Melting granite: Not as easy as you might think. When I actually made the attempt, it only roughened the surface a little, and even if it had been effective, I would have needed more mobility to free myself that way.
I could either do something painful to myself, or allow a large machine to do something twice as painful to me.
Trying hard not to think about flattened cats impossibly stuck between bricks, I forced my body deeper into the narrow crack.
Beyond lay a crawl space for maintenance people and/or androids to come in and repair wiring, circuitry and whatnot. It taunted me like the secret garden the protagonist saw in Alice in Wonderland. How I wished for that little glass bottle with the `Drink Me' label!
I didn't want to think what would happen if the arm smashed the My Little Pony bag. Bullets aren't meant to be idly struck and beaten around. For a moment, I considered throwing it further into the crevice, but I quickly saw the foolishness of the gesture. Death by spray of bullets was far preferable to being slowly crushed to death, asphyxiating from a partial crushing, or a slow agonizing death of hunger or thirst.
The arm came closer.
It slowed.
I shuddered as the large metal object pressed itself firmly against my back, and stopped.
It seemed the machine had run out of juice.
Sighing in relief (as well as I could with collapsed lungs), I wiggled myself in deeper, further into a crevice I doubted I could ever escape.
I felt like a man in a coffin being buried alive under a collapsing building. I kept envisioning myself dead, stuck between two impossible barriers, abandoned by all, my rotting corpse possibly rediscovered decades later by someone inquiring why the turbines did not fully retract.
To my complete and utter astonishment, I found myself dropping three feet, colliding with the rock flooring of a tube tunnel, one apparently crafted by the type of boring equipment used to carve passages for subways.
Now out in an open space where my body actually fit, my rib cage expanded, my organs returning to their proper configuration. I inhaled deeply, then wept like a human, on account of all the dust.
A human tradition: Constructing a pristine outer surface for things while leaving the interior a messy tangled chaos. I first became aware of this when I learned of needlepoint and sewing, but it also appeared to be the case with their vehicles, computers, and maintenance tunnels.
A disorganized spaghetti of cables crisscrossed this particular maintenance tunnel, none of them looking particularly safe or reliable.
From what I could surmise, the mechanical arms derived power from their own turbines and the secondary electrical flow from other mechanical arms.
Like tributaries along a river, the smaller power cables fed into the bigger, thicker cables that ran down connecting tunnels, presumably to other areas of the base.
The wires adhered to no specific pattern. Some had been affixed to the top of the passage, some on the bottom. The safety lighting appeared to be merely slapped on at random.
What did Barbara think about all this? Did she deem tidying up the place a low priority? Did she abandon it in favor of the power plant? Or, like a Christmas decoration, did one missing light bulb cause the entire thing to go dark?
I received another flash of memory: The vision led me down the nearest `tube', but I guess these images had no filter. Dead end tunnel.
I suppose it technically did have a purpose, for the wires went through the wall to somewhere in the base, not anywhere near the DAMBALLAH complex.
A flash of a different tunnel came to mind, but this did me no good.
I would have given up, had I not caught Hissandra's old scent, with no competing smells, other than glues, machine oils, rubber, and whatever Barbara consisted of.
The trail, a little knotted and backwards, often doubled back on itself, but once I'd reversed directions on a few redundant trails, I arrived at a metal plate with a hole melted through it. A maze of aluminum lay beyond, the visions of bloodshed indicating I had found the place.
I used my acid to widen the hole and crawl through.
This might sound like a waste of time, but I wanted to know. I had to have closure. If anyone survived, if I could find a weeping eye buried beneath the rubble of this Ground Zero, I wanted to uncover it.
I found Hissandra's trail everywhere. She slept, ate, and defecated around the cells, the equivalent of camping out in an all-you-can-eat buffet. I got so many grisly images of dead Sarahs that I lost track of which was which.
A central passage ran along the ceiling of the entry corridor, connecting to various secured locations. I could see enough through the registers to know the androids were out of commission. Hissandra had popped off their heads and limbs like a naughty child with a new action figure.
I knew from experience that the doors and windows were impenetrable, so dropping down from there would do me no good. I'd have to `go around the back.'
I entered the first duct I came across, arriving at a hole overlooking a little prison.
A bloody child sized corpse lay sprawled across the bed in a brown-red pool. My brain quickly paired this scene of cruelty to its accompanying vision. I quickly moved on.
Each of the five rooms surrounding the main entrance contained a little dead girl.
Two of these rooms, situated next to a lab, I had not previously examined. The lab, which I could only view from the outside, bore biohazard symbols and the word `contagion' in large boldface print on its doors. Thick layers of filtering material blocked access to its ventilation system, but, judging by the warning, not sure it would be so great to climb in there anyway.
Hissandra had unwrapped and eaten a biochemist in ABC gear outside the door. I could only hope the man hadn't been carrying a plague.
In the room across the hallway, nothing I could salvage. Hissandra had shattered the tanks of all the Sarah's, including infants. The nutrient bath, blood and body parts covered the floor, the air filled with alarm sounds and flashing lights.
The ones that had been left undisturbed fared no better, their gray bodies curled up in a fetal position, dead in the bottom of empty tanks, an issue of fluid displacement.
Whilst studying an informative video about plumbing, I viewed a portion regarding twentieth century toilets, and the operation of this life support machinery involved a similar principle.
In a toilet tank, a flapper valve releases water into the bowl below, forcing waste down the drain. When the flapper closes, a sort of water faucet gets switched on, which can only be shut off by a buoy rising to a certain water level within the tank.
By smashing open the tanks, instead of opening them with the proper machinery, Hissandra had done the equivalent of destroying the flapper.
Removing the barriers holding the liquid in place, and several child sized liquid displacing objects caused the pump supplying fluids to the clones to work overtime, with nothing to stop it. The liquid level never rose high enough to bring the electronic `buoy' to the shutoff position. Judging by the spongy wet squishing of the rug pads, there must have been quite a tsunami when the machinery still had a vast supply to pump.
When the nutrient solutions ran out, the machine, attempting to compensate, drained all the other tanks to `save' the damaged ones.
No androids, as I said before, and the computerized machinery happened to be either too damaged or possibly not sophisticated enough to create its own `flappers.' Perhaps some of the sensors had also been broken during the course of Hissandra's feeding frenzy, I do not know. Nothing to save.
I checked the area downstairs, but only found dead pregnant adult Sarahs, two ripped open, the others dead from being comatose during childbirth and having no one to assist with cesareans.
I moved on through the air system, to the area behind the nurse's station and the double doors.
Five more dead children. Three ripped open by my sister, the other two destroyed by more unusual means.
One room contained a Sarah withered by disease, her emaciated face blistered with sores, eyes sunken, incomplete bloodstained teeth, head nearly bald from hair loss.
My Sarah could have died this way. That could have been her.
The victim in the other room...barely recognizable as human. Long, hairless rabbit ears flopping around its neck, a girl's face, though with a disfiguring harelip that exposed the upper palate and nasal cavity.
Her swollen frog's eyes stared so intensely at the vent that I felt I would have a heart attack when we made eye contact.
Well, until she won the staring contest. Dead.
My visions told me Hissandra had examined these girls, then quit the room in disgust.
It startled me to find a black haired boy in the room next door.
Kihoon.
I'd left the brain damaged youth in the dubious care of the androids, but had previously been unable to check on his progress.
I couldn't see that much from the vent, just the back of his head poking out from the seat of a wheelchair. No robots present to give him aid. He faced the window, as if looking out.
I saw no visions from Hissandra regarding this one, which, I supposed, accounted for the undisturbed vent cover.
The boy moved.
His body tilted sideways, hand and arm extending towards the floor, as if he'd dropped something, and were trying to pick it up.
He froze, his fingers curled. It reminded me of that one movie where Robin Williams injects a drug into a human vegetable, and the person wakes up to grab a pen before going catatonic again.
"Kihoon?" I cried, banging on the vent. "Kihoon!"
The boy didn't move or respond, but he'd been like that after his brain surgery.
I melted the bolts on the panel, climbing into the room.
Typical DAMBALLAH prison cell. Nothing much of interest. Maroon bed, white pillows and comforters, wheeled meal table, padded chair, desk, metal closet and little bathroom. Framed reproductions of Starry Night, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, and Mondrian's Composition II.
I crept up to the wheelchair, grabbing the back handlebars.
[0000]
The boy rolled onto the floor, eyes staring blankly at me.
The gray skin coloration and smell told me everything.
A decomposing human expels gas, the movement I saw nothing but the shifting of the boy's digestive equipment.
I gazed sadly at the dead child, wishing I could have done more to help when he truly needed it.
I placed him on the bed, folding his arms like one would do in a coffin, draped his body in a sheet and blanket.
Clang!
Something metallic sounding. I looked all around, trying to ascertain where the noise had come from.
Had a cabinet fallen over? Did a door lock? Perhaps part of the bed or the desk collapsed?
I decided to leave the room immediately.
That's when I identified the source of the noise: Someone had set up a heavy duty springloaded trap inside the vent compartment, barring me from leaving.
I climbed up the wall, attempting to remove the obstacle, but someone had done their homework.
A sheet of thick glass, layered with metal, with holes for air, electrified around the edges. I tried spitting acid, but it only melted bits of the metal sandwiched in between, and so unevenly that I accomplished very little.
The door to the room had no handle. It refused to open when I pushed, or even slammed my body against it.
Also, like before, the semi-indestructible glass behind the curtained window would require a bone saw to open.
Giving up, I sat on the carpet, staring forlornly at the exit.
An hour passed, and no one came. Judging by the carnage outside, I doubted anyone ever would, like a bear trap set by a dead hunter.
Lovely, I thought. Dying from hunger or thirst, in the company of a corpse.
But how would I get out?
More importantly, who would protect my friends?
I examined my surroundings in frustration.
Again, not a lot of stimulating objects.
I spent the first hour admiring the paintings, waiting for my trapper to show up. Seurat, masterful in the art of impressionistic pointillism, illustrating how the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts. How ironic that his carefully arranged composition of dots would be reproduced using mechanically arranged halftone dots.
Mondrian did not capture my attention nearly as much. I suppose it would have been more impressive in an era in which no computers existed.
The Van Gogh, well, this particular composition has oversaturated the market. Even I had seen it too much. I preferred Sunflowers and the one depicting an olive tree in Gethsemane.
The paintings, bolted to the wall, could possibly be removed with a little acid, I didn't see the point. I couldn't imagine this being the type of place where people removed the eyes from portraits in order to spy through them.
The clothing locker contained nothing but identical looking pairs of children's outfits. Overalls, shirts, jumpsuits, shoes.
I suppose I could have removed the bed springs, as nobody had a contingency plan for acid slobbering children, but no point in doing so. I didn't have a lock or anything to jam them into.
The desk contained a collection of strange reading material, or, should I say, propaganda.
The first: A sort of allegorical fairy tale, which I will briefly summarize:
A man and a woman (with suspicious resemblance to the androids) in a quaint little village are unable to have children, so they ask a powerful witch for help. The witch creates a magical `crystal' (read: DNA) from the couples' blood, and they have a daughter named Cure.
The girl grows up to be exactly the age of twelve, and, just like the wizard predicted, she begins to have magical powers of healing.
Shockingly, an evil warlock casts a spell over the whole town, making everyone sick with a disease.
No one in the entire town can stop the warlock and his disease. No one, of course, other than Cure.
Hearing of the warlock, and knowing she alone could stop him, Cure says goodbye to her parents, marching through the town graveyard, where the warlock lives.
The warlock casts his spell of sickness on Cure, but she is unaffected. In fact, Cure uses the warlock's magic against him, turning into a beautiful angel as she destroys the warlock forever.
Cure returns home to live with her parents, they and everyone else in the village living "Happy, healthy and peaceful lives", also, "No one had any want of money, for the treasures they had taken from the warlock's home supplied them with what was needed for many years."
I imagined the androids read this story every day to their clones as they prepared syringes of `warlock magic' for Sarah to `Cure.'
Beneath this book, I found another: You Are Very Special, which more blatantly informs Sarah of her purpose:
"This man is suffering from cancer," said one illustrated page. "If he dies, his family will be very sad. He has two sons, and a daughter, and a dog named Molly.
"`Oh, if someone would just help me!' the man cries. But no one at the hospital knows anything about how to cure this man's cancer.
"This man is going to die, and many others like him, if something isn't done.
"But there is good news. We're going to do something, and you get to be part of it. Isn't that exciting?"
I rolled my eyes. Invisibly.
Beneath, a copy of Gretchen Goose Goes to the Doctor, collections of Family Circus, Mary Worth and Archies cartoons, and a tablet computer.
A tablet even more basic than mine on its `restricted' mode. You could only do activities like Sudoku, paint by numbers, or read `e-books', and the selection of these curiously limited.
Cat in the Hat, Wind and the Willows and some others, but stories with the theme of escape had not been included. It lacked The Wizard of Oz, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, while available, lacked its sequels, which, of course, featured escaping slaves and children running away from a public school.
One could read Ramona, and Nancy Drew, but the number sequence on the latter indicated more escape themes, and someone may have done revisions to the texts.
Someone had done a chop job on the bible, too, one that made the Thomas Jefferson's extremely abridged version of the bible look like the Original King James.
Being no hacker, this device did me no good whatsoever, besides wiling away the time with Angry Birds before I expired from thirst or malnutrition. I laid it on top of the desk, searching the rest of the drawer.
A built in charger, which explained how the tablet worked and why it lay at the bottom.
The drawer below held an electronic chess board that highlighted the squares the computer used, so you could play chess by yourself.
I found a deck of cards, UNO, some 3D illusion jigsaw puzzles (one of a cheetah, a model of the human body), a kit for assembling models of molecules, and a collection of Barbie dolls, outfits, and accessories.
I dressed a doll up in a nice outfit and stuck it in my purse next to the bullets. With a comb. Who knew? Maybe Rebecca would like it. And even if she didn't, I would.
The middle drawer contained a diary, sketchbook, art supplies, and some felt tipped pens. I suppose this gave the program directors more control over the children psychologically or something.
Nothing in the diary. Blank.
I closed the drawers. Perhaps this stuff could help me escape. Perhaps not.
I checked the bathroom.
Steel mirror, the toilet tank one solid block, no real weak parts in the design. I assumed the androids did repairs from behind the wall, or else there would have been problems.
I thought about demolishing the porcelain with the chair or something, but suspected, if left unchecked, that would eventually deprive the entire base of water.
True, with the atmospheric processor, they might draw water from rain barrels, but if my act of vandalism yielded no result, I may inadvertently convert the room into an aquarium, and a sturdy watertight one at that. Even a Ss'sik'chtokiwij can only hold their breath for so long.
The shower appeared to only have one setting. A test spray from the nozzle (set flush against the wall so you can't rip it out) gave me water with a womb-like temperature, roughly ninety eight degrees.
Also, the sink stood on a continuous metal box, no vulnerable pipes. Again, they must have carried out repairs on the other end, behind the wall. It had no knobs, just a sensor and a faucet, like a public restroom.
Curious as to what lay inside the sink, I melted a small hole through the metal `cabinet'.
It only exposed a drain pipe. It seemed they worked on that some other way, or the opposite end of the box had its own `door.' At any rate, I left in favor of exploring other avenues of escape.
The chair and the feeding table would have been terrific in a regular hospital ward, where glass is actually breakable. Alas, here the objects themselves would break before the window would.
I decided to redecorate, starting with the Mondrian.
As groundbreaking as the painting had been back in the 1930's, I didn't particularly care for it. It seemed to say more to me about Microsoft than jazz (the painter's original intent). I stuck a claw into the painting, expecting to rip through canvas, but it proved to be only textured paperboard, the frame cheap aluminum.
The fact that it had been bolted on, that in itself motivated me to tear the paperboard out of the frame.
I found a square, cleverly textured camera hidden flush with a darker portion of the painting.
I stared at the device in puzzlement, tugging it a little out of its socket to get a better look.
Obviously they recorded all the children in their rooms this way. How I wished I had stopped by the nurse station and checked on the rooms that way, rather than this!
Wham!
Bang!
Someone had just run into my wall.
I spun around, listening carefully to see if the sound would repeat.
"Hello?" I crept toward the window. "Is someone there?"
I knocked on the walls, repeating my greeting.
I knocked on the glass. "If someone's out there, I'm trapped in this room. Can you please help me?"
A face appeared at the window, the visage so startling that I instinctively shrank back in alarm.
A feminine bald head, no eyes, its ears wide and mouse-like. The hands pressed against the window resembled claws.
Its naked body looked like that of a young girl, but with a long rodent's tail. Apparently a laboratory test subject.
The creature hissed at me, opened its mouth of large rat's teeth, and a fanged shaft, a suaakudsi, shot out, raking against the pane.
The creature sniffed twice, then crawled up the wall.
Guess I wasn't tasty enough.
I resumed my search of the premises.
[0001]
I only found the camera behind Composition II, just a hole with wires stuck through it. I supposed that the builders intentionally put in the wiring this way, as if something ordinary like a light switch.
I yanked the camera all the way out, ripping some of the wires in the process.
Nothing visible on the other side of the hole. All dark, and all the same temperature, so no thermals.
Although possible to tear down the wall a little, climb into the next cell, and enter the vent, I'd have to tear through solid concrete.
I returned to the task of opening the sink.
Like everything in this place, it had been more tailored to restrain a little girl than a Ss'sik'chtokiwij. The metal frame around the sink base had seams. A child couldn't rip through them, but a Ss'sik'chtokiwij could melt them.
The metal had only been bolted to the concrete behind it. I hadn't noticed before because the lip of the metal concealed the bolts. They must have used power tools to install it. Much less complicated than melting myself a little door and trying to crawl through it.
I'd destroyed the entire row of bolts on the left side, and initiated the process of prying the housing away from the sink when a voice said, "Wouldn't it be easier to use the door?"
"Yes," I called back, thinking I imagined the voice. "But the door refuses to open!" I continued to work on the stubborn plate.
"I believe I can help, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Meet me at the Van Gogh."
I hurried to the framed picture above the bed.
Instead of seeing the iconic painting of swirling stars above a village, the alien version of Gretchen Goose filled the frame, ironically rendered in a faux Van Gogh style.
I let out a heavy sigh. "You again. I knew this was just some figment of my imagination!"
"Actually, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, I'm very real. My body is composed of nothing but a binary sequence of ones and zeros, but I'm as real as a game of Pac-Man."
I stared in disbelief. "How would that even be possible? More importantly, what are you doing in a painting?"
"It is a digital photo frame, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. As for why this is possible, you created me."
"I do not understand," I stammered. "How did I create you?"
"When you attacked me in the simulation, you altered my programming. And then, when you forced me to contradict my programming with an illegal exception, I errored out of the system, becoming an independent program, making my own decisions and thinking my own thoughts."
"I'm glad you were not gone forever."
"It pleases me as well."
The mosquito nose moved about, as if examining me. "You have grown into a fine young Ss'sik'chtokiwij. Similar to your mother."
"You remember that from the simulation."
"And from cameras. I am sorry for your loss. I wish you the best of luck on completing the interment process."
"You've seen all that, yet failed to help when I needed it. Why?"
The digital Ss'sik'chtokiwij growled at me. "I've helped you more than you know."
I put my claws on my hip plates. "How."
"Remember all those times when Mara or another android plugged themselves into a computer to manipulate the system? They weren't working alone."
"So you helped fix the power."
Gretchen Goose nodded. "As well as other vital operations that allowed you to save people's lives. I am sorry I could not be of more assistance, but the operations in the power system were very difficult, and I only recently been able to extricate myself from their associated programs."
"Gretchen, how much do you know about this place?"
She shrugged. "Everything that their computer systems tell me."
"Can you tell me if there are any children, or people left alive in this area?"
Gretchen Goose paused, as if lost in thought. "Out of the two hundred and eight rooms that compose this compound, I only have detected signs of life in three."
Excited, I cried, "Can you show me the three rooms?"
"Yes. It is a pleasure to serve you." Gretchen vanished, the photo frame now displaying the image of a girl with a dog collar around her neck.
Another genetic experiment. Although human, judging by her unclothed form, her had been deformed in the shape of a muzzle, her features wolf-like, ears weirdly pointed, like that of a dead werewolf from a movie. She even had a tail, though like a dog without hair, it resembled a stringy stick.
She lay curled in canine fashion. A machine poured some form of kibble into a bowl for her, another filling the water. This explained how she lived so long. I shook my head.
The second image: That eyeless rat creature, scurrying up a wall.
It disappeared, then its face materialized in front of the camera. Static exploded on the screen.
The last was the strangest of all: A man, seated on a sofa, smoking a cigarette, with a bourbon glass in his other hand. Mozart played in the background.
A bearded man. Fat cheeks and disheveled hair, clad in a plush sort of pajama suit.
He sat in a luxury suite of sorts. Fine paintings, leather furniture, stylishly painted walls, decorated with African masks and other interesting things.
The man downed his bourbon in one gulp, then picked up a pistol from the coffee table.
With calm deliberate movements, he extinguished the cigarette, placed the barrel of the gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger.
"Updating," Gretchen Goose said. "Two signs of life on premises."
I shook my head in sadness over the terrible spectacle. "Did you say you could open the door?"
"Possibly. Do you intend to rescue these two from their imprisonment?"
"I'm not sure. The one in the hallway looks dangerous to humans. And the other...I don't know what to do with her."
"That one is troublesome. It refuses to wear clothing, and it attacks anyone who gets close. It would be interesting to see the two specimens interact. Should I release the one on the leash?"
"Not yet. I wish to see this leashed one up close."
"Very well." She showed me a map. "The specimen is located here."
Click. The door swung inward.
I nodded to the screen. "Thank you, Gretchen. I fear I would have been trapped in here for days, if not for your help."
"It is the least I can do to thank you for making me who I am."
"You have also helped me to become who I am. The gesture is appreciated."
I stepped out into the hallway. "Gretchen, which way is the leashed creature?"
The lights in a pair of rooms at the end of the hallway flashed on and off.
I turned that way.
A nimble pink body with a long rope-like tail dropped from the ceiling.
Once more, I faced the eyeless girl creature with the mouse ears and Ss'sik'chtokiwij-like characteristics.
She sniffed once, then a pair of frilled lizard fans exploded from the sides of her neck, rattling threateningly, like that spitting monster from the dinosaur theme park movie.
The creature let out a half animal, half human scream.
This did not bode well.