by George Right
He did already. He tried to drive this thought from his mind, but it only grew stronger. It will come to no good no good it cannot come to any good... "Despair." Despair, anxiety, and fear. Yes, the whole atmosphere here (where?) contributed to it. But there was still something besides the realization that he had awakened (regained consciousness!) devil knows where, remembering nothing, in the neighborhood of a dead person who had choked to death in his own blood. Having rummaged through the short scraps of his memory, he understood with surprise that the "something" was his previous thought about genetic engineering. It was as if... as if he had inadvertently touched a painful tooth which had now subsided and was having no effect. Why? Why does this thought generate such fear? Perhaps these bandages are the result not of an accident but of biological experiments? Some operations made against his will? Though, how does genetic engineering come into the picture? As much as he could remember, geneticists did not cut the victim, they operate at the microscopic level. Or not genetic engineering per se, but something related to it? Something that (no! no! don't do it!) he could not remember. He tried again, despite the fear that spread like a sticky cold. No. He could not recall. Emptiness.
He approached a little table which until now had escaped his attention and found out that it was not simply a table. Half of it was occupied by a built in screen and, maybe, some other devices. Had there been any communication facilities? Now it was already difficult to tell. Everything had been destroyed, broken out, and shattered with a wild frenzy. Only a lonely torn off optical path stuck out from the mess. Suddenly the man leaned forward and peered through the dim light. In the niche which remained from where the screen had been, among the fragments of electronics (photonics, broken out from the emptiness, "electronics" is an outdated term) something lay that did not resemble a circuitry element. He lifted this small object, rounded at one end, and brought it up to his eyes. In an instant he understood with disgust that he was examining a torn off human nail with flesh attached. Could the one who destroyed things here have done it with his own nails? And the intense pain of a nail and flesh being torn off had not stopped him?
The amnesiac hurled away his trophy and gloomily thought that having a weapon could not hurt. However, the harmful subconscious immediately replaced "could not hurt" with "would not help," but he tried to drive away this thought. At least a chair... after all, shouldn't there be a chair in this room? But alas, there was none.
Again he went to the corridor sunk in flickering twilight, only now realizing that the corridor was not straight, but smoothly bent, forming a large ring. Which direction to choose – left or right? Whichever direction he chooses, he could not see around the curve of the corridor. He listened. He listened. Neither from the left nor from the right came any sound. Only occasionally the oppressive silence was broken by the electric crackling of flickering lamps. He went to the right. Underfoot there was the same dirty floor–for how many years was there no cleaning done here? However, he no longer regretted that he had to go barefoot, as it allowed him to move almost silently. The blank wall continued on the left and doors similar to those which he had left repeated on the right. Judging by distances between them, not all of the doors hid such small rooms. But he had no desire to enter and to come across... The devil only knows what it is possible to come across here. His goal was to get out of here as soon as possible, so he should go directly to the exit. Shouldn't there be an exit somewhere here?!
The dim shivering light was distorting his sense of reality, hindering his ability to orient himself, and giving the impression that all this was just a dreadful nightmare in which he would walk eternally in the dirty gloomy corridor that had neither beginning nor end. For a moment he was so assured of it that he began to pinch himself but without the desired result. However, as he remembered it now, actually pinching oneself to wake up is a myth, since painful sensations can be in a dream, too. While in dreams they are usually weaker than in reality but the sleeper does not realize it. A pinch is not very painful anyway. But if he were thinking so logically about a dream, then he probably was not sleeping. However, what if he indeed had already made a full circle through this corridor and had begun a new one? Immediately came more questions. What if the exit were behind one of these identical doors? Or perhaps the exit did not exist at all? No, that's delirium! But was not all that surrounded him since he came to his senses similar to delirium?
These thoughts entangled him with a sticky cold fear that he tried to expel in vain. Everything here should have a logical explanation. Everything here should have... Yes, certainly. But who guaranteed you that you will like it?
He shook his head. He had to somehow mark the door from which he had emerged and then he would know if he had made a full circle or not. To mark? With what? His own blood?
No way, he calmed himself from the hysterical thought which had rushed to his head. To leave the door open–what could be easier? And maybe he had actually done this? Did he close the door when he left the room? The first time–surely, would be a natural behavior for a person who knew that he was naked. But the second time... He couldn't remember.
A moment later, however, he was given proof that he had not completed a circle yet. On the next door on the right, all in the same manner, in brown-red with long stains (in blood, recognize it already, in blood), was written: "KILL YOURSELF NOW."
"Encouraging," he muttered. It was the first word pronounced by him as far back as he could remember. Usually such a phrase refers to a whole life, but in his case... Goddamn, probably, no more than ten minutes had passed, though it seemed to him that he had wandered in this terrible building not less than an hour. He did not like the sound of his own voice, a hoarse croak. He probably had been silent very long before he spoke.
Or maybe, on the contrary, he had damaged his throat with shouting?
He shrank in belated fright, listening. Perhaps even this flat muttering will attract unknown creatures from a corridor twilight? Or even directly from this door.
But everything still remained silent. Khrrr... click... khrrr... crack! He shuddered from surprise. One of the ceilings fixtures ahead had suddenly gone out and this section of the corridor was engulfed in darkness. Nothing was visible behind this section because of the curvature of the corridor. It was very easy to imagine that...
He waited tensely, peering into the darkness. No, he told himself, the fixture had simply failed. With such voltage, obviously far from standard, it is no wonder. He looked at the door again. The one who leaves such appeals can hardly be a friend. And if an enemy were trying to frighten him, then it would be foolish to take his cue from what the enemy had done. But if a real threat lay behind the door, an enemy would probably not warn him about it, even in such an exotic way. The man pulled the handle. With the door obediently sliding into the wall, he went in.
It was probably some sort of laboratory. That's it–"was." The same furious destruction, as with the little table in the first room, only on a larger scale, had been repeated here. The whole floor was covered by the remains of the mauled, smashed devices torn out of racks. It was now difficult to tell what kind of research they had been intended for. Fragments of a turning chair which, probably, the unknown vandal tried to use as a sledge hammer, lay there, but then the chair, made of plastic, proved to be too light and fragile for such a job.
The amnesiac took some cautious steps, being afraid to wound his feet. But, apparently, there were no splinters from test tubes and subject glasses here. That being as much as it was possible to understand in such chaos and with such illumination. So, it was suited probably more for physics, than for biology or chemistry. Though who would know? Maybe only remote control of the equipment in some hermetic chamber was carried out from here. Among fragments of plastic cases and boards some metal plates, cores, coils, windings occurred–but, apparently, there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. And all this demolition was carried out long ago, as fragments had time to grow with dust–the dust which had a
lmost hidden the brown stains on a floor. In a corner a massive metal bed of a certain installation towered, which apparently proved to be too difficult to destroy. And on its side there was the next inscription, made in the same fashion: "DARK IS FASTER THAN LIGHT HA HA HА." From the last stick of the last letter "A" a stream with a drop on the end led downward. Directly on this drop sat a whitish cockroach. No, it was more likely a fat round spider, as if it had crept out to drink the blood. But actually both the stream and a drop dried up a long time ago.
Gingerly bending down–he liked spiders no more than cockroaches–the man nevertheless approached more closely, wishing to examine the arthropod to discover whether it were a representative of another ugly mutant, or just a normal spider? What is ugliness here: a deviation or the norm?
He moved nearer slowly, in order not to frighten off the creature, but precaution was excessive. The spider did not move. It was dead long ago. And has dried on the bloody drop just as if it had not enough mind to move away when it has started to get thick. The man lifted a fragment of some transparent polymer from a laboratory table–possibly a former screen part–and poked the dried up whitish little body with it. The spider fell to the table, the drawn in legs up. The number of legs, as befits to all spiders, was eight. Three on the right side and five at the left.
The man returned to the corridor. This time he intentionally left the door opened. For orientation, he told to himself, though more likely in order not to see the inscription on it. But, just as he thought of it, the inscription with all its stains appeared in his mind’s eye: "Kill yourself now." Whatever had been before in this laboratory, he did not yet see reasons for suicide. For optimism, however, too...
Suddenly he shuddered, overtaken by a new wave of sticky fear. Physics, a laboratory, mutants–all of it merged together, knocking out the wall which had cut his memory by one more concept: radiation. What if this were the case? If this strange building (a research center? a clinic?) experienced a certain nuclear failure, then all here was abandoned long ago, and all this musty air was penetrated by a slow death. If even insects and spiders, which are more radiation resistant (from where did he know this?), have mutated, then a human here was doomed for certain. That's why "kill yourself now" would mean less suffering. Death from radiation sickness meant long and horrific torment.
But what was with the personnel, hastily leaving the building after the accident, destroying the equipment? The rage against machinery which betrayed them, of course, was understandable. Even a scientist can break down, but when each second was valuable for rescue… And all these bloody inscriptions? A naked corpse in a bath? Maybe he was someone who had found his way into the forbidden zone after the accident and understood too late what he had done?
But, maybe, there had been no evacuation? Maybe they were all just written off? The authorities wished to hide the truth about the accident and had let nobody out. Or not radiation, but some biological shit, and all of them were infected–infected and dangerous. But was radiation capable of preventing decomposition? Some virus may be capable...
But what about himself? Who, in that case, was he? One of the personnel left here or a guinea pig? How could he have survived here for so long, from the moment of the accident, after, seemingly, years have passed? What did he drink, what did he eat? Cockroaches? This thought made him squirm.
Are there other survivors? And what does a meeting with them threaten? Who has left these inscriptions? At first he thought that the word "despair" was written before death by that person in a bathroom. But he had been bleeding profusely, in such a condition that he could not come here from there or vice versa. And all the inscriptions looked to be made by one hand. Then would it be logical to assume that it was the hand of a murderer? But where were the new victims, whose blood was used for the writing? Dragged somewhere, maybe still alive? What for? And why the inscriptions, why smash the equipment? Madness, madness...
He suddenly felt himself very tired–not so much physically, though his head remained heavy, the infinite, hopeless weariness raising from these attempts to consider the situation rationally, the process of thinking per se painful. "Nobody has survived" had escaped suddenly, as an agonizing exhalation, from the depths of his mind. The accident affected not only this building, everything was much, much worse, no people remain in the whole world, nobody, only mutant spiders and cockroaches, and he never will get out from here, never, never.
He mutely moaned through clenched teeth, leaning against a wall covered with something sticky, shocked with the power of the despair which had captured him. Despair, yes. Were these inscriptions made under such conditions? "Kill yourself now." No, he should struggle! He would not allow this place to win, whatever it actually was. It was necessary to search for an exit. ("No!", his frightened subconsciousness peeped. "Don't search. No, don't search anything!") It was necessary to search, he firmly repeated to himself, and, having gathered himself up, made him step into the darkness of the unlit part of the corridor.
For some instants he moved forward, carefully rearranging his feet and expecting every moment that something cold and slippery from the gloom would suddenly seize his ankle. The darkness seemed to go on longer than he expected. There was, probably, a cascade switching off of several lamps successively. But at last ahead an unsteady light began to dawn around the bend. Some more steps and...
Something cold and slippery occurred under his foot and stuck its teeth into his sole.
Overwhelming fear kept him from jumping aside, freezing him in place, a behavior beyond reason. However, the paralysis, lasting a pair of infinitely long seconds, allowed him to understand that the jaws unclenched under his foot were too languid and didn't try to bite him at all. He had simply stepped on the face of a corpse.
"Kill yourself now." Did someone really yield to such advice? Or, more probably, someone was helped.
At that moment the head of the dead person turned (not by itself, a late understanding came, it happened simply because he pressed on the face with his weight), and his foot, having slid off, was stuck into a floor. But instead of dirt and garbage familiar already, he felt under a sole something different. During the following instant he understood that he was standing on the long matted hair stretched around the dead head. Is that a woman?
Probably, he should explore the body more carefully, at least to the touch, and better to drag it to the light. But the disgust, and also the fear that the thing that killed the woman could still hide somewhere here in the gloom, flooded any rational thought. The man darted off and rushed to the light, as if being pursued by hellish demons. His makeshift skirt fell down, but his reflexes managed to catch the falling oilcloth. Several instants later he was already taking a breath, standing under the next flickering light fixture. Nobody pursued him. Only his heavy breathing was heard in the dead air.
Having calmed himself, as much as possible under the circumstances, he put his attire in order and again moved forward. Soon his efforts were rewarded, at least partly–the passage leading, obviously, to the ring center occurring on the right. But he had no time to be glad about this, as he noticed something else, something far less encouraging.
It was the bloody prints of bare feet, which went along the circle corridor in the opposite direction and turned into this pass. And not only feet... Here and there between footprints the large blots darkened, somewhere merging in the whole paths, similar to the traces of huge worms. So the idea that someone had simply passed through a bloody pool had to be rejected. In that case, each succeeding trace would be paler than the previous, which did not happen here. No, blood streamed from the legs of the walking one, but he(she?) persistently went forward, overcoming the pain.
All right, the man thought, whatever happened with this person, it happened from where he came, not to where he was going. He turned into the pass.
Here the light glowed particularly dimly, some light fixtures periodically dying out completely. Then–probably when some condensers had time to
accumulate a charge–with a click they would flash on for a short time. These flashes did not so much help, as blind him, preventing his eyes to adapt to the twilight. The man felt under his foot a small flat object which has slipped to the floor. Stooping down, he picked it up and stood up under the nearest light fixture, hoping to examine the find.
It was a small, palm-long, rectangular plate, most likely metal, or maybe of firm plastic. Defining its makeup was difficult, since it was densely and completely covered with dried blood. Here and there short curly hairs had dried on it–more likely from a body, rather than from a head.
When the finder made it out, his throat was squeezed by a short spasm of disgust, and he went to fling the plate away, but he forced himself to think more rationally. It could be used as a weapon. And he obviously was not the first to think of this. One of the plate corners had been made keener.
The man began to scrub the blood from the object with his fingernails. His fingers almost immediately felt some grooves on one of the sides. It seemed an inscription had been embossed on the plate.
At last the plate was entirely cleared. It was a tablet of golden metal (but obviously not of gold, judging by its weight). The inscription was definitely not handmade and consisted of a single word: "HYPERION."
He tried to remember what this word meant. First his consciousness struck the same blank wall. Hyperion... hyper... hyper... It seemed it was some character from ancient Greek mythology. (A minute ago he had not suspected even the existence of ancient Greek mythology.) But this explanation didn't satisfy him. It had arisen too hastily, as if trying to protect him from the undefined fear that splashed from the bottom of consciousness, fear of something doubtfully concerning the ancient Greece.
