CHAPTER 1 -- Prologue: A Find
Absolute terror. Looking at his surroundings and at the deep, dark passage before him, all he could feel was absolute fear.
'How did I ever find a place like this?' he thought, his mind quickly turning into a gibbering mess of sense and unintelligible thoughts. Briefly, he saw the events leading up to this moment, and tried to piece them together to see if they gave any meaning to the place he now found himself.
His name was Bill. He was a laborer on contract for a research project excavating in ancient areas of the world, to search for relics of archaeological importance. That was as far as he understood it, at least, and nobody else on the job knew much more. The higher-ups were keeping many of the details hushed, compensating by paying the workers an almost obscene amount of money simply to dig holes. Very deep holes, in this case, but holes nonetheless.
For the past six months, he and his co-workers had been digging in the midst of a barren, tangled swamp called Deep Darkness. It was madness, of course, to try drilling anything in a swamp, but the financial incentive was far too great to turn down for such trifling things as logic. They'd all been flown out to a temporary housing area constructed far into the swamp, away from the ocean where the muck was thickest from the constant flow of sea water. They'd found a prime digging site, up in some low hills that were elevated enough to escape much of the thick vegetation and spindly trees.
Everything had gone off without a hitch. Morale was high as the men piloted brand new digging equipment provided by their employers. They cut through sections of rock with speed and efficiency, stopping every so often to check the integrity of the dig and to examine the strata for anything unusual. The paychecks continued to come as the hole grew deeper and deeper. Very quickly the weak sunlight from the hazy sun overhead became insufficient to shed light on the dig, and electric lights had to be dropped down to bathe the hole in a stark white. An elevator was installed to ferry workers from the surface down into the depths.
Bill had begun his day just like any other, by waking up and having a meager just-add-water breakfast and getting into his work clothes. Men were always coming to and from the dig site, ones with soot-stained faces beaming and joking being replaced with faces of indifference ready to apply themselves to the task at hand. Bill's shift was set for the afternoon, so until then he contented himself with playing cards with the guys and making calls to his family.
"Yes, honey, I have to go. It's my shift in fifteen minutes so i've got to go get rigged up. Mmhmm. I love you too, sweetheart! Bye now."
He stepped out of the barracks style housing area and moved toward the towering machinery placed around the hole.
"Your turn now, Bill? I don't envy you... it's starting to get really claustrophobic down there."
"Yeah yeah, I know you've just got a weak stomach Fred. Hah!"
The machinery loomed closer, silhouetted against a dank gray sky.
"Don't get lost down there, I bet it's hard working an excavator when you're directionally challenged!"
"Keep your opinions to yourself, Mitch. Some of us have work to do!"
Laughing, he waved to his friends on the job and moved into a small clearing surrounded by a spiderweb of parts and gadgets. He went right to his designated storage area and started suiting up to descend. Nylon fabric creaked as he tightened a belt and harness and fastened a flashlight and tools onto it. He slipped his feet into a pair of heavy, metallic boots and clasped them tight as well. When he was completely ready, he donned the age old sign of the laborer, the construction hat.
A damp wind smothered his face and caused him to wipe sweat from his brow; he could already feel sweat soaking his shirt. His boots clomped noisily as he walked past the row of safety cones and to the elevator clinging to the side of the gargantuan hole. Looking back briefly, he said goodbye to the world above and at the press of a button descended down, down, down to the underworld of the dig.
Minutes passed as the natural light of the sun faded and was replaced by the periodic glow of light bulbs. Sound gradually began to reach him, crashing around him like a caged animal with no means of escape. He put in some earplugs as he neared the bottom, keeping the cacophony to a dull roar.
Stepping from the elevator, he was greeted by a pitted plane of machines and men. There were workers on giant futuristic looking drills, the product of a rather imaginative research company, and there were also men around the edges of the site, checking the walls or working industriously at improvised computer stations. Bill realized that he was still almost ten minutes early for his shift, and wouldn't be needed to replace the men on the drills yet. Knowing that standing in the wrong place could mean a tragic accident, Bill moved around the edge of the hole to an area that was flagged off with signs that read 'KEEP OFF - NO MACHINERY ALLOWED'. The workers all knew that when something of importance was found in a dig, it had to be sectioned off for the experts to examine at a later date. This appeared to be just such a place. Bill's curiosity itched at him, making him wonder what it was that they had found.
Looking around, he saw that all of the nearest workers were a good distance away, engrossed in their work. Feeling a sudden impulse, Bill moved past the signs and walked carefully up to the rock wall. He glanced up; it was impossible to see the top of the dig, not even a pinprick of light was visible. Coming back to the sheer rock wall before him, he leaned in close and looked carefully. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He extended a hand and felt the rugged surface through his gloves, then knocked softly. A few pebbles crumbled to the floor.
Bill stepped back in alarm. Was the wall safe? Sometimes cracks appeared from the stress of the digging tools and the vibration of the floor beneath. They had avoided any cave-ins so far, but such an event was always expected and looked for. Trying to calm his rapidly beating heart, Bill told himself there was nothing to worry about and stepped closer to look for any apparent cracks. To his dismay, a deep crevasse had appeared where he had knocked.
He bit his lip and looked back to where his co-workers continued to dig. If it turned out some structural defect was threatening the integrity of the dig, then the entire operation could be ceased for days, even weeks, while the problem was fixed. If he'd caused a crack just from knocking on the wall, he was going to get in massive trouble and most likely lose his job. His mind racing, he bent down slowly and grabbed the biggest chunk of rock that had fallen out and attempted to replace it in the crevasse.
In response to his efforts, another handful of stone crumbled away. Bill almost cursed out of frustration and sudden fear. It would be best, then, to leave it alone and just get to work. Maybe nobody would even notice that the area had been tampered with. Bill's efforts to move away were stopped when he suddenly felt a puff of stale air touch his cheek. Looking closer, he felt a small stream of air coming from the crevasse he had created. His heart leapt in astonishment. 'Could there be a tunnel this deep underground?'
Feeling a strange sense of awe and curiosity, Bill pulled another chunk of stone away from the tiny crevasse. It came off without much resistance. More pieces came away as he scrabbled to pull them off, and in only a few moments he had created a hole big enough for him to fit through. Completely enraptured in his sudden find, he donned an oxygen mask and ducked through into the hole, thoughts of discovery and adventure filling his head.
A cold sweat crept down his spine as his mind snapped back to the present, to the great opening before him that eerily resembled a threshold. Willing his feet to move, to do anything but stand still in this eternal silence, he stepped through the forbidding entrance.
The rock tunnel, he had discovered, had been immediately on a decline. The air around him swirled almost visibly as he reached to turn on his flashlight, as if no man had entered there for hundreds of thousands of years. It descended down into a pure blackness, penetrated only by the fierce white glow of the flashlight. He started walking, the steady decline bringing him further and further down. 'I wonder where this could possibly lead?' he thought.
Fear brought him back to the present, fear that grew and grew with each passing second. The floor below had changed suddenly, for no longer was he walking on stone, but on a cold, cold metal. His fevered consciousness was beyond wondering why this could be, so far below the surface. Every step he took clanked and echoed off the walls around him, rebounding angrily upon him at intruding upon this untouched hall. His flashlight came up on a wall as the hall curved slightly. The metal reflected back at him, but also absorbed a portion of the light like a soft fabric would. Like skin.
His steps had taken him further and further down, so far that he lost track of time. A few times he had considered returning, a hesitant kind of fear creeping into his curious nature. Some unknown urge kept him descending.
The end of the tunnel had broken upon him suddenly, as if he had been thrown through a window into a bizarre new world. Incomprehensibly, white dust crunched under his boots and dissipated as if muffled, the only sound in a vast sea of pure, stifling silence. He stood on a ledge in a cavern of unimaginable size, in a darkness that felt like it extended as high as the clouds and for miles in every direction before him. The floor of the ledge was some kind of white stone, pale like a corpse. It was there that the first tendrils of fear had clenched the pit of his stomach and nearly caused him to turn right around and run for his life. Inexplicably, he had moved forward.
The metallic tunnel grew more and more convoluted as curves zigged and zagged before him. A burning desire to know what lay at the end of the hall was raging within him, quickening his steps and shortening his breath. His heart was beating incredibly fast, while adrenaline sharpened his mind to a focused point. He remembered walking down the eerie white walkway with the darkness falling for unimaginable depths to either side. He remembered coming to the end of the walkway and being faced with a crevasse that looked like a tall, thin triangle, only wide enough for one person to fit through. The crevasse, he knew, was an entrance. An entrance to a place that he should not be, that no sane man would enter. Inexplicably, he knew that entering there would mean he would not come out alive. The rumblings of fear deep inside him erupted in a wave of terror.
Absolute terror.
Before him was a dead end. The walls and the floor all rose to surround something on a platform before him. His feeble light showed what appeared to be pipes laid across the ground and up over the walls before him, leading down the hallway he had just walked. Suddenly he realized that they were not pipes, but some twisted, terrifying kind of arteries. This was not just a room, it was a heart, a dried up, dead heart. Bill lifted his flashlight to look before him with his entire being quivering in fright. Where all of the veins came together, at the place where the life of this heart had once flowed to, there was an eye. A pitiless, lidless, lifeless eye.
Bill only made it as far as the top of the tunnel before he finally collapsed.
-----
Somewhere far away, an old man in a white lab coat was standing over a table scattered with sheets of paper and rolled out blueprints. A coffee cup sat half full at arms reach, long since gone cold. The man wore a pair of round glasses and had a spray of white hair ringing his bald head, and a bushy white mustache under his nose. The smell of ozone permeated the spacious laboratory of austere whites and sterile blues, sparsely furnished and hardly decorated.
He was engrossed in his work, muttering to himself and making unintelligible notations with a well worn pencil. The shriek of a telephone cut through the quietness and caused the old man to jerk his head up in annoyance. After muttering a few choice words under his breath, he called, "Jeff, would you answer that?" and craned once more over his work. The phone continued to cut the stillness with it's clamor. "Jeff! Where the blazes..." the man's voice dropped once more to self-contained ramblings.
He stood up slowly and cracked his back before moving around the metal table to where the phone rested. Picking it up, he snapped, "Yes?" A voice spoke hesitatingly through the speaker, and the old man turned quickly with wide eyes. "What?! Say that again, slower." His eyes moved as if tacking off points in space, attempting to solve a sudden problem and finding it insurmountable. One hand darted out to grab the edge of the table for support, as suddenly he felt incapable of standing. "I understand. Thank you." and with that, he carefully replaced the phone on it's charger. For a few moments he simply stood there leaning on the table, trying to fathom what he had been told. "Could this truly be..." he said to himself, his eyebrows like troubled thunderheads, "Can they truly have unearthed the Devil's Machine?"