Throughout the majority of their exploration,
Robert and Tribbon had heard nothing but the sound of their own footsteps. Their exploration took seemingly hours and
was incredibly boring. Finally, after
three long and tedious hours of wandering in circles and from every which way
they could find, they began to hear a sound.
It started as a low hum, barely noticeably
over their footsteps. Then Tribbon
heard it and called them to a halt. "What is it?" he whispered.
"I don't know," whispered Robert back.
"Where is it coming from?" whispered
Tribbon.
"I don't know,"
"I think it's coming from over there," said
Tribbon in a louder tone, but still almost a murmur, as he pointed though the
incandescent glow of the glowrock into the darkness beyond the halo.
Without arguing, Robert began to wander in
the direction Tribbon had indicated, and Tribbon followed with him. As they walked, the noise became louder,
confirming that they were headed in the right direction. The noise quickly grew to become a roar, but
more so a chugging roar, as though something wooden was repeatedly hitting
another wooden thing. They continued
their approach and before long the light of the glowrock began to touch the
wall of the cave. They stopped at the
wall and began following the sound to their right, following the wall as they
went. Just then, Tribbon stopped
suddenly and threw his arm in front of Robert to stop him as well. "What is it?" called Robert over the noise.
Tribbon didn't reply; he only pointed to the
ground in front of them. Robert looked
and could see that the light from the glowrock wasn't hitting the ground in the
same way it had been before. Instead,
it seemed to show that they had reached a ledge, though there was something
there, a liquid, but not water. Robert
looked at his feet and saw that he was only one step from wandering into the
pool.
He bent down and stuck his fore finger into
the liquid and found it cold and smooth. He pulled his finger back out and looked at it. Even though the light from the glowrock was
faint, he could tell that the liquid on his finger was pure black. It's
a death-trap, he thought as he
wiped the black substance on his pants.
Together, they skirted the pool, leaving the
cavern wall behind and being careful to stay at least a good metre from the
edge of the pool. The sound continued
to get louder and after several minutes, maybe ten, the wall appeared once more
before them and with it came the thing that created the noise.
Imbedded in the wall quite a few feet from
the edge of the pool, a square shaped machine hovered over the black liquid
with some kind of tube dropping beneath the surface. A second tube rose from the top of the box and disappeared into
the darkness above, possibly as high as the ceiling itself.
Robert stared at the machine wondering how
long it had been here; let alone what it was. He looked to Tribbon and saw that the man was questioning the same
things in his own mind. It was then
that Robert noticed that there was a structure imbedded into the wall about
twenty feet above the ground. It wasn't
above the pool, but it was as much a mystery to the two men as the pool
was. "What do you suppose it is?" asked
Tribbon.
"I suppose it could be the building that
Angenog spoke of," said Robert in an optimistic tone.
"If
it is, I suppose we'd want to climb up there then," said Tribbon.
Robert gave him a look that said, "You
think?" but Robert didn't say anything of the sort. Instead he said, "Yes, I suppose we will want to. What we need is a rope."
In the light of the glowrock, Robert watched
as Tribbon's face lit up and his hand disappeared within his tunic. A moment later, the strange man fished out a
coiled rope that looked more than thirty feet long. Robert stared at the man in near disbelief. Of all the things he had seen the man pull
out of his tunic, this must have been the most bizarre. "What are you doing carrying a rope that
size around with you?" exclaimed Robert, unsure whether he wanted to hear the
answer.
"I like to be prepared for the unexpected,"
said Tribbon.
Robert shook his head, trying not to wrap
his mind around the concept. He took
one end of the rope from Tribbon and looked at it; he then looked up at the
structure, and then back at the rope. "Problem," he reported.
Tribbon repeated the process of looking
between the rope and the structure that Robert had just gone through before
asking, "What's the problem?"
"We had a rope with nothing on the end of
it, and a structure with nothing obvious for something to catch on if there was
something on the end of the rope to grab with."
Tribbon blinked as he tried to follow the
words that Robert said to him. Robert
had said them rather quickly and Tribbon was finding it somewhat difficult, but
in the end he thought he understood. "Well I can fix the problem of putting something on the end of the
rope," he said as he produced a three-pointed hook from within his tunic and
tied it to the rope, "but I don't know about finding something for it to grab
onto."
Robert was fighting the urge to think about
the fact that a large hook had just appeared from the tunic and instead began
formulating a plan. "I suppose there
would be no harm in simply throwing the rope and hoping it catches on
something."
Tribbon thought for a moment, "No, I suppose
you're right; there would be no harm in trying."
Robert took the end tied to the hook in his
right hand and held the rest of the coil in his left hand. He stood in a stance that seemed appropriate
for hauling the metal hook into the air towards the target and after a few
spins, he let the rope fly. The hook
clanked as it hit the wall of the structure and continued to clang as it fell
down towards the ground, bouncing off the wall as if fell. Just when Robert's heart began to sink with
the though of hopelessness, the hook clanked loudly once more and there was no
further noise; the cavern was silent once more.
Tribbon was the first to move; he took hold
of the rope and went to the base of the wall. Robert still stood in awe of the occurrence, and Tribbon looked back at him,
"Come on, let's see what's up there."
Tribbon wrapped both hands around the rope and began the short climb
towards the mysterious building in the wall. Robert hesitated until his feet found their ability to move and he
joined his companion in the accent.
Five minutes is all the climb took. The hook had miraculously managed to imbed
itself into the rock that formed the floor of the building. It seemed that there had once been doors on
the opening, but they had long since fallen off. Tribbon climbed through the doorway and turned to help Robert
into the building.
They stood at the end of a square-shaped
rock hallway that turned right about ten feet down. There was a door on the left side of the hall that stood closed,
and in the light of the glowrock, it seemed somewhat blue coloured. There was a faint shape on the ceiling at
the end of the hall where it turned, but neither Robert nor Tribbon could make
it out from where they stood.
They walked slowly up the hallway, unsure of
what they might find. The darkness that
hid in the corners, where the glowrock couldn't reach, frightened the men with
their suggestion of the unknown. Anything could be hiding in the blackness, though the dark in the cavern
didn't frighten them so. Perhaps it was
simply because they now stood in a building that was older than the world they
knew and that they didn't know what sort of creature may still live in it. They came to the door and observed the fact
that it was terribly old, but seemed to be made of wood. There was a cool, round handle on the door;
it was unlike anything either man had seen before. Tribbon wrapped his hand around it and pushed – nothing
happened. He thought for a moment that
the door might be stuck and Robert agreed, so he put his shoulder into the door
– still nothing.
Finally, Robert decided to try a different
approach. He wrapped his hand around
the handle of the door and felt that it was slightly loose. He wasn't sure what that meant, but purely
by accident he found that it turned slightly. He tried turning it more and as soon as he had turned it enough, the
door came loose on it's hinges and opened freely. Robert smiled at Tribbon, feeling quite proud of himself.
Behind the door was a large room with a
dozen or so tables that were obviously not made of wood. It resembled the eating areas of the modern
day inns and taverns, so Robert immediately assumed that the room was used for
that purpose. They wandered further
into the room and found two large rectangular boxes near the door that stood as
high as the average man.
The first had a clear side displaying
strange looking shelves lined with strange characters. The clear window was not made of glass,
which surprised both of them. Under the
window was a strange compartment that was accessed through a heavy flap, and
beside the window about halfway between the top and bottom was a group of
little square shaped. Each square
represented a character, all of which seemed to match the ones on the shelves. The box intrigued Robert, but Tribbon made
his way over to the second one, which was clearly different.
The second box wasn't quite
rectangular. The front side was curved
out and seemed to give it a little more essence. There was a strange picture on the front of the box of a cylinder
with funny writing on it surrounded by cube shapes that couldn't be easily made
out in the light from the glowrock. There were a number of rectangular shapes near the midsection of the
front side that curved out much like the front section itself. Each one would move into the box as it was
pressed, and pop back out when released. Amazing, he thought. "Let's move on," said Robert after he had taken a quick look at
the second box.
Together, they wandered out of the eating
room, closing the door behind them. From where they now stood they could see that the object on the ceiling
at the end of the hall was in fact unidentifiable. It was a flat piece of an unfamiliar material, much like that of
the first box's clear front, only this was a solid colour. It bore more strange symbols that seemed to
be lettering as if to spell out a word from the ancient language. Robert was familiar with many words in the
old language but was unsure of how to spell them; he didn't recognize the
word. Beside the word was a symbol that
was unfamiliar as well, but seemed slightly universal in it's meaning. It seemed to point up the next hall as if to
indicate whatever the ceiling ornament spoke of was in that direction.
Robert looked up the next hallway and saw
that there were a few more doors. There
was a set of interesting double doors at the end of the hall that interested
him most; they were clearly solid from the look of them, but they had windows
that revealed that there was a staircase behind them. Aside from the stairwell doors, there were two other doors, both
solid with no windows. Both doors were
on the right side of the hall and when examined, wouldn't open. Robert was disappointed, but was quickly
distracted by the excitement of finding the staircase.
The staircase was different that any that he
had ever seen. They were clearly
man-made, but they seemed almost as if they had been built from many different
parts and substances. The culture of
the old world was beginning to interest Robert in ways he had never imagined. He wanted to study them, to understand their
way of life, but he knew that was virtually impossible. The stairs didn't curve in a circular
pattern or run straight like the modern stairs did; instead they stopped
halfway with a landing before turning back and continuing on beside the first
set of stairs. They led to a second
floor, but continued higher to at least a third floor in a repeating pattern of
doubling back on itself.
Robert and Tribbon stopped at the second
floor and began to explore. They exited
the stairwell into a hallway that was much like the one they had just been
in. It stretched forward about twenty
feet before turning left, with two doors on the right side of it. The first door opened, but it seemed like a
storage closet with many versions of the modern cleaning utensils that were
much more advanced.
The second door revealed a room cluttered
with all sorts of paper and things like it. In the middle of the room was a wooden table of some sort that resembled
a desk. Papers were scattered all over
the table, including a pile of papers that folded together, most likely to keep
them together. The paper was a faded
colour, unlike the white papers around it, and although there were more incomprehensible
words scattering the top sheet, the words surrounded a picture.
The picture was old and faded, and could
barely be made out: a woman in strange clothing running towards the artist in
terror, though what she ran from was too faded to see. Tribbon moved to the other side of the table
and found a strange chair that seemed to be padded with some kind of pillows
that were built into the chair itself. He found the concept quite intriguing and couldn't help but try it out. The chair was very comfortable, and he
decided that he didn't want to get up.
On one side of the table sat a rather odd
looking box. It wasn't perfectly
square, but it was close enough, and once side had a glass cover. There were some funny little buttons along
the bottom of the side that had the glass covering and when Tribbon pressed one
of them, the glass lit up, lighting the entire room, though the glass just went
fuzzy with rapidly moving colours. Tribbon was amazed, "These people must have spent hours looking at this
thing," he said as he moved closer to the glass to watch it.
"What's this?" asked Robert as he fished a
rectangular box out from under a pile of paper.
Tribbon looked away from his colourful glass
but his eyes were blinded and he couldn't see what Robert was holding. Robert moved around to where Tribbon was
sitting and looked at the glass as well. "That's interesting," he said, "I wonder what it was used for."
Beneath the box with the glowing glass,
there was another box before the table began. The second box was smaller and more rectangular. The most curious thing about it was the
display that showed, "--:--" and flashed at a fixed pace. Beside this display was a rectangular flap
that seemed to hide the insides from the world around it. Robert looked at the flap, then at the box
in his hand. Strangely they seemed
about the same shape.
Robert held the box in a way that made it
possible to insert the box into the slot, purely out of curiosity – it fit
perfectly. Unsure of whether it would
work, he pushed the box further into the slot but it stopped shortly before
passing all the way in.
He pulled the box back out and thought for a
moment. One side of the box in his hand
was flimsy, almost as though it was ment to flip up, though he couldn't manage
to flip it without exerting a significant amount of force and he didn't want to
risk breaking it. He turned the box in
his hands so that the flimsy part would go into the slot first, unlike the way
he had pushed it in the first time. This time, the box was pulled from his hands into the slot and
disappeared inside. Robert jumped in
surprise before feeling good about himself again.
The colourful glass went black, but a
different sort of black, almost as if there was light coming from it. Tribbon covered his eyes for a moment as the
sudden darkness overwhelmed them. He
opened his eyes again as the box began to make noise – a voice. The glass was lit once more by moving
pictures of a man and the voice corresponded with the movement of the mouth on
the glass. Tribbon was shocked by this
and tried to touch the pictures, but found that they were actually under the
glass. "What is this?" he asked, but
Robert shushed him.
"I think I can understand the language when
it is spoken. I'll try to translate
what he's saying," said Robert who paused for a moment, "He's saying, 'If you
are watching this tape, then you are another survivor of this great
tragedy. It has been several years now
since it happened, but we are now beginning to experience the effects of the
radiation. There were twenty of us at
the start, but now,' a bunch of names, 'have died leaving only the five of
us.
"'After the power went out, we managed to
set up a generator outside fueled by a large oil source. We're not sure how long it'll last; maybe a
few years, maybe a few centuries; either way, it's powering this entire
building. We turned off all
nonessential instruments to save the power, lights, computers, even the
security cameras.
"'The world as we know it has come to an
end. In fact, there were some reports
that a good portion of the Earth itself have been blown away, that the planet
is no longer round. I'm not terribly
surprised.
"'I suppose there's a chance that whoever
you are, you don't know what happened, so you might be interested in finding
the other tape; it should be where you found this one. It contains a video documentary that I'm
going to put together after I've finished making this tape and it will explain
everything to you.
"'Regardless of who you are and what you
know by now, I wish you good luck and I hope you survive longer than we
did. Goodbye.'"
Robert stopped talking as the figure under
the glass reached towards them and the picture became black once more. Tribbon was confused, but this didn't
surprise Robert, though he too was confused. "Did any of that make sense to you?" Tribbon asked.
"Most of it, actually. I don't understand some of the terminology,
but I think it's fairly straightforward. I assume that the little rectangular box that I placed in the slot was what
the man referred to as a 'tape,' though I could still be wrong. What he said about another tape interested
me too," Robert moved papers around on the table where he found the first tape,
but found nothing.
"We need more light," he exclaimed.
"For once, I can't help you," said Tribbon,
shrugging his shoulders.
Robert looked around the room, but nothing
looked much like a light except a long rectangular fixture on the ceiling. It looked like nothing he had ever seen
before, but something about it was familiar. Attached to the inside of the rectangle was a cylindrical tube of some
sort that seemed to remind Robert of something, but he couldn't quite put his
finger on it. Then he remembered the
cylinder that Angenog had given him.
He reached into his cloak and produced the
glass cylinder. Looking at the fixture
on the ceiling, he confirmed that the tube in his hands was the same as a tube
in the fixture already. He reached up
and pulled on the second tube until it came out. He tossed it onto a pile of papers in the corner and tried to
figure out how to put his cylinder into it. After a few minutes of fiddling, he slid the cylinder into it's proper
place and the room was flooded with a dazzling bright light. Both Robert and Tribbon were forced to shield
their eyes and they strangely had the same comparison in their minds with the
sun itself.
After Robert's eyes cleared up enough, he
was satisfied that there was enough light to look around the room in. While Robert searched for the second tape,
he asked Tribbon to figure out how to get the first one back out of the device
that seemed to have eaten it. Both
found what they were looking for at nearly the same moment.
"Found it," cried Tribbon.
"Found it," cried Robert.
They looked at each other and smiled. Robert plodded over to the machines and took
the old tape out so he could insert the new one. "We should turn off that light first," suggested Tribbon, "It's
reflecting in the glass of this thing."
Robert inserted the tape until the machine
pulled it inside, and then he reached up and pulled the tube out of the
fixture. The glowrock lit the room once
more, and their eyes had to adjust to the dark for a moment before the same man
appeared on the glass once more. Robert
began to translate:
'Okay, if you're watching this, I can assume
that you have nearly no clue as to what happened to us. To be quite honest, it began as an accident,
or so the [something I don't recognize] claimed. They claimed to have been developing a new weapon; they called it
a [something I don't understand] bomb. Somehow it detonated in one of our cities by accident, though we never
believed them. There was a long debate
carried out over several days, but in the meantime, things were happening in
the blast-zone. People, plants, and
animals were mutating. The bomb, it
seemed, was designed not to kill or destroy, but to alter the physiology of
things on an atomic level.'
"What does that mean?" asked Tribbon.
"I haven't a clue," said Robert before
continuing the translation:
'I don't know what level of scientific
understanding you currently have, but if you don't know what that means, it
means that it takes the elements of our deaneh and changes them.'
"What on earth is deaneh?" asked Tribbon.
"Again, I don't know," said Robert.
'Strange, bizarre things began to
happen. Plants were becoming vicious
and took many lives. People mutated
into ravenous cannibals, destroying many more lives. I suppose the strangest of all the occurrences were the deaths of
two thousand and some odd people that were reported to having been caused by
their own clothing. Apparently the
cloths mutated and became living creatures, killing their wearer and anyone
else in their way.
'The worst aspect of this bombs affects was
that it was contagious. It spread
quickly across the you es and into the other countries as well. It seemed to even have an affect on the
water and soil and it became harder and harder to avoid [something I don't
think we have a word for].'
The pictures under the glass changed to show
fire and clouds that seemed to be caused by the fire, though they were of
nothing either man had ever seen before. The voice continued to explain what happened, 'Before they could be
affected, the [something or other] fired several [things] at [someplace]
causing a major string of retaliations. The you es fired a dozen or so [things] which I suppose is what caused
the creation of a massive crater to form where [someplace] used to be. In the end, the world looked a little like
[some kind of] cheese. Those of us who
survived know that it is only a matter of time before the mutation catches up
with us. I just hope the world is a
better place by the time you see this tape.'
The picture disappears in much the same way
as it did on the last tape. The two men
remain silent for a moment, "I guess you've found what you were looking for,"
said Tribbon finally.
"Ten years of searching," said Robert,
trailing off at the end.
They became silent again for a moment. Robert tried to think of what he would do
now that he had finished his quest. Nothing came to mind; he had been away from a stable lifestyle so long
that he had forgotten what it had to offer.
His train of thought was caught short by a
sudden noise from somewhere nearby. Robert looked at Tribbon who looked at Robert looking at him. "What was that?" Tribbon asked.
"I don't know, but I intend to find out," said Robert as he left the room.
