Post by Seto Kenji on May 24, 2014 13:47:23 GMT
Date: March 7th
Time: 9pm
“You’re still here, Kenji?” Seto jerked at the sound of his name. The spacious research lab he shared with Doctor Mark Branson had been silent and empty for the last hour. All of the assistants had already gone home. On the long metal work tables each of their microscopes was covered with a drop cloth, making the semi dark lab seem filled with tiny, narrow ghosts. Their samples were all slotted neatly in the slide boxes, every folder of individual research had been carefully locked in the communal filing cabinet by the door, to which only he and Doctor Branson had keys. All of this Seto took in at a glance, paranoid about failing to follow procedure.
“Was that a question?” Seto muttered, poised above his own microscope. He’d been intently staring at a slide of blood, flipping between this one of a normal person, and the other of a Potential. Doctor Branson’s huge frame had filled the door without his notice and the man had probably been here for some time. The thought made Seto’s stomach twist. What if it had been someone other than Mark who’d been watching him? He needed to pay better attention to his surroundings.
“I realized I forgot my badge when people kept staring at me on the street!” Mark smiled but his closely cropped beard hid most of the effect. He was a heavy man without being fat and nondescript looking without being ugly; exactly the kind of person one’s eyes slide right over and forget about once he was not in someone’s immediate presence. It was both advantageous and depressing.
“You’ve done that twice this week,” Seto replied with a glare as he pointed his pen at Mark’s desk. Their desks were pushed together so that he could have simply reached out and plucked the I.D. from its place on the lamp but he did not. He didn’t want his fingerprints on Mark’s badge.
“I have, haven’t I?” Mark rubbed his eyes and came fully into the room, plodding toward the desk. “I just can’t seem to get much sleep. There’s this…noise that keeps me up all night. Well, not just me. Half the outer ring, truth be told.”
Mark made a swipe for the badge. His fingers clipped it and sent it spiraling into the waste basket on the other side of the desk. “Frick,” he muttered, bending to retrieve it. Seto narrowed his eyes at the use of such language but it was to be expected from someone like Mark, who lived on the outer ring.
“What kind of noise?” Seto asked, in spite of himself. He did not like to take an interest in coworkers’ lives. It was too much of an investment in someone he might not ever see again. This was something he tried to not dwell on but there it was. Mark was especially hard not to get to know since his every thought was broadcast to the world at large.
Seto had worked very diligently within himself and had formed a respectable opinion of Mark that did not go too near dislike or affection. Though Mark was a bit scatterbrained, he was brilliant and that was what made Seto nervous. People like that, too smart but too stupid to keep their mouth shut, tended not to be anywhere very long. His hand began to shake and he stuffed it under his leg.
“Loud,” said Mark. “Think…megaphone loud. Speaker loud. Except,” he shuddered. “I don’t know. It’s difficult to describe. Whenever I do get sleep I have nightmares about it. One of my buddies thinks it’s a ghost, if you can believe that.”
“I can’t, actually,” Seto didn’t try to keep the bite out of his voice. “But, you think it’s not human?” He leaned away from the microscope. Mark paled and looked back over his shoulder at the open door. Seto too realized his mistake and stood quickly.
“What nonsense,” he said suddenly. “Look, take a sleeping pill. It’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing?” Mark pinned his badge to his coat and took Seto’s blood slide off the microscope for him and slotted it into the box. Seto cleared his papers, slid them into the folder, taking it to the cabinet and locking them inside. He and Mark darted out into the hallway, each looking up and down in search of any other person.
They were alone.
“Look,” Mark whispered, smiling up at the camera on the hallway’s ceiling as they headed to the elevator. “You’re the smartest man I know. Just come to my place tonight. I’m sure once you hear it-”
“Good night, Doctor Branson,” Seto cut across him. They were in the building’s echoing lobby now and the night security guard was looking at them. Both men nodded to the dark eyed young man as they passed him and into the chilly, Biome night.
“Good night, Doctor Kenji,” Mark retorted stiffly and headed left, toward the outer ring. Seto watched him go with mixed feelings. Curiosity gnawed at the edges of his imagination. He did not believe in ghosts, but he did believe in the real possibility that whatever this was could be of real value in his research. On the other hand, he might be being watched right now.
His palms began to sweat, even as he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care. Let them watch. They wouldn’t see any threat in him. He’d been working for them for the last ten years! If nothing of that ilk had come from him then, it certainly couldn’t now.
Right?
His mouth felt dry as though he hadn’t finished his last cup of water a few minutes ago and he had to lean against the wall to avoid looking like he might be in the throes of a seizure. What an idiotic thing to have said, he thought bitterly. ‘Was it human?’ Like a new lab assistant, he’d said his thought out loud for anyone and everyone to hear. The brick of the building snagged on his hair and he pulled away, rubbing the back of his head.
No one was coming through the shadows yet. He ran one hand over his chest absently while the other hand gripped the crucifix in his pocket. People were mostly gone home now but a few were still leaving work. A group of lab coats from the skyscraper across the street were coming toward him. They were a blend of men and woman, none really speaking to each other and all walking in uniform step. He caught the tail end of their group and followed them to the left, the way Mark had gone.
When they reached the public transport hub, Seto flashed the inside of his wrist like most of the group, though some had to fish in their pocket for chips. It was the chip people he hovered near once they all boarded the train compartment. At each stop more and more of his new group left until he was left standing next to two young women who, he thought with some reasonable conviction, were interns.
Seto stepped off the train onto the open cement platform and was rather abruptly thrust into city. There was no train station here to ease the transition. He turned up the collar of his lab coat and glanced over at the two girls who had not moved from his side once the train left. They were staring at him with wide eyes and he wondered, not for the first time, if he had a smear of blood somehow on his forehead.
That had happened before and people had given him a wide birth. He subtly ran his fingers across his face and, when he felt nothing, frowned at the students.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“You’re Doctor Branson’s friend,” one of them said. She was unfortunate looking with a rather decidedly big chin and puffy bags under her dull blue eyes. Her friend was a bit prettier but plain with a pinched face.
“Friend is going a bit far,” Seto began but then thought better of it and said instead, “Yes. Do you live near Doctor Branson? He said something about wanting me to hear a noise that’s been going on.”
The girls moved closer together, not unlike sheep tightening up against a wolf, with their mouths clamped shut and their eyes growing round.
“How interesting,” the plain one said with an unconvincing air of nonchalant carelessness. “There has been loud music. Good night.” As one the girls turned and moved hurriedly away from him. Seto set off after them.
“Wait! What kind of music? Megaphone loud?” His voice naturally had a soft cadence that put people at ease even if he meant insult but tonight the sound sent the women into a dead run. He watched them flee into the darkness, slowing his own pace and working his tongue against the side of his cheek. When they were tiny white specks darting around the corner of an old apartment building he turned and glared up at the dark clouded sky.
“No fake stars tonight?” he whispered to himself and shoved both hands into the pockets of his lab coat. A loud growl erupted from his stomach. When had he last eaten? He flicked his wrist over and squinted at his watch face. Six hours ago. Not relishing the thought of a train ride home without at least something resembling food, Seto turned full circle, looking for a store of some sort.
The layout of the city was fairly simple. Everything was set up grid style and though each sector was different, the rough layout was nearly identical, especially in the slums. If he went passed that bar, there would no doubt be a store only a few minutes away. People in the slums had to buy food too. He wondered if the store was equipped to scan his wrist, since he didn’t bother to carry chips around with him.
The store was indeed only a few minutes walk from the platform and was populated with a few people here and there. It wasn’t overly large and the selection wasn’t what he was used to but he found a bag of something he suspected was candy but could easily have been dried figs and went to the counter to pay for it. As he walked the aisles he stared hard into every person’s face that he passed. This was difficult to keep up, especially when the person was rude and didn’t look away first.
The common denominator everyone shared was that they looked haggard. They all had dark rings under their eyes or a sunken look about their cheeks. Their eyes darted about and most looked like the nervous wreck he felt like most of the time. Part of him demanded that he take someone by the shoulder and ask them if they couldn’t sleep because of a megaphone loud sound but he couldn’t bring himself.
Whenever someone did meet his gaze he dropped his eyes to the floor quickly and moved on, clutching his bag to his chest. The store clerk was the only one he could look at and maintain eye contact with. It was expected. It was polite. …it was an opportunity.
“Find everything you need, sir?” the clerk asked.
“No,” Seto said, quirking his eyebrows at the stupidity of the question. “But I did find what I wanted.” The clerk looked as though he didn’t know if he should be satisfied with this answer or offended. He valiantly replaced his smile, however and asked for Seto’s chips and in silent reply Seto offered his wrist instead.
“Ah,” the clerk said, bringing out the boxlike scanner and setting it on the counter for Seto to slide his hand into. “We don’t get many of you down here. You look a little old to be a student.”
“Hard up in life,” Seto replied coldly and slid his hand into the box, waiting for the scanner to pick up his code. This one was at least twenty years old. He hadn’t seen one of these since he was a child. It figured that the slums would get the Alpha ring’s elite technology eventually.
“Listen, I haven’t slept in a couple of days. What about you? You look exhausted.”
“Oh absolutely,” the clerk allowed himself to slump over the desk and rest his chin in his palms. “You know how it is.”
“Sure, sure…” Seto chewed his lower lip. “The sound keeps you up at night too?” He hadn’t expected the immediacy of his attack. The clerk shot up and back like the counter had become a live wire and before Seto could even react, an ear splitting pitch, something between a whine and a scream sliced through his core. He fell to the ground, clamping his hands over his ears and curling into a fetal position.
No one helped him up and no one ran because they were all doing the same. Seto forced his eyes open, gritting his teeth. This was his chance! If no one would tell him about this, he’d have to find it. It took every ounce of will power to scrape himself off the floor and stumble out into the night but he could at least remove his hands from his ears.
The sound was fading now and with it his panic increased even as his nerves decreased. What if the sound went away completely? How would he even find it? The streets were deserted and no one had followed him out of the shop. His ears were ringing and he turned around and around, trying to locate the direction of the sound even as the ringing in his head intensified.
“There!” he said aloud, pointing northwest.
He ran.
The noise was all but gone now, and faded completely once he reached the head of an old neighborhood. Seto ‘s sides heaved and he doubled over, his hands on his knees, propping himself up. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his favorite pen but his crucifix was still here, though now it was out of his lab coat and dangling off his wrist. The metal glinted in the light of a street lamp.
This part of the city was utterly silent and it made him shiver. Lights were still on in the buildings but no one moved in front of the windows. It was sort of like walking through a painting, not that Seto had ever seen a real one. People didn’t paint anymore, or at least, they only painted approved things and those weren’t worth looking at.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which building the sound had come from but Seto tried hard to reason out that it could have come from any of the others. Of course, it could have been someone’s…he couldn’t even imagine what kind of machine could make that sound, couldn’t even come up with a name for it. He knew better than to hope and so forced himself to square up with the one building on the street that he would rather have ignored.
It was old. Very old. Old even before the biome had been built. All of these buildings were but this one, this one was in a class of its own. The windows were intact but dark, which gave it a creepy look. The stoop’s steps were clean as though someone had swept them but it was obvious no one lived here. Obvious only because the building’s front doors were open, wide open, like dark arms held out, inviting one for a last hug. Good night…
Seto swallowed hard. He didn’t want to go in there…
Time: 9pm
“You’re still here, Kenji?” Seto jerked at the sound of his name. The spacious research lab he shared with Doctor Mark Branson had been silent and empty for the last hour. All of the assistants had already gone home. On the long metal work tables each of their microscopes was covered with a drop cloth, making the semi dark lab seem filled with tiny, narrow ghosts. Their samples were all slotted neatly in the slide boxes, every folder of individual research had been carefully locked in the communal filing cabinet by the door, to which only he and Doctor Branson had keys. All of this Seto took in at a glance, paranoid about failing to follow procedure.
“Was that a question?” Seto muttered, poised above his own microscope. He’d been intently staring at a slide of blood, flipping between this one of a normal person, and the other of a Potential. Doctor Branson’s huge frame had filled the door without his notice and the man had probably been here for some time. The thought made Seto’s stomach twist. What if it had been someone other than Mark who’d been watching him? He needed to pay better attention to his surroundings.
“I realized I forgot my badge when people kept staring at me on the street!” Mark smiled but his closely cropped beard hid most of the effect. He was a heavy man without being fat and nondescript looking without being ugly; exactly the kind of person one’s eyes slide right over and forget about once he was not in someone’s immediate presence. It was both advantageous and depressing.
“You’ve done that twice this week,” Seto replied with a glare as he pointed his pen at Mark’s desk. Their desks were pushed together so that he could have simply reached out and plucked the I.D. from its place on the lamp but he did not. He didn’t want his fingerprints on Mark’s badge.
“I have, haven’t I?” Mark rubbed his eyes and came fully into the room, plodding toward the desk. “I just can’t seem to get much sleep. There’s this…noise that keeps me up all night. Well, not just me. Half the outer ring, truth be told.”
Mark made a swipe for the badge. His fingers clipped it and sent it spiraling into the waste basket on the other side of the desk. “Frick,” he muttered, bending to retrieve it. Seto narrowed his eyes at the use of such language but it was to be expected from someone like Mark, who lived on the outer ring.
“What kind of noise?” Seto asked, in spite of himself. He did not like to take an interest in coworkers’ lives. It was too much of an investment in someone he might not ever see again. This was something he tried to not dwell on but there it was. Mark was especially hard not to get to know since his every thought was broadcast to the world at large.
Seto had worked very diligently within himself and had formed a respectable opinion of Mark that did not go too near dislike or affection. Though Mark was a bit scatterbrained, he was brilliant and that was what made Seto nervous. People like that, too smart but too stupid to keep their mouth shut, tended not to be anywhere very long. His hand began to shake and he stuffed it under his leg.
“Loud,” said Mark. “Think…megaphone loud. Speaker loud. Except,” he shuddered. “I don’t know. It’s difficult to describe. Whenever I do get sleep I have nightmares about it. One of my buddies thinks it’s a ghost, if you can believe that.”
“I can’t, actually,” Seto didn’t try to keep the bite out of his voice. “But, you think it’s not human?” He leaned away from the microscope. Mark paled and looked back over his shoulder at the open door. Seto too realized his mistake and stood quickly.
“What nonsense,” he said suddenly. “Look, take a sleeping pill. It’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing?” Mark pinned his badge to his coat and took Seto’s blood slide off the microscope for him and slotted it into the box. Seto cleared his papers, slid them into the folder, taking it to the cabinet and locking them inside. He and Mark darted out into the hallway, each looking up and down in search of any other person.
They were alone.
“Look,” Mark whispered, smiling up at the camera on the hallway’s ceiling as they headed to the elevator. “You’re the smartest man I know. Just come to my place tonight. I’m sure once you hear it-”
“Good night, Doctor Branson,” Seto cut across him. They were in the building’s echoing lobby now and the night security guard was looking at them. Both men nodded to the dark eyed young man as they passed him and into the chilly, Biome night.
“Good night, Doctor Kenji,” Mark retorted stiffly and headed left, toward the outer ring. Seto watched him go with mixed feelings. Curiosity gnawed at the edges of his imagination. He did not believe in ghosts, but he did believe in the real possibility that whatever this was could be of real value in his research. On the other hand, he might be being watched right now.
His palms began to sweat, even as he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care. Let them watch. They wouldn’t see any threat in him. He’d been working for them for the last ten years! If nothing of that ilk had come from him then, it certainly couldn’t now.
Right?
His mouth felt dry as though he hadn’t finished his last cup of water a few minutes ago and he had to lean against the wall to avoid looking like he might be in the throes of a seizure. What an idiotic thing to have said, he thought bitterly. ‘Was it human?’ Like a new lab assistant, he’d said his thought out loud for anyone and everyone to hear. The brick of the building snagged on his hair and he pulled away, rubbing the back of his head.
No one was coming through the shadows yet. He ran one hand over his chest absently while the other hand gripped the crucifix in his pocket. People were mostly gone home now but a few were still leaving work. A group of lab coats from the skyscraper across the street were coming toward him. They were a blend of men and woman, none really speaking to each other and all walking in uniform step. He caught the tail end of their group and followed them to the left, the way Mark had gone.
When they reached the public transport hub, Seto flashed the inside of his wrist like most of the group, though some had to fish in their pocket for chips. It was the chip people he hovered near once they all boarded the train compartment. At each stop more and more of his new group left until he was left standing next to two young women who, he thought with some reasonable conviction, were interns.
Seto stepped off the train onto the open cement platform and was rather abruptly thrust into city. There was no train station here to ease the transition. He turned up the collar of his lab coat and glanced over at the two girls who had not moved from his side once the train left. They were staring at him with wide eyes and he wondered, not for the first time, if he had a smear of blood somehow on his forehead.
That had happened before and people had given him a wide birth. He subtly ran his fingers across his face and, when he felt nothing, frowned at the students.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“You’re Doctor Branson’s friend,” one of them said. She was unfortunate looking with a rather decidedly big chin and puffy bags under her dull blue eyes. Her friend was a bit prettier but plain with a pinched face.
“Friend is going a bit far,” Seto began but then thought better of it and said instead, “Yes. Do you live near Doctor Branson? He said something about wanting me to hear a noise that’s been going on.”
The girls moved closer together, not unlike sheep tightening up against a wolf, with their mouths clamped shut and their eyes growing round.
“How interesting,” the plain one said with an unconvincing air of nonchalant carelessness. “There has been loud music. Good night.” As one the girls turned and moved hurriedly away from him. Seto set off after them.
“Wait! What kind of music? Megaphone loud?” His voice naturally had a soft cadence that put people at ease even if he meant insult but tonight the sound sent the women into a dead run. He watched them flee into the darkness, slowing his own pace and working his tongue against the side of his cheek. When they were tiny white specks darting around the corner of an old apartment building he turned and glared up at the dark clouded sky.
“No fake stars tonight?” he whispered to himself and shoved both hands into the pockets of his lab coat. A loud growl erupted from his stomach. When had he last eaten? He flicked his wrist over and squinted at his watch face. Six hours ago. Not relishing the thought of a train ride home without at least something resembling food, Seto turned full circle, looking for a store of some sort.
The layout of the city was fairly simple. Everything was set up grid style and though each sector was different, the rough layout was nearly identical, especially in the slums. If he went passed that bar, there would no doubt be a store only a few minutes away. People in the slums had to buy food too. He wondered if the store was equipped to scan his wrist, since he didn’t bother to carry chips around with him.
The store was indeed only a few minutes walk from the platform and was populated with a few people here and there. It wasn’t overly large and the selection wasn’t what he was used to but he found a bag of something he suspected was candy but could easily have been dried figs and went to the counter to pay for it. As he walked the aisles he stared hard into every person’s face that he passed. This was difficult to keep up, especially when the person was rude and didn’t look away first.
The common denominator everyone shared was that they looked haggard. They all had dark rings under their eyes or a sunken look about their cheeks. Their eyes darted about and most looked like the nervous wreck he felt like most of the time. Part of him demanded that he take someone by the shoulder and ask them if they couldn’t sleep because of a megaphone loud sound but he couldn’t bring himself.
Whenever someone did meet his gaze he dropped his eyes to the floor quickly and moved on, clutching his bag to his chest. The store clerk was the only one he could look at and maintain eye contact with. It was expected. It was polite. …it was an opportunity.
“Find everything you need, sir?” the clerk asked.
“No,” Seto said, quirking his eyebrows at the stupidity of the question. “But I did find what I wanted.” The clerk looked as though he didn’t know if he should be satisfied with this answer or offended. He valiantly replaced his smile, however and asked for Seto’s chips and in silent reply Seto offered his wrist instead.
“Ah,” the clerk said, bringing out the boxlike scanner and setting it on the counter for Seto to slide his hand into. “We don’t get many of you down here. You look a little old to be a student.”
“Hard up in life,” Seto replied coldly and slid his hand into the box, waiting for the scanner to pick up his code. This one was at least twenty years old. He hadn’t seen one of these since he was a child. It figured that the slums would get the Alpha ring’s elite technology eventually.
“Listen, I haven’t slept in a couple of days. What about you? You look exhausted.”
“Oh absolutely,” the clerk allowed himself to slump over the desk and rest his chin in his palms. “You know how it is.”
“Sure, sure…” Seto chewed his lower lip. “The sound keeps you up at night too?” He hadn’t expected the immediacy of his attack. The clerk shot up and back like the counter had become a live wire and before Seto could even react, an ear splitting pitch, something between a whine and a scream sliced through his core. He fell to the ground, clamping his hands over his ears and curling into a fetal position.
No one helped him up and no one ran because they were all doing the same. Seto forced his eyes open, gritting his teeth. This was his chance! If no one would tell him about this, he’d have to find it. It took every ounce of will power to scrape himself off the floor and stumble out into the night but he could at least remove his hands from his ears.
The sound was fading now and with it his panic increased even as his nerves decreased. What if the sound went away completely? How would he even find it? The streets were deserted and no one had followed him out of the shop. His ears were ringing and he turned around and around, trying to locate the direction of the sound even as the ringing in his head intensified.
“There!” he said aloud, pointing northwest.
He ran.
The noise was all but gone now, and faded completely once he reached the head of an old neighborhood. Seto ‘s sides heaved and he doubled over, his hands on his knees, propping himself up. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his favorite pen but his crucifix was still here, though now it was out of his lab coat and dangling off his wrist. The metal glinted in the light of a street lamp.
This part of the city was utterly silent and it made him shiver. Lights were still on in the buildings but no one moved in front of the windows. It was sort of like walking through a painting, not that Seto had ever seen a real one. People didn’t paint anymore, or at least, they only painted approved things and those weren’t worth looking at.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which building the sound had come from but Seto tried hard to reason out that it could have come from any of the others. Of course, it could have been someone’s…he couldn’t even imagine what kind of machine could make that sound, couldn’t even come up with a name for it. He knew better than to hope and so forced himself to square up with the one building on the street that he would rather have ignored.
It was old. Very old. Old even before the biome had been built. All of these buildings were but this one, this one was in a class of its own. The windows were intact but dark, which gave it a creepy look. The stoop’s steps were clean as though someone had swept them but it was obvious no one lived here. Obvious only because the building’s front doors were open, wide open, like dark arms held out, inviting one for a last hug. Good night…
Seto swallowed hard. He didn’t want to go in there…
CODED BY ELECTRIC OF GS
