The Red Elevators (Prologue/Chapter One)

 

The Red Elevators

Prologue: Only By the Night

"FIN!"

The diminutive butler android designated Fin-X3 put on an extra burst of speed as his master called him again. He raced through the higher levels of the skyscraper laden city known only as Zero Two, towards the only being of flesh on the entire planet.

A planet known only as Zero One.

"FIN!" The distant voice screamed a third time, then swore. Fin-X3 hadn't even been given time to finish the last task his fractious overlord had put him on, but the robot did not take it personally. Indeed, he could not, for his programming did not possess the capacity.

When Fin-X3 finally burst through the doorway into his master's bedchamber, he quickly took note of the disarray that had overtaken it. The bed was where it ought to be, and the bookcases. The desk still sat facing the massive picture window that occupied one wall. And the chair behind it still held Fin-X3's master, just as it had five minutes ago when he'd left.

But papers and books were strewn everywhere. Fin-X3 had never seen a tree, for there was no organic life on Zero One, but he had a picture of one in his memory logs, and he knew paper usually came from them.

Paper was a frivolous human trapping, and even in his limited capacity to understand, Fin-X3 saw how trivial such a thing was on a world run by computers. Still, there was something in the way humans stared so raptly. Perhaps it was a glitch in his operating matrix, but Fin-X3 longed to look at those pointless sheets of pulp and see something that enthralled him.

But more pressing than the paper that distracted him so, Fin-X3 quickly noted the presence of a blue phantasm standing before his master. The ghostly creature was perfectly see through and without detail, save for its face. The face bore the features of a woman, a human woman.

And not just any sort of face either. According to some of the oldest recordings on Zero One, it was a face perfect of symmetry and line. Save for eyes perhaps a touch too large. Even so, a vision of beauty to any being born of living tissue. As Fin-X3 analyzed, he also noted that the phantasm's body had the shape of a female as well. There was a slight glimmer to her "skin", the faintest traces of light.

Fin-X3, neither rattled nor capable of true fear, dropped to one knee in the required show of obeisance. The blue woman, noting the android's presence, winked and walked away, apparently disappearing right through a wall.

"What do you require of me, milord?" Fin-X3 inquired, his tinny speaker box crackling over the words.

"Stop that nonsense and get over here," his master groused angrily. Fen-X3's servomotors whirred as he stood and approached. All this time the man in the chair had had his back to the robot, and this did not change now. Fen-X3 kept his distance, for his master had been known to backhand him in a fit of rage on more than one occasion, sending the hapless, four foot android flying backward.

Fin-X3's master was a human male. The robotic designation that had been given to him was Alpha. No one knew his true name. Alpha was a man of Riintus 3, a planet of heavy gravity that created a propensity towards a level of obesity considered unsightly among humans born under more standard conditions. His immense bulk caused the substandard chair beneath him to groan as he shifted to face his butler.

"Fin, I've just been visited again by the ghoul who has been troubling my sleep these past months. You must ready my starship at once. I shall return to the orphan world in a week's time."

"What did the ghoul tell you, sire?" Fin-X3 asked with a touch of curiosity that would have gotten some robots rebooted immediately. He didn't think most would have called the creature he'd seen a ghoul but he made no attempt to offer correction.

Alpha however, was eager for someone to talk to and did not take offense. "What did she tell me? We didn't have a conversation! What an odd thing to say. It's written in the way my things have been thrown about, in the cold sweat that has overtaken me. In the nightmare I had. I know the time has come."

In this way Fin-X3 surmised that his master could not see as he had seen, that somehow Fin-X3 was able to look upon what Alpha's eyes of flesh could not. The android ventured another question. "This ghoul has visited you often?" Fin-X3 had seen the room in collapse into various states of chaos, but he had assumed it was part of messy human nature.

"Often, yes, and only by the night I might add," Alpha waggled a finger at his butler as if to emphasize his words. "It is a curious thing. I don't suppose you know the agony that is troubled sleep. Even on nights where I experience no visitation, I lay awake, wondering if and when it is coming to haunt me. I tell you I can bear it no longer. This planet has always given me the creeps anyhow. One needs life to surround, not these endless miles of computers."

"Shall I accompany you, sire?" The android asked, hoping the speaker box did not betray the hope he felt. It was the curiosity. Once allowed to work at his programming, it moved like a virus, corrupting his processing capabilities.

"Well, yes, I suppose so. I will certainly need someone's assistance, and you're not the most useless of your kind." Fin-X3, not offended in the slightest, let his memory logs run a search for info about an "orphan world" but they came up blank.

After a moment Alpha shouted at him. "What are you still doing here, you useless rustbucket? See to my starship at once! Great and terrible things are afoot in the galaxy, and I don't want to be left behind, playing nursemaid to a bunch of overgrown number-crunchers!"

Fin-X3 scurried away at once, to the spaceport. He didn't know what the blue phantasm was, nor did he understand what his master meant by 'great and terrible things.' All he knew was he was about to visit the galaxy at large for the first time since his construction.

Soon his ever growing curiosity would be able to satisfy itself with the makings of an infinite universe.

Chapter One: The Blackout

They called it the long road to paradise.

I preferred to think of it as an end to misery. I trundled along through nearly half a foot of snow with only a ragged sweater to keep me warm. It was thick but fraying at the hems. Strings were always hanging off, catching on things.

You may be wandering where I am. They called it the orphan world. They. The survivors. There was no such thing as the elderly here. On this planet, you're old if you reach thirty.

But it doesn't matter, because you won't.

Only the strongest, toughest and meanest can survive. It's these who sometimes live into their twenties. Sometimes they helped you out, taught you things, sometimes they didn't.

But I'm probably confusing you. There's only three things you need to know about the orphan world, honestly. First, the minute you turn thirteen you're going to work in the mines, or the factories. Second, you will die in the mines, or the factories. And third, when they call you to the building with the red elevators, you are never ever coming back.

I'd been summoned yesterday morning. A man in a gas mask had delivered a crinkled, burned-around-the-edges envelope to me. He hadn't said a word, just handed me the stupid little packet and walked away. Inside was only a piece of paper with one word.

Come.

That was all that was needed, because everyone knew what it meant. You can ignore it, yes, but one day someone's going to show up, right beside your bed when you're sleeping, just blow your head clean freaking off. You don't have to believe me, but I saw it happen once with my own eyes, so I know well enough the consequences of ignoring a summons.

Being twelve years old, I lived in the Lyran Commons with all the children. It wasn't a building meant for living in. The whole planet had been different once long long ago, before the warts had taken over. There were ruins everywhere. I was walking in a canyon made by several toppled buildings, towards the one structure the warts had built themselves, a massive rectangular building that towered over the land like a boxy mountain.

Wart headquarters.

A wart was the name the survivors had given to the rulers of the orphan world. No one knew exactly what they looked like behind the gas masks they always wore, but apparently the story was they looked like toads, their skin covered in warts.

As to what the warts called themselves... they seemed to only want us to think of them as "the master race". They'd never given any sort of real name to call them, a fact which only added to their mysteriousness.

I wanted to drag out the long walk from Lyran Commons to the headquarters as much as possible, but it was so cold I couldn't do it. Even after half an hour in the cold I was shivering. Soon enough I was standing in a massive, echo-y atrium dripping snow onto tiles checkered gold and white. The walls were all windows, but heavily tinted, making the room oppressively dark.

There was nothing in the room, absolutely nothing, except for two elevators set opposite the door. All else was glass, tile, and silence. With a startling "bing!" one the elevator doors opened, spilling light into the dimly lit entryway.

True to rumor it was as red as blood.

Warmer now out of the cold, this was a walk I could make last as long as I please. And I did. I took several minutes of pacing, hemming and hawing before I finally stepped inside the red red red elevator, feeling like I was stepping into a blood vessel or something. There was a massive array of buttons next to the doors on the left side, but touching them did nothing.

There was one in the high right hand corner, a funny looking sideways 8, it was the only one lit. I was going all the way to the top. I gripped the red railing with a shaking hand, trying to steady myself. Every strange rumor, every wild possibility ran through my head in that long ride into the sky.

A little thingie like a digital clock ticked off the levels in one corner. I stared at it, watching as the symbol representing each floor was passed. I couldn't understand what all of them meant, but it didn't mean I couldn't match them up. I had to fight to stem off panic as my destination began to grow closer and closer.

I hummed the tune to a silly children's song. I couldn't remember the name or any of the words, just someone singing it to me while they wrapped me up in a pale blue blanket. Maybe it was my long lost mother, maybe not. Whenever I was scared, I had taken to humming it. But when the doors opened with another "bing!" I couldn't bring myself to move.

There was nothing to see beyond the elevators. An oppressively heavy mist prevented me from making out even shadows. Little tendrils of fog began to curl their way towards me. Heat followed, driving out the last of the cold that I'd brought with me from the outside.

"Step forward!" A synthetic, robot-like voice commanded. The voice of a wart inside its suit. Trembling, I stepped forward. If this was my last moment on earth, I supposed it didn't do much good to spend it quivering against the wall like a lily-livered coward.

The elevator closed behind me, leaving me blind and vulnerable. "Remove your sweater, subject 1-4-9-9 Jonah Griffin." a second voice ordered. It was similar to the first, but subtly different. It was an odd request, but I was beginning to grow very warm now anyways. I let the ragged old thing drop, now wet with moisture.

Shadows emerged from the fog. Figures in bulky metal suits and insectoid masks. Beads of condensation clung to their shiny black goggles as they studied me. One of them had a syringe. It looked tiny in his padded glove.

"Stretch out your arm, subject 1-4-9-9." He told me. Humming one last bit of my tune, I did so. I'm not too proud to admit, my arm was still shaking. The wart gripped my elbow roughly in his free hand, holding it tight. With the other I watched as the syringe began to get close to my skin.

And then things got crazy.

The next thing I knew, I wasn't in that strange, misty room at all. I was in a hallway. Alarms were blaring like crazy, and my head was incredibly fuzzy, like when you wake up from a poor night's sleep, or an unrestful nap.

And in my left hand, I was holding tight to someone else' hand. A girl named Penny. I'd had a crush on Penny for the last few years, but I'd never had the courage to tell her, and she'd never taken much notice of me regardless. It didn't help that Penny was a year older, too.

Mere weeks from being sent to the mines, she'd been summoned just days before me. Could it be we had escaped somehow? I couldn't make sense of where my memories had gone. It felt like I should be able to remember what had happened, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't do it.Maybe Penny knew. She had an odd expression on her face, a senseless sort of bliss. She seemed content to simply stand there while I came to my senses. "What's going on?" I asked the girl.

Penny looked at me with unfocused eyes, then giggled. "Johnny," she said, stroking my cheek. "They hurted my brain." She tapped at her forehead awkwardly, as if her motor skills were no longer what they were. Her hair, once dark and beautiful, clung to her skin in lank strands. There were bald patches here and there where they'd just shaved it away.

She attempted to relay her story to me, but it was too vague for me to understand much. She kept going back to needles, in her skin, through her bone. She was terrified of needles.

They'd lobotomized her, I realized.

I looked around, trying to get a grip and figure out my surroundings. We had to escape, that much was obvious. Even if we'd managed to get away for a little bit, I doubted we'd be free for much longer.

I led Penny towards the first door I found. It was a supply closet. The second, however, led into a immense hanger that seemed to take up much of the space on this floor. Beyond the open hanger doors, a starlit night awaited. The light of worlds beyond our own twinkled invitingly.

And floating a few inches off the ground, waiting as if a gift from God himself, was the most beautiful, elegant spaceship I'd ever seen. It was an electric blue disk, with two engine pods sticking out to either side. The cockpit was settled into a third pod, jutting just above the bow of the ship.

And in it I saw my means of escape, my freedom. I didn't know what had happened to me in the minutes since my ride in the Red Elevators, but I knew I'd been given a chance at maybe finding something better, perhaps even a real life. The thought of living free of oppression and fear almost seemed impossible to me, like a bird whose never been let out of its cage. I had to seize this while I still could.

We had to steal the starship.