Chapter 6 – A Fragile Equilibrium

The much taller and larger blond put a heavy hand on the awkward student’s shoulder. “We’re going to be good friends, Ebby. You know that, right?”

“Yeah…”

The smaller, awkward student with glasses looked out of place with the rest of Luke’s entourage of rich and popular students.

“You did me a big favor, Ebenezer. I’ll get your brother the best recommendation, as thanks from my family to yours.”

“You mean it?” Ebenezer asked, looking hopefully at Luke.

“Of course I do,” Luke replied. “The Brightsteel family never forgets those who help them.”

The group continued down the hall, passing them, as Luke appeared to be too preoccupied with his new acquaintance to care about anything else.

What was that all about? William’s curiosity was mildly peaked, but he had other things to worry about.

Perhaps this was the right time to leave for them as well, before Professor Ghoulstein gave them an earful for taking too long. William motioned for Finn. “Let’s go grab that flour.”

The two of them unloaded the cleaning supplies and prepared to leave for stability storage to retrieve the heavy bags of flour. Vanessa and Abby thanked them for the help and William promised that they’d help wheel back the cleaning supplies at the end of their shifts.

“Don’t forget, we’re going to meet here at midnight, okay?” Abby reminded them enthusiastically. “No backing out. We can play some midnight truth-or-dare as well.”

The four of them all agreed.

A group of students meeting in the middle of the night at school in order to tell ghost stories and play truth-or-dare out of boredom sounded like a plot lifted directly out of a cliche horror movie. What could possibly go wrong?

——

“This is… so… heavy,” Finn said, struggling to move a bag of flour onto the cart.

“It’s flour, of course it’s heavy,” William replied, patting the bags already on the cart so that they didn’t shift when in motion.

They were in stability storage, a cold basement storage sector right before the generator room that students normally did not see, since the only thing stored here was food, stupidly large amounts of food. The entire room was a dull metallic bluish gray reminiscent of a submarine’s interior. Here, emergency lights were the only lights available.

The emergency pamphlet did not lie. Hunger would not be an issue here. Between stacks of shelf stable rice and flour to freshly procured seafood and frozen meats in the deep freezer, the storage area had enough ingredients to host a year’s worth of banquets fit for a king.

Besides two other male students who quickly came and left with frozen vegetables, they were alone. The overhead ventilation hummed vigorously, bringing in cold dry air. The monotony of their task at hand and their relative isolation gave room for William’s mind to spin.

“Finn,” William said suddenly, stopping.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking…” he continued softly. “What if something—a logical axiom, let’s say—that you never thought could be wrong, turned out to be wrong? What would you do?”

Finn frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember during our first lesson in theoretical physics last semester, we were taught about the axioms that govern the behavior of all bodies of mass?”

“Vaguely, yeah.”

“The law of attraction, the law of conservation of mass… those. Hypothetically speaking, what if they were wrong?” William said.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. We know that those are true.”

“I’m well aware,” William snapped. “But hypothetically speaking—“

“It’s not possible. That doesn’t make any sense,” Finn replied.

“How do you know that the axioms are true?”

“Because they are, because so many people tested them and they always hold true. We built rockets and cars and used telescopes to track how planets move with those axioms. How could we do all that if the laws of physics didn’t make sense?” Finn said in an exasperated voice.

William shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Well, not specifically about the laws of physics.”

Finn looked at William blankly.

“I think that we should be careful when going around the school,” William said.

“Careful of what?”

“I don’t know exactly. But let’s just be careful.”

A hiss of cold air issued into the deep freezer, causing a bout of condensation droplets to form on the deep freezer window before they stabilized into ice crystals.

William gestured at the ice crystals forming on the window. “That’s a cycle. Every time the ice on this side of the window starts to melt a bit, the freezer senses that the temperature is too low and pumps in more cold air, which causes the condensation on this side to freeze, before it starts to melt again. Forming a delicate system of artificial equilibrium.”

“I mean, that’s just how a freezer works. By the way, isn’t it time for us to bring this to the kitchen? We have enough flour for one trip.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.”

Finn looked at him strangely as he hit the elevator button, almost squinting through his glasses as if to judge him.

“William, you’re nervous,” he said quietly. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you nervous. What’s bothering you?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I don’t know.”

“Your hands are shaking,” Finn said. “I’ve never seen you shake before.”

“It’s just cold down here. Forget it, Finn.”

Finn dropped the subject, but his look was strange.

——

The kitchen bustled with activity. Professor Ghoulstein busily chatted with one of the chefs at the corner before spotting William and Finn burst in with the cart loaded with flour.

“Took you two long enough. A few more trips and we’ll have enough for tonight’s menu. The chef’s serving cherry pie for dessert,” Professor Ghoulstein said. “Which means we’ll need cherries and sugar from stability storage. That’ll be your job to fetch. I already sent the others ahead for sweet cooking wine.”

“We’ll get that for you, professor,” Finn replied in a strained voice that he probably thought sounded enthusiastic.

“And try to be faster this time.”

——

When they entered stability storage again, they were greeted by a commotion. The awkward freshman called Ebenezer was fighting over a bottle of cooking wine with the two male students sent by Professor Ghoulstein.

“The chefs need this, why are you fighting us?” said the taller male student, exasperated.

“It’s mine, I was here first!” Ebenezer replied.

“Just move the stacks over there, there’s plenty!” the taller male student shouted, pointing behind the rack at an unopened set of wine bottles.

“I can’t move all that by myself. You do it, you’re two people!” Ebenezer shouted back.

However, the two male students overpowered him and took the loose bottle of sweet sherry wine, giving him a bad look as they left.

After all, the two male students technically had the right to the bottle since that was a cooking ingredient for their dinner tonight. Why did Ebenezer want cooking wine so bad in the first place?

William decided to ask. “Why do you need cooking wine?”

Ebenezer frowned, grabbing the side of the stack. “That’s none of your business.” He pulled at the stack, trying to move it aside to access the box of wine behind it.

“Do you want help with that?” Finn asked.

“No. I’m fine, just leave me alone,” Ebenezer said, not even looking back at them.

Finn shrugged at William. “I guess we’ll just get what we came here for. Er, what did Professor Ghoulstein need us to get again?”

“Cherries and sugar,” said William. “I think he meant frozen cherries, which should be in the deep freezer. I’ll get them, I think I saw them earlier.”

“Alright, I’ll look for the sugar then.”

They split up to grab the ingredients. They could still hear Ebenezer cursing under his breath. He had given up his original plan of moving the stacks and now was trying to squeeze in between the two stacks.

William unhatched the deep freezer’s handle, wishing he had gloves or a jacket at this point. He’d better be quick. He entered and began closing the door behind him, before the rather morbid thought of getting stuck in the freezer flitted through his mind. Grabbing an ice scraper hanging from the wall, he wedged it in between the door so that it’d leave a slight gap. Phew, that felt better. He didn’t want to end up banging on the freezer door with no one to hear him like in that one movie. The low hum of the compressor filled his ears as he looked quickly for what he was here for. Scanning the layout quickly, it became obvious that ingredients were organized by type, with fruit and vegetables in the very back.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and blew some hot air into them, shivering as he walked to the back of this massive freezer room. The frozen cherries were buried between bags of other fruit, so he started to move them aside.

He just wanted to get this over with faster. It was so cold in the freezer that he could feel his eyes start to tear up. As he moved aside the last bag of unrelated produce to grab the cherries, the compressor above issued a low hiss.

He looked up. Listening carefully, he felt like he could hear a faint rattling or knocking sound coming from the temperature regulator. That tended to happen when the system was old. Maybe a broken piston, or a loose mounting bracket.

But strangely, if he listened very closely, the rattling noise seemed to be moving.

William frowned. A theory had been building up in his mind for a while now, nagging at him and goading him like a jaded housewife that he chose to keep ignoring, because it was a theory that he could not dare imagine being true.

He listened intently, even the cold biting into his fingers forgotten for that brief moment, as he turned his gaze toward the vent near the corner of the ceiling. It was an unremarkable rectangle of metal slats, frosted slightly at the edges from the freezing air it exhaled. But now, under the pale, sterile light of the freezer, something seemed off. The slats were faintly trembling, vibrating in a way that could be caused by a broken compressor, or perhaps something else entirely…

William narrowed his eyes, his breath clouding faintly in the cold air. He focused on the rattling sound itself. The sound was subtle, almost imperceptible, but the more he focused on it, the more it seemed like something was shifting behind the vent.

And then it stopped. The low hum of the condenser returned.

His head stayed perfectly still, his eyes still glued to the vent. The sound he thought he’d heard had disappeared. How curious.

Didn’t he leave the freezer door slightly open? The hot air flowing from outside must have forced the temperature regulator into overdrive. That explained this entire situation, a far more rational explanation than the nonsensical theory in his head.

Grabbing the bag of cherries, he left the freezer and closed the door behind him, where Finn was waiting with several packets of sugar.

“Nice timing,” said Finn. “Let’s head back to the kitchen.”

They left stability storage with the ingredients, leaving an increasingly frustrated Ebenezer behind.

——

The next time they came back to stability storage, Ebenezer was already gone. It appeared that he’d gotten frustrated and given up trying to get the sherry wine at some point, judging by all the knocked over dry ingredients. He couldn’t understand why Ebenezer was so desperate for it. Maybe Luke asked him for it.

Time went by quickly, and before long their shift was coming to an end. William and Finn helped Vanessa and Abby bring back the cleaning supplies, agreeing to do the same the next day, before heading to the cafeteria to grab dinner.

William had never seen so much delicious food in his life. It took all his effort not to faint on sight. He inhaled roasted beef and cherry pie like a hurricane before getting a little self-conscious about the fact that he was starting to attract a few sideways glances due to his lack of table manners. This was still Trinity Academy after all.

It took all of his self control to eat slightly slower. He noticed last night that his ribs were becoming a little visible.

“Five more hours until midnight,” Finn said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “What do you want to do until then?”

“I need to do my daily power manifestation.”

“Yeesh, you actually believe in that pseudoscientific stuff?”

“Doesn’t hurt to try.”

Finn did not object. The five hours passed by quickly, and before long the time had arrived to go down to the east wing girls’ bathroom.

The hallways were quiet. Only a few students were still moving about at this hour. To conserve electricity, the lights in the halls had been dimmed to such an extent that they could barely see down the hall.

The two of them walked down into the dark hallway as William continued to wrestle with that nagging thought in his mind. Doubt and reason, haziness and truth clashed against each other like raging waves slamming into the stern of the ship, but throughout the chaos, one thing remained as clear as the stars above.

If that ever so small chance that his theory had merit proved to be true, the world could never be the same again.

He wished with all his soul that this was not the case. Because if it was, that little seed of madness would take root and soon engulf the entire world into the flames of chaos, and all of humanity would have to face consequences previously unimaginable.

But for now, until he was proven otherwise beyond reasonable doubt, he decided to tuck away his paranoia and try to simply enjoy the night.

If all went well, today would be a peaceful night of college memories and he’d have nothing to worry about.