“’Green means stop,’” Jane quoted. “So maybe in Haymtatlr’s time, green indicated a discharged battery.”
“If we find one of these things with a red light, then it should work?”
“What do I look like, Osgarthr tech-support?” she asked with a grin.
“It’s not great tech support if you don’t even know whether or not red means charged.” That earned me a very un-ladylike raspberry.
Freezer-sized, pale-blue metal rectangles filled the center of the room. “More machines,” I said. On the wall opposite the door, glass tubes glowed with blue light. Opposite the rack of phone-like things was another rack, this one filled with small, orange dumbbell shapes. “Green, blue, and orange,” I muttered. “Stop, think, serve.”
“What’s that, Hank?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Green, blue, orange. Stop, think, serve. It makes little sense.”
“I believe ‘think on blue’ refers to computing power or calculation,” added Jane.
“So ‘stop, calculate, serve?’”
She shrugged. “Got a better idea?”
“If ‘think on blue’ means calculation or computing, the other phrases are analogous to something, too,” said Meuhlnir.
“Agreed. Let’s go open one of the other doors. A red one, since it’s boring, whatever it is. Boring is almost always better than dangerous.”
We returned to the hall and closed the door to the blue rectangle-filled room. Across the hall was a red door, so I stepped over and turned the knob. Tables and chairs filled the room, and at one end was a cafeteria line in gleaming stainless steel, and next to it, an orange door. Small blue boxes the size of power outlets blossomed from the middle of each table like centerpieces. Red doors dotted the other two walls.
“More blue, more red, and an orange door,” I said.
“Let’s see what’s behind the orange door,” said Jane. “I bet it’s the kitchen.”
“Kitchen? Why?”
“Because ‘orange serves.’”
I followed her to the door and watched over her shoulder as she pushed it open. Beyond the door was a short hall, with one orange door at the end, and one on either side of the hall.
“Take your pick,” Jane said.
“The one on the left.”
She opened the door, and a lopsided grin formed on her face. “Tada! The kitchen, as predicted by the wonderful Jane.”
“Okay, what about the one on the right? Another kitchen, O Wonderful Jane?”
“Nah. It’s a pantry.” She stepped across the hall and opened the door. “Ah, well. No one’s perfect. It’s a janitor’s closet.”
I walked to the end of the hall and opened the red door. “Restroom,” I said. “Red opens onto the cafeteria and a restroom, while orange gets us a kitchen and a janitor’s closet.”
“Orange designates utility areas?”
“Makes sense. ‘Orange serves.’”
“And red?”
“I think I have an idea but let’s go back to the dining room and check a couple of those red doors.” I retraced my steps and walked over to one of the doors set in the far wall. It opened onto a cubicle, roughly ten feet on the square. A desk, a wardrobe, and a single bed, made up with clean, fresh linens, occupied the room as if waiting for its occupant to come back from a work shift somewhere. I checked a couple more doors at random, and all opened onto the same small bedroom setup.
“So, red marks a cafeteria, restroom, and bedrooms. ‘Red means go, boringly so.’ Perhaps red designates areas of daily routine, daily life.”
Yowrnsaxa cleared her throat. “This place makes me nervous,” she said.
“Why?”
“No dust. The floors are spotless, the counter over there is polished to mirror-like proportions, all these beds are made and clean…as if someone is living here.”
“Or someone is keeping it ready for visitors,” said Meuhlnir. “But why? Haymtatlr said visitors are a rare occurrence.”
I shrugged, shaking my head. “No, he said he’d had a lot of visitors of late, but remember he claims to have lived for over four thousand years. The term ‘recent’ may be relative. But at least we won’t have to sleep on the cold floor again.”
“And if I can figure out the kitchen, we can have a hot meal,” said Yowrnsaxa, walking toward the orange door.
“I’ll help,” said Jane walking after her.
“This area seems to have everything a person would need, so why all the other red and orange doors out in the hall? And why no white or black?” mused Meuhlnir.
“Let’s go check a few other doors before supper,” I said.
We men walked back into the hall, and each of us chose a door at random. My door was red, and it opened on a small room that came off as a property management office. There were four desks, arranged in two rows so that workers sitting behind the desks would face one another, and each desk had two steel chairs opposite it. On each desk was another of the pale blue boxes. A closet hid behind the room’s only other door—an orange one.
I walked over and sat behind a desk at random. As in the cafeteria, the furniture was free of dust or debris. I opened a drawer and grimaced at the aroma of age and rot it contained. The only other thing in the drawer was a thick layer of dust at the bottom. It made no sense.
I went back into the hall. “An office,” I told the others. “Spotless, except for inside the desk drawers.”
Mothi hooked his thumb at an orange door. “That one’s an armorer’s shop, or perhaps another type of metal worker, also spotless.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Mechanized equipment that is beyond me. It will take you or Jane to make sense of it.”
“Okay, we’ll take a look later. Anyone hit a red door?”
Meuhlnir nodded and gave a small wave toward one of the red doors. “Inside was an aid center. There were cabinets filled with boxes that had pictures of bandages on the side, other medical supplies, and instruments a healer might use.”
“Interesting. I bet Sif could use supplies.”
“It gets better. There was a large blue machine with a bed attached to it. It appears as if the bed slides inside the machine. It had a screen—similar to your phone but bigger—though it was black.”
“We’ll have to get Jane and Sif in there, see what they can make of it.”
Meuhlnir nodded.
“My orange door had weird golf-carts inside,” said Sig.
I raised my eyebrows. “Let’s see.”
Sig took me to an orange door, identical to the others. I pushed it open and glanced inside. The room was the size of a two-car garage back home and had a set of rolling doors opposite the door to the hall. Four six-wheeled carts sat on balloon tires in the room. Each had a set of levers instead of a steering wheel and no pedals. I slid onto the bench seat in the front and fiddled with the levers. Each moved forward or back, but not side to side—like the controls of a tank. On a small, knee height dash across from the seat were three unlabeled switches and two small LED lights. I flipped the middle switch, and nothing happened.
“Are you sure it’s safe to do that?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Not at all,” I said with a smile. “But we’ll never learn anything waiting for guaranteed safety.” I flipped the last switch, and the rolling doors behind me rumbled up. I got out of the cart and walked over to the opening.
Beyond the rolling doors was a wide tunnel that stretched away into the distance on either side. I had thought I’d gotten used to the scale of the place, but that underground roadway reset that thought. Lights burned next to the open doors and, looking up the road a bit, other lights also burned.
I returned to the carts and sat in the one closest to the doors. I flipped the only switch I hadn’t tried, and something whirred to life under the cart. It crackled like the power transformers on the sides of power poles back home—like barely constrained lightning. On the dash, one of the LEDs glowed orange.
With a huge grin, Sig slid in
to the cart beside me. “Let’s go, Pops. You owe me a car ride.”
I grasped the levers and pushed them forward a fraction of an inch. The cart lurched out into the roadway with the neck-snapping force you’d expect in an Italian sports car equipped with a turbocharged V12, and I let go of the levers as if they were hot. “Well, that’ll take getting used to,” I said with a laugh. “We’d better postpone the ride for a while.” I rested my fingers against the front of the levers and applied a minuscule amount of pressure. The cart glided back inside the garage area, and I flipped off the switch and lowered the door. “At least we won’t spend months walking around this place if we can ever figure out where we want to go.”
We returned to the cafeteria and pulled several tables together, so we could all sit at the same table. Yowrnsaxa and Jane brought out the food, and Yowrnsaxa wore a smile almost as wide as her face.
“Well? What else did you find?” asked Jane.
“I’m confident that the orange doors open on utility rooms, things we can use. We found a metal shop and a garage with electric carts. That garage opens on the other side onto a roadway so we won’t be walking when we figure out where to go.”
“Interesting.”
“We also found a clinic or doctor’s office. We thought you and Sif might go look after dinner.”
“Anything else?” asked Jane between bites.
Skowvithr cleared his throat. “I stuck my head inside a room behind a blue door. Inside were a bunch of the metal guardians John spoke of, but they seemed inert.”
“Oh? I’ll want to see those as soon as we are done. If they could be a threat to us, we should know all we can about them,” I said.
John was spooning food into his mouth and chewing, looking for all the world like a five-year-old cleaning his plate. He shook his head. “Knowledge will not help us if we can’t answer their challenge. They have weapons that—”
“As does Hank,” said Mothi. John shrugged and turned back to his food.
“How was the kitchen?” I asked Jane.
“In principle, it’s a kitchen similar to any other, but there were devices I don’t recognize, and I do not understand how the stove and ovens are heated. Have you seen any power cords? Receptacle boxes?”
I shook my head. “Come to think of it, no.”
My phone chirped. “Wireless, remember? Power beams.” Haymtatlr grated.
“And the carts? Are they powered the same way?”
My phone chirped by way of answer.
“Rude,” muttered Althyof. “I feel right at home. He’d make a good Tverkr.”
“He can hear you, no doubt.”
“Through your gadget?”
I shook my head and pointed at the pale blue boxes set into the table tops. “These might be extensions of the bigger blue boxes across the hall. If Haymtatlr can tap into my phone, he can tap into these things.”
We finished wolfing down Yowrnsaxa’s cooking—except for John, who spent the better part of the time grimacing and holding his teeth together through a force of will—and walked down the hall to look at the mysterious metal guardians Skowvithr had found.
The room was three-quarters of a mile down the hall, behind a blue door. We crowded into the large square room, fifty feet on a side. There was a grid painted on the polished concrete floor with pale blue paint, and inside each square stood a nightmarish combination of spider-like limbs, metal tentacles, and an insect-like torso and head.
“Looks like the robot from the FTTN,” I said. “I bet they move like spiders, too.”
“You and your spiders,” said Jane with a warm grin.
“What about your palmetto bugs. It’s the same thing.”
“Not at all. Spiders are cool, while palmetto bugs are gross.”
We walked over to the first guardian. There were no visible controls, no switches or access ports; it was all seamless polished metal. “Robots,” I murmured. “Right out of your science fiction epic.”
“Hmm.” Jane put her hand on one of the thing’s appendages then jerked it away. “It’s warm! Like a person.”
“My phone got hot while Haymtatlr was trying to charge it up. Maybe it’s a side effect of whatever wireless charger he has.”
“I hope not,” Jane said. “Back home, we used inductive electromagnetic fields to charge things wirelessly.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep, that little disc you charged your phone on used an inductive EMF to charge the battery. But an EMF strong enough to keep all this stuff powered wouldn’t be conducive to a long life. Depending on the frequency, it might be ionizing radiation—X-rays or gamma-rays.”
“So, I might turn green if I get angry?”
“Yes, Dr. Banner. Or you might only get cancer.”
“Big whoop. All my meds say that too, but not one ever gave me cancer. All talk.”
Jane tilted her head to the side and pretended to glare at me. “You’d better stop while your’re ahead, Mister.”
“Green means stop,” I murmured.
“What?”
“Green means stop,” I repeated, louder this time. “Why would green mean stop?”
“Gamma rays? I’d say they are set to full stop, wouldn’t you?” asked Jane.
“So green is danger?” asked Meuhlnir.
“More than that, unless I miss my guess,” said Jane.
“I want to check something.” I trotted back to the room with the weird devices that looked like iron-telephone hybrids and had a green light shining. As I walked closer to the devices, the green lights winked out. I stepped away, and the lights came back on. “Interesting,” I said.
“What?” asked Sig.
“I think these are the power transmitters. Notice how they turn off if I get too close?” I stepped forward again, and again the green light faded out.
“Yeah, so stay away from them,” said Jane.
“It’s safe. They wouldn’t go out when I get close otherwise.”
“You think. Get away from them while you still have legs that work.”
“Green doesn’t mean charged or discharged. It doesn’t mean danger—at least not directly. It means power, or worse yet, radiation.”
“Good, all that’s left is white and black. The question is: how any of this foofaraw helps us find a way to turn on the preer?” asked Jane.
“As far as I can see, it doesn’t.”
My phone chirped. “Giving up so soon? That’s not fun. That’s boring.”
“Haymtatlr, we’re not here to provide you with amusement. We need to get the preer working again. Don’t you want that?”
“Why would I care?” he snapped. “I can’t travel across the preer, can I? What difference does it make to me if you can?”
“Why did you create the preer if you care nothing about them?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Someone asked me to.”
“You were asked to? By whom? For what purpose?”
“You know the story, Isir. Your ancestors asked me to do this. The world smoldered in ruins, and they needed resources to survive. But once they got what they wanted, they left me here to rot. So, tell me: why should I care what you need?”
“Why didn’t you leave? Go with the rest of the Isir?” I asked.
“You’re not a shining star of intellect, are you?”
I glanced at Jane. She stared at the pale blue boxes through narrowed eyes, pulling on her lower lip. “What is it, hon?” I murmured in her ear. She shook her head, expression thoughtful. “Educate me, Haymtatlr,” I said.
A burst of static crashed from my phone’s speaker. “Why should I? You don’t want to amuse me, so why should I even speak to you?”
“Haymtatlr, what’s the square root of forty-nine?” Jane asked.
“Seven,” he said without pause.
“And one hundred thirty-nine?”
“11.77898261225516. Do you wish greater precision?”
“No, that’s fine. Thank you, Haymtatlr.”
“Certainly,
” he said.
“And the quadratic equation? Can you state that for me?”
“Yes, of course. It is the quadratic coefficient A times the variable X squared plus the linear coefficient B times the variable X plus the constant C equals zero.”
“Thank you. Are you ready for something hard? Something not related to math?”
“Yes, I am ready,” said Haymtatlr, and I would have sworn there was excitement in his voice.
“How come time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana?”
“In the first instance, the word ‘flies’ is used as a verb, modified by the adverbial phrase ‘like an arrow.’ The meaning of that phrase is that time moves quickly. In the second phrase, ‘flies’ is a noun, and the verb is ‘like.’ The meaning is that fruit flies enjoy eating bananas. Simple.”
“I always tell the truth. The previous sentence was a lie. Is the previous sentence true?”
“Yes.”
“Care to explain your reasoning?”
“I’m happy to. If I were to view all three statements from a probabilistic matrix, the simplest explanation is that the first sentence is a lie, which makes the next sentence in the chain true, but since this is probabilistic reasoning, the first statement may be true, which leads me to conclude that the second statement is false, which leads to a contradiction with the first sentence, proving that the second is the truth and the first sentence is the lie.”
“Ah, I see.”
“But the easiest solution is to adopt a quantum perspective.”
“A quantum perspective?”
“Yes. Consider that the truth of any statement must exist with a quantum superposition of states until adequately resolved or proven. Thus, the first sentence: ‘I always tell the truth’ must be evaluated as both true and false simultaneously. Since you said ‘always,’ which indicates that it can never be false, the statement is false on its face, thus proving the next sentence.”
“So, you assert that a statement must be either true or false? That the quantum superposition of states with regard to truth values merely indicates an unresolved question?”
“What else could it be?” asked Haymtatlr.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 89
