You are in the hundred chapter garden. Act 2
Spectacles, A caged cat, Blacked out
My real response-time to hearing Keith had passed out was short. Part of my mind was already trying to think of ways to help, trying to find explanations. Smacked in the head by a big woman security guard? Fallen down a flight of stairs? Freckle was showing me the way deeper into the house. I tried to keep up. Through the doors to the right. A hallway with a different atmosphere. Was this part underground? In the hillside? We stayed on the same level. The floor ongoing rubbery blue smoothness. No thresholds. Walls flowy and curved. Adobe-like with subtle relieved decorations. I ran past colourful sculptures and huge paintings, lit by invisible sources. Many doors. Receded black panels with no handles, just a thin line marking the rectangle of the passage into another space. The bird’s back in front of me, its speckled wings rustling and the tips and tail sweeping the floor like a bride’s train, blocking the view of Freckle’s feet and legs, made me feel as if flowing through these endless corridors was a waking dream. Me half running. Trying to remember the turns and the T-junctions. The sporadic crossings.
I ran right through Freckle as I noticed too late he had stopped, distracted by a red tribal face with football-size pupils that were in fact footballs—eyeballs. We’d stopped in front of a door. The same black panel as the others. Closed.
“Is he here? How do I open…?” But the panel already swooped inward, revealing a huge space twice the height. Double stairs descending into a classic library. I lifted my spectacles to check the realness of the rows and rows of antique bookcases, imported from some old institution along with all the aged furniture. I should have brought the wheelbarrow was my first response.
Catching my breath, I walked to the hand-carved balustrade and looked down. A shiny mosaic floor. Straight below, Keith lay face-down. His torso bare. I turned to question Freckle, but he was gone. I ran down shouting, annoyed and angry and scared.
“Tell me what has happened. Has he been out more than twenty minutes now? Why isn’t he wearing a shirt?”
No answer.
I focused on how Keith was lying there. No blood. First assuming he had dropped from the balustrade. The inner image of him falling head-first. I looked up. The giant bird spread its crazy wings to jump, making me duck and dive on reflex—a ridiculous response to a bit of light and sound.
“Can you not fucking do that? And deploy some useful assistance?” I yelled out, sliding on my knees. Keith seemed calm, like sleeping, moving a bit because of the noise I made. No visible wounds. He lay in front of an opened panel revealing digital equipment. He softly snored. Like a drunk. I leaned closer. Smelled his breath. God, he was drunk. Passed out by alcohol? He fucking fainted? Had he been drunk all evening, preparing to get to this level? I couldn’t believe that. But what did I know about Keith? He raided dead people by day. I looked around and did spot the bottle, far away on a very long table in the mid-section. Two huge lemonade glasses closer by. What a donkey dork. I stretched my legs on the polished marble. An underground library? This was surreal. I leaned back, annoyed.
“And where’s Mig, Freckle? Crawled shit-faced onto a shelf in between History and Insurgence?”
I gave Keith a push with my foot and turned on my bum.
“It’s not what you think,” said an unstable Freckle. “I’ve found the security files and could replay what happened. Keith and I were able to contain the situation so far. Aphram is caged, but so is Miss Monsoon. Shall I show you?”
I didn’t even bother to ask questions, just nodded and rose to my feet. Freckle faded.
I heard Mig’s voice from above, entering the library.
“Ralph’s office is down here, other side of the book-place.”
Now I saw her, dancing down the stairs, Keith dribbling, looking pale like a corpse.
“You can’t just walk in there and steal his journals!” he whined. “You will be—”
“I need a drink,” said Mig, interrupting Keith.
She walked straight along the left wall. I followed them, feeling like a ghost visiting the past. Mig had clearly been here before—opening the liquor cabinet and deliberately choosing the whiskey bottle now on the table, and giving that to Keith. She grabbed the two glasses and held them up to be filled. Her smile and eyes deeming no talk-back.
“Stop,” I called, because my mind was working overtime; my eye had caught the water dispenser and bottles of syrups on the lower shelves. The two figures froze. I felt the unrest watching this replay with Keith in an unknown state. My guess was half a glass of whiskey on an empty stomach, maybe hypoglycaemic? He needed fluids and sugar. Twenty minutes was god-awful long. Maybe Keith had a condition I wasn’t aware of.
“The system is tasered, like an electric fence,” said Freckle’s voice. “He was shocked trying to override the unforeseen lockdown.”
“Can you read his vitals?”
Several seconds of silence as I prepared a high-sugar drink of blueberries. I could use one too. Drank half the glass and refilled it.
“He seems okay, starting to wake up. Heart rate slightly elevated. Sorry, this system is complicated and extensive, and I need a third of my capacity to keep Aphram down.”
As I approached, Keith was sitting upright, his head hanging down, softly moaning. I sat down in front and touched his shoulder. He looked at me empty-eyed. A vague smile of relief.
“Here, drink this. Freckle is showing me what happened.”
Keith looked at the blue liquid.
“Freckle?” said Keith, double-tongued.
I put the glass on the floor.
“Sugar and water,” I said as I rose to my feet again. “I’ll be back.”
I ran back.
“Can you increase the speed, Freck? Skip the boring bits?”
They both emptied their glass, followed by a refill. Mig took the bottle, walked to the mid-section and put her empty glass down, then proceeded dancing down the aisle to the back of the library. Keith tried to set down his still-full glass.
Mig gave him a bossy look, one hand on her hip, the other threatening to refill his glass. Keith took his second shot, causing a body quake. Miggy laughed out loud.
Then they fast-forwarded to the glass wall in the back—an office space at the other end. Mig stopped ten metres off.
“Biometric scanners,” she explained to Keith, putting her catsuit body through a quick series of poses. “Girls like me have high clearance; I am on the list. You are not. I can get in, you have to get me out.” Her index poked his belly button.
“Lose the shirt,” she said.
Keith grinned.
“I mean it, come on, we haven’t got all night!”
He did.
“I rub you in plenty of alcohol to make you invisible, and then you come in right behind me.”
She immediately started splashing the poor man with the bottle’s contents. I couldn’t help but laugh. But my mind was also racing. She took his hand and led him behind her toward the glass wall. She walked right through. Keith hesitated and was stopped by the glass quickly sliding closed. He cried out Miggy’s name. Her clear voice became muffled. She was standing behind the monumental desk, leaned on the edge of it for a second, then in slow motion collapsed and disappeared behind the heavy furniture. Keith was panicking outside the glass cage, not sure what to do before he decided to run back. Already very unstable, as if he was dizzy, he stepped through his real version sitting there, jaw dropped and dazed. The virtual Keith opened the already open panel, took a small device from his back pocket, hesitated—seemingly unsure where to plug it in—then decided. His whole body jerked as he slammed against the floor and then faded.
The real Keith was looking at me.
“Augmented glasses?” he asked.
At least his brain wasn’t completely fried.
I nodded.
“Freckle was here to help,” I said.
Keith looked up at me, then at the cupboard with the shimmering devices—a dumb expression on his drooping face.
“I didn’t bring Freckle,” he mumbled and tried to get on his hands and knees, but sort of fell over.
“Whooow,” I called out and caught his head just before it would hit the floor.
“Freckle? Are you still here?” I asked mid-air.
I waited with growing tension, listening intensely as I half-sat with Keith, who was totally limp while trying to sit up again. The first thing I noticed were the bookcase lights slowly dimming, then the central row of ceiling lights next—a quick, glitchy fade—leaving the office lights in the glass cage as the last bright source. A few seconds later they too switched off. Now only the guiding lights near the floor gave a candlelight-level glow and the panel with the racked computer units with all its glimmering and flashing points. The thing produced the buzz of a cooling system working overtime. Each time it produced a sharp beep, one of the units shut down, then the next below that, until all twelve of them were dark and a total silence follwed the total blackout of the library. No light, no sound. Except for my quickened breath and the whimpering of Keith.