoots him twice in the back and the guard collapses in a heap on the floor.
*****
The prison walls collapse and the King of Dreams rises like Cthulhu awakening. His shadows fill him with information: visions, recordings, things that happened while he was trapped. He processes the data rapidly, anger welling up in him that not only was he trapped here but these tiny … things had the temerity to think they could study and understand him.
Vengeance is coming, he thinks. He stands and starts to walk into the world when a force stops him. All around the dais is a blue, pulsing mandala. It glows with power.
He shrugs and tries to flicker back to the Dreaming lands. The world flickers around him but he can’t leave. He screams in rage and pounds his fists on the invisible wall holding him in place. So, Fear’s little prison had a backup wall. There’s only one person who could build this kind of power.
John Begay will pay for this.
In the interim, maybe he can get one of the humans to break the circle for him.
*****
Russ notices the man on the pedestal is no longer on the pedestal; he’s standing and his eyes are full of fury, literally glowing with rage. Russ can feel his anger at being caged from all the way across the room.
Shadows are moving around the room, circling like sharks. Russ doesn’t know what the shadows are, but shadows that move on their own can’t be good.
“Hap!” Russ yells and points at the guy standing there glaring at them.
“What the hell is going on here?” Senator Bedfellow yells from the doorway.
“Get out of here!” Hapablap yells. “Take everyone with you!”
Bedfellow doesn’t hesitate. He bolts out the door like a blur in an expensive suit.
“Hap, come on!” Russ yells.
“Go on, son. I’ll see what I can do to hold it off. Get that pretty secretary out of here,” Hapablap calmly tells Russ.
A quick look back and when he sees Russ still standing there, General Royce Hapablap realizes he needs his command voice. “Go!” he says simply.
This time, Russ doesn’t hesitate. He gives Hap one last look and heads out. On the way out, he finds Bethany standing by the elevator, nervously wringing her hands.
“He left,” she says in a daze. “He left and told me to stay down here. He said someone would come down and he needed me to let them in.”
Russ wraps an arm around her and she leans into him. “Why did he leave?” she asks him.
“I don’t know,” Russ says, “but we’re in trouble. Come on. Let’s check the monitors in your office.”
He takes her hand and together they run to her office. Inside is a bank of monitors that shows the scene in the office upstairs. As they watch, that Robinson creep sticks a key in the elevator lock and twists it before pulling it out.
Russ’s heart collapses and Bethany sinks into her chair.
“That son of a bitch just froze the elevator,” Russ mumbles.
Robinson and his cronies stare at the elevator door for a moment before retaking their positions. Robinson sits in his desk and glares at the front door. The two guards stand on either side of the room and face the front door.
“He trapped us,” Bethany whispers. “Why would he trap us down here?”
“He’s a politician,” Russ says. “He’s covering his ass and he doesn’t care who he has to step over to do it.”
“What happened in there?” Bethany asks again.
Russ thinks for a bit. How does he explain what happened? She doesn’t know what he does or what’s in the cave. She may or may not have the clearance for the information and she definitely doesn’t have need to know. Screw it.
“We’ve been watching something sleep in there,” he finally says. “It woke up. It somehow took over a guard and used him to shoot some people. Hap shot the guard.”
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” she asks him.
“Yes,” Russ whispers. “We’re in trouble.”
Distantly they hear a gunshot and Russ knows something bad just happened to Hap.
*****
The man fought well, like a true warrior. The God of Dreams sent shadows with a simple message: release me and I’ll let you go. The man didn’t move. The shadows pushed further into his head, releasing nightmare visions of a wife leaving and a family turning their backs but the man stayed still, rooted to his spot.
The God of Dreams could feel the dedication in the man; the General had made a promise to keep the world safe and he aimed to keep it. Too late, the God of Dreams noticed the man pointing a gun at his own temple.
The gunshot echoed and the connection was severed.
*****
“Stay here, lock the door,” Russ tells Bethany. “I can’t promise anything, but I’m going to see what I can do.”
“Don’t leave,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Russ tells her. “I promise you, I’ll be back. We’ll find a way out of here. In the meantime, try the phones, email, anything you can think of.”
“Okay,” Bethany says, steeling herself. It helps her to have something to think about. “Come back, please. You owe me a date.”
Russ can’t help but smile, but it’s a sad smile. He finally got up the nerve to ask her out and, like so much of his life, it was just too late. Well, this time he’s not just going to lie down. He’s going to find a way to save her.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he tells her and, acting completely on impulse, kisses her.
She kisses him back and they cling together, each of them wishing this was a different time and different place for their first kiss.
Russ finally pulls himself away and, with a sad look, says, “I’ll be right back,” before stepping out the door of Bethany’s office. When he hears the door lock he says a silent prayer to someone he hasn’t prayed to in years and walks back to Room 2 to face his destiny.
*****
Rage consumes him again. To come so close only to be thwarted. He stares around the room and sends his shadows scurrying, seeking anyone still alive. All he needs is someone to cross over the mandala from the other side and the spell will be broken. Anyone will do, even someone barely alive.
To his dismay, the shadows report everyone is dead. The humans have figured out new and exciting ways to kill each other and their new tools are frightfully effective.
He closes his eyes and forces himself to be patient. Someone will find him eventually.
*****
Russ lets door number two close and lock. For the time being, no one is getting in or out of this room.
The man in the center of the cave watches Russ impassively, like a cat watching a bird with a broken wing. Russ stares back. He doesn’t know what the guy in the center of the cave is, but he does know the guy’s not going anywhere right now.
Russ is so focused on the guy in the center of the cave he almost trips over Hap. He knees down to check on the general and finds the entire top of Hap’s head is missing. From the look of things, Hap did it himself. Hap’s gun lies nearby.
“Turn off the wall, please,” the man in the center tells Russ. His voice is hypnotic and soft, carrying the promise of warm comforters and pleasant dreams.
The wall? Oh, the circle. Russ looks at the man and realizes he’s not crossing the circle. If he turns the circle off, the guy’s free.
“No,” Russ says.
“I said please,” the man responds. “Do it. Let me out of here.”
“No.”
The man sighs and Russ catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone or something else is in here with them.
