Past and Present

By thesuperdot

Chapter 4: Exploration

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Beneath the surface of the school, and other buildings for that matter, a large network of old water tunnels ran to various places. No ever really used them anymore, computers controlled the water now. In fact, the most times those tunnels were used where when four friends traveled to an abandoned factory. That was 20 years ago.

Now four friends travel the same path, not knowing what was at the end.

"Whoa, hey Grant, how'd you find out about these tunnels?"

Grant smile and patted his laptop. "Trade secret, I looked them up online. I figured these were better than walking over a highway."

Ax was waling on the edge of the path. "Well you got that right! That would have been suicide." He paused and looked ahead. "Say, what are those?"

He pointed to what looked like a few scooters and skateboards. He ran up to them and found out they were. "Cooooool!" Ax said and picked one up.

They others caught up and also looked at the items. "Huh, someone must've left them down here…" Ceil said, she picked up a skateboard. "Hey, someone's name is inscribed here…" She picked away some of the rust and saw the name 'Yumi'.

"It says Yumi on it."

The others, following suit, did the same.

"Mine says Ulrich." Terry said, he had picked up a skateboard.

"Odd on mine." Ax said, skateboard as well.

"Jeremy…" Grant said. "Could this be his…scooter…?"

Terry looked over at Grant. "Hey, Grant, what were Jeremy's friends named?"

Grant put his scooter down and screwed up his face in concentration. "Err, their names were… Ulrich… Odd… annnnd… Yumi."

Almost immediately everyone dropped what they were holding and even Grant realized what happened. "Okay, now THAT is just plain weird!"

For a moment, no one did anything. Then Ax decided to do something. "Well, they've been missing of almost 20 years now, right? They won't mind if we use it!" He got on Odd's skateboard and got ready to push off.

"Wait! I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

"What? It's fine!" With that, he gave a mighty kick, and fell right into the water stream. He got up, completely soaked. Everyone fell down laughing. "Shut. Up."

Grant pointed to the rust on the wheels. "Man, 20 year of no use, that thing isn't going anywhere without oil!"

Ax sighed and felt his hair. "Aw man, my hair…"

The laughter started again. "Hey! I said shut up! Now, what do we do now?"

Terry and the others began to walk. "What else? We walk!"

After about a mile or so, they came to the end. "Huh. Dead end. What now?"

"Ax, it's just not your day is it? We climb!" Ceil said pointing to a ladder leading up, Terry and Grant were already near the top.

Ax tossed a stone at her to stop her laughing. "Hey, quit it!"

After Ax had made his way up, he stopped to observe the view in front of him. "Whoa, it's bigger than I thought."

The others agreed. "Yeah, you can say that again." Terry said.

Ax did.

"Ha ha."

The others rolled their eyes. "What? He said say it again!"

"Yeah, it was a joke, buddy."

Walking in, they admired the wide open spaces. Looking around, they saw tie off points for ropes, but the ropes themselves had long since deteriorated. Luckily, there was a ladder near by.

They took it down to the floor and stopped at a large, square gaping hole. There were was a large red button near it. Terry pressed it and nothing happened. He pressed it again. And again. And again.

"TERRY!" Grant yelled. "It doesn't work!"

Terry looked at him. "Well, why not?"

Grant looked at him as if he were insane. "From a first guess, there's probably no power!"

"Let's turn the power on." Ceil suggested.

Grant though about that. "Highly unlikely that there will still be power to this place, but sure, why not?"

"Good, it's settled. How do we do that?" Ax asked.

"Control room?" Grant suggested.

And so they went and began to look for the control room. Stopping every so often to check out the equipment and speculate on what was built here.

Grant scoffed at the large metal arms that were placed at the edge of the conveyor belts.

"What's so funny?" Terry asked. "I thought you like this kind of thing?"

He nodded. "I do, but this, this is junk!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, this stuff is not even fit for scrap metal! It's a wonder they ever made something here."

"I don't know, really. Probably car parts or something."

Ceil and Ax had gone ahead to see what was around. Ax came running toward them. "Heeey! Guess what! We found it! We found the control room!"

Grant went wide. "Alright! Let's see it!" Upon entering it, he laughed. "Whoo, this junk's even older than I thought!"

Ceil and Ax looked at Terry confused. "Don't worry, he marvels at how people survived with this stuff."

"Really? It's a mystery. But, never mind that, take a look at this…"

Ceil pointed to a bank of panels along a wall. Grant smiled. "Excellent, you found the circuit breakers. Let's see if we can get power back."

Terry took a closer look at one of the panels. "Do you think this is the one?" He pointed to one in particular; it looked like the rest but instead had what looked like an eye engraved in it. Plus, it was the only one unlocked. Terry flipped it open and was rather shocked to see a light on indicating power. The breaker itself was off.

"Whoa, this place DOES have power. Well? Turn it back on!"

Terry did so and the smallest of hums indicated that it was on. Ceil, Ax, and Grant looked around. Nothing was on, not even a light was on. "Let's go back to that hole, maybe it did something there." Ceil suggested.

They did so, making sure they examined everything to see what was given power. Arriving at the hole, they saw it was actually a cargo elevator shaft. It was open, and looked very rickety. Ceil walked toward it, but Grant stopped her.

"Wait, I don't think we should."

"Why not?"

"Look at it! It's not safe!"

"How do you know?"

Ax joined in. "Well, because everything else is falling apart."

Ceil broke free of Grant's grasp. "Oh please, live a little, you know?" Ceil walked into the elevator. She stomped around, and even jumped up and down a lot. But aside from creaking a little, it never moved. Terry shrugged, and went on it himself. Then Ax did as well.

Grant bit his lip and looked at the elevator. It was true, despite its looks; it wasn't giving way to anything. And with great apprehension, he went on it himself.

"Okay. Now what?"

Ceil was hunched over the control panel to the elevator. "I think we need a code or something to go down…"

Gant came over and looked for himself. There it was, a simple numeric pad. "Well, I don't know the code."

Terry shook his head. "I don't either."

Ax chimed in. "Me neither."

"Hey, there's something engraved on the cover." Ceil said. Taking a closer look, she saw it was a set of numbers. "0181361… Could that be the code?"

Without waiting for an answer, she punched in the numbers. Sure enough, the elevator closed its doors and lowered down very shakily.

Grant went white and held onto anything he could find. "Oh God, this is scary!"

Ceil was undisturbed. "It's still moving, right? It still works so what's so scary about it?"

"You can't feel that?"

"It's just old, you know?"

Finally, the elevator stopped with a bang. The door slid open and an even weirder sight met them. It was a door unlike any other. It looked futuristic and opened with a hiss, letting them into a room that looked way out of place.

"Wow… What on earth do we have here?" Ax said in wonderment.

Grant approached the monstrous computer screen and half visible dome in the center of the room. He took a seat and smiled, his fear completely gone. "It, it's a computer! A very big one, I'd guess… Probably a super-computer of some type."

The others walked up to it. "Is there power to it?"

"No, it seems to be off. There's no way to turn it on from here."

Ceil nodded. Let's see if there are any more rooms like this. They went back to the elevator and Ceil pressed the down button. And down they went, the same door greeting them as well. When this one opened, an even more bizarre sight greeted them.

Ax let out a low whistle. "Weirder and weirder."

Three giant tube stood around a small hatchway and a number of wires and cord led from each of the tubes to an unknown place in the walls.

Each of the tubes was numbered. 1 on the left, 2 in the middle, and 3 on the right.

"Maybe these are coolant tubes…" Terry offered weakly. Grant shook his head.

"No, these are something else. This isn't where you turn it on at." Grant walked over to the hatch and opened it. "Ah ha! Down there! It's down there!"

The others gathered around and looked down it. There was nothing but a shallow pool of foggy water.

Terry looked at Grant. "There? How do you know?"

He smiled. "One of the ways to keep a computer cool is to use water on it. I bet inside that pool is the switch to turn this place on."

They went down to the pool and shivered slightly. "They must use Freon and water to cool it."

Ax shivered. "Good to know, how do we raise it?"

"Good question."

They needn't worry about it, it began to raise itself. Each of them looked on with a different view as it rose.

Ceil thought it was cool.

Terry thought it was a little much.

Ax thought it was too slow.

Grant thought it was elegant.

Finally it stopped.

Ceil then noticed something similar to the circuit breaker. "Hey look! It has that same eye logo on it!"

"Huh, you're right, it does!" Grant reached towards the eye. The eye slid down revealing a knife switch. It was, as expected off.

Grant's hand crept ever closer.

But would he do it? Would he reawaken an evil from 20 years ago?

Or would they leave and never return?

20 years went in to the creation of this day. 20 long years, just for this moment.

Just for a simple act of flipping a switch.

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Next Chapter Soon!