As Elmo 3124b trudged back down the corridor behind the silent Foby 1, Elmo 679 faced a different conundrum.
"You need to see this," 352 said to his assistant, barely pausing as he passed, obviously expecting to be followed. He continued striding purposefully out of the investigation wing, 679 jumping up and hurrying to keep pace. "We have an unexpected situation. Certain things aren't going quite according to plan. It's so not good!"
"They never are," thought 679, "We're never going to get home, it's messed up." The thought was interrupted as they passed the I.T. department; someone there was shouting nervously, "He is trying to find it!"
Tiny feet could be heard slapping backwards and forwards. A strangled quack echoed in the distance.
"Don't ask!" 352 put in, "Just don't ask. Don't know why we bother with this," he muttered, placing his thumb and fingers onto a scanner aside a reinforced door. "352," he said into a microphone, and then, "Equally pointless!" His disdain for the security system was obvious as he rolled his eyes during the usual retinal scan. Nevertheless, the reinforced door slid aside with an airy weightlessness and the pair strode through.
They stopped before a glass panel. 352 gazed at the shadowy room beyond.
"This is the cloning centre, the green room!" 679 regretted the obviousness of his statement as it came out.
352 glowered, "Just look inside."
A female figure within saw them, marched to the viewing window.
"That's Mistletoe. I didn't think we had brought her in."
The woman stopped and placed her palm on the glass.
"No, it's not. That’s the form she has in the UnKnown World."
"What's she doing in the green room? Who brought her here? Is that wise?"
"That's just it," 352 whispered. "No one brought her here. She just appeared. And look." He pulled up a grainy image on his personal tablet, timestamped from two nights ago. "She’s been here before."
"This is a cloning facility," the woman growled. "Aren't there enough of you yet?” She then demanded, "What is the ogre-eater? The beest that can change its shape? I know it comes from here, but why is it rampaging about the UnKnown World. What does it want?"
She hammered a fist then on the glass, making both Elmo 352 and 679 jump and scuttle off down a corridor.
*****
Meanwhile, the real Mist was pacing the living room, eyes darting between the clock and the door. Roan should have been home hours ago. It was getting late and anxiety was slowly wrapping itself around her thoughts like the cobwebs she hated so much.
“Why doesn't he ever text? Just let me know where he is.”
She sat on the sofa, pulling a blanket over her legs. She turned on the electric fire and contemplated
lighting a few of her favourite scented candles. As warmth flowed out, she looked at the device.
“Have it,” she giggled to herself quietly before switching on the flat wall TV. It was approaching bedtime and dark shadows collected in the room, especially over the device. It seemed menacing again now as night came on. Ignore the thing. Watch some TV. Just relax.
Mist gradually became sleepy as she sat in the warmth. Drowsiness was gently sweeping over her like an incoming tide. Her eyelids were growing heavy. She found herself blinking, nodding. She glanced at the device, it looked hard, unforgiving. “It's not a spider.” She closed her eyes, moments of TV filtered into her tired mind; a news report on the risks of excessive online gaming. Ought she to fall asleep?
“Cybersickness and dissociation are just some of the...” the TV droned.
"It could just creep up on me again when I'm dozing," she thought.
“...teenagers light-headed and...”
She could still see the device, even with her eyes closed. It crouched there in her thoughts. She should pick it up and shut it away somewhere, somewhere safe where it couldn’t get out. This seemed like a good idea. Until Roan came home. She would just rest her eyes a little longer. Mist pictured herself picking up the device with her hand. It was heavy and cold. It felt almost frozen. “Smooth jazz; think of smooth jazz, nice Autumn leaves - mmm…”
Behind her eyelids something fluttered, the TV began to flicker. "It’s like a moths" she mused dreamily. “Like a big, lost moth.” The flickering TV suddenly went silent, went black. The screen seemed watery, moving subtly, as when a leaf might land on a smooth pool, radiating, causing the whole surface to ripple, to ripple out in all directions.
Mistletoe was standing now, gazing at all the circles. Instinctively, she held her left hand out, fingers almost touching the screen. It didn’t seem like much of a surprise when her fingers went right through. In the next blink of her eye, her world turned upside down. Then it turned back again, then it lurched and flipped sideways. a tugging, flowing sensation pulled her forward. Panic welled up as the world swirled black, but before she could react, the shadows flew apart like startled crows, leaving her sprawled on the floor.
*****
Wherever they had gone, it was far too dark to tell. It was more than dark, it was devoid. Devoid of light. Devoid of sound. Devoid of depth. The darkness here was tangible. It had texture, it had a presence creating its own atmosphere. It was disturbingly uncomfortable. senses were stripped of all use.
"Are you there?" The voice seemed to bellow through the devoid. With the total absence of other senses, the volume of sound appeared excessive.
"I am," came a reply, equally thunderous.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Me too!”
"And me!"
Everyone felt extremely unbalanced. The devoid made it hard to decipher whose voice was whose. Their minds wrestled with the theft of sensory perception.
"Everyone OK?" Gum softly launched his concern, almost whispering it. He had had the intention of reaching out to try and grasp Heather; she would need something physical to reassure her. He knew he had thrust out his hand, but had no assurance he had managed it physically. As he called out to Heather, he raised his hand before his face. The darkness was so dense, it prevented any sensation of his hand being anywhere near his face. The impenetrably thick blackness swallowed all kinaesthetic awareness.
These unnatural realisations were beginning to leak out in the voices of the others in a scrabble for comprehension. Confusion came and went swiftly, even fear only surfaced fleetingly, all swept along by the imploring surge of panic.
"Where... are...we?" Each word emerged. Sound did not carry here, words simply ‘appeared’ directly in the mind like thoughts, but louder, and somehow, distinctly with the utterer's accent and intended tone. The whole disturbing experience was more of a series of feelings and emotions than actual sounds heard.
"This is not a ‘what’ or a ‘where’, in fact, you should be grateful that you all still ‘are’!" A new voice! The words burst into the awareness of the group. But this new one was different: it had an image attached! Not only did the voice storm into their consciousness without warning, but also a vision of a tall, hooded figure. Like the words, the perception of the image was unsettling, flashing within, rather than entering via the senses. The figure was clear in every detail as if seen normally, but it felt like it was standing on the inside of their eyelids. The ‘feel' of the voice made it worse. It had an irritating familiarity, yet was alien enough to prevent recognition.
The group hesitated, but the nothingness was unbearable. Words provided something at least. So words there were:
"Who's that?"
"Who's there?"
"What the…?"
"Tum?"
The responses grew out of everyone, confused, alarmed, frightened. Only Heather managed to grasp the faint familiarity of tone the voice carried. it was, essentially, Gum's voice, but did not come from him, a least, not from her Gum! "I'm here babe, but I did not say any..." Gum, as confused as the rest, began to deny ownership of the intrusion, but did not have chance to finish.
"Yes!" The voice flashed and died like a light bulb flicked on-and-off in a dark hall. The intensity of the expression extinguished all other thoughts of enquiry. The four companions were held in expectation of further revelation.
"But not now," it continued with a phosphoric brightness that etched its existence into their minds, "There is no Time - pun not intended," the voice flashed on, making some kind of joke that only he understood.
"I shall retract that. There is Time, it has never been about a lack of Time, but simply a matter of Time distribution."
"Are you me?" insisted Gum, with more than a hint of annoyance.
"I have answered that," appeared a stoic reply, with an unmissably impassive tone.
"What do you mean - ‘not now’?" interrogated Roan, anxiety giving his words a sharp edge.
"The now holds relevance only to yourselves; meant only as a means for you to understand," the voice offered with phlegmatic obscurity.
The image had not moved and they were beginning to wonder if the voice was coming from the figure, or whether it was just some kind of ‘focal' point to ease the unsettling nature of the whole experience. Although Heather had recognised the voice to be Gum's, she knew that it was not ‘her’ Gum; This Gum's voice, it had a different resonance to it. Her Gum's voice was beside her, or at least, that is where she perceived him to be. There was no sense of orientation within the devoid, but his voice definitely ‘appeared’ more to the left of her awareness than the others. She kept telling herself to reach out and try to grasp him, and despite the belief that she had, she was not at all sure whether she really had or not.
This uncomfortable confusion stirred up a frustration that defied containment:
"Understand what? What has happened to us? Why can't I see anything? What have you done?!"
Her voice was laden with emotions, each scrambling for prominence. It escalated to an authoritative crescendo like that of a mother discovering her offspring had trashed the lounge - and planned to expand the chaos into the dining room. Gum believed that he had turned to Heather to comfort her.
Then the image moved. Hands flowed out from under the enveloping cloak, raised, and carefully lifted the cowl from off of its head. The friends realised that the cloak was not just the black that they first thought. As it moved, it appeared to change colour; hues of midnight-blue, deep-purple, dark-maroon; each racing along the cloak's surface, chasing and merging with each other like multi-coloured oil. The whole action was swiftly done in one flowing move, with a purposefully practised silky grace.
"I have done nothing to you."
These words were implanted with such tenderness, that a collective wave of compassion was felt by all of them. It did not help to ease the ‘visual’ shock though. With the hood now resting on the high, broad, shoulders of the figure, their attention was drawn to two high protrusions that stood sentinel, each side of his head; looking like long, ornate sword-handles. They were strapped to his back, deliberately positioned for immediate and quick access. The distraction was brief, however. As the head was now revealed, the identity of the mysterion could be concluded: despite the longer hair, pulled tightly back into a ponytail, and the small, circular sunglasses hiding the eyes, the figure was most certainly Gum!
"You have… " There was a distinct pause, as this Gum searched for something that would give meaning to the friends' dilemma, without being uneconomical with the dispensation of explanation that he felt was allowed him at this meeting. He seemed to find something that worked, and continued: "slipped off the page, if you will."
"If you are not my now Gum, then what when Gum are you?" The contortion of the sentence slipped surprisingly smoothly off of Heather's tongue and it was only after she had said it, that she decided to think about whether or not it made sense.
"I am a pathfinder currently perturbed at the discovery of your plight.”
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?" Heather's voice had abandoned all of its former restraint, and she screamed at the ‘Then Gum' - wherever, or whenever he was!
"It doesn’t matter. What is of more importance for you all is this: you must return. And I must continue, must find the rat, and save him. Save the rat: save the world!"
This last, unexpectedly clear, determinisation burned through each of their heads with an intensity that they were not expecting, not even Heather. It was the only thing he said that carried any hint of confrontation or aggression.
"Now let the dust settle!" This was a command, given with an unchallengeable authority, it was given directly to Roan and there was, literally this Time, no Time to respond. At the very moment that Roan was told by ‘Then Gum’ to let the dust settle, his consciousness automatically obeyed. The image formed in his mind of the dust membrane, his own outstretched hand just as precise and clear as the figure of Gum had been. With his mind directed to the intention of letting the dust settle, he felt himself withdrawing his hand and perceived a physical action.
The shift was intense. It was as if somebody had come into his bedroom, and abruptly woken him by turning a halogen spot-lamp on his face: the vivid return of his senses made him reel back on the stairway that was once more below his feet, his eyes struggling with the comparative brightness, attempting to focus on the swirl of motes hanging in the air before him. He stared at it…
“What the…?”
"Where…?"
"How…?"
The other four were standing behind Roan now - lower down the steps, on the other side of the screen of dust. No one was conscious of having moved from the chamber, or having evaded the assault of the thing on the steps. Each looked at the other; then looked at the drifting dust; then beyond the dust. The dark, twisted figure lurked there beyond. It seemed hesitant to approach, its eyes scanning the floating particles as if seeking a hole or a flaw. Roan turned breathlessly to Gum: "That was you, wasn't it?"
"Yes. It was. I could… feel it!" he responded, quietly, almost reluctantly. "And I have a horrible feeling that I do actually know more than I understand."
“Should we run while we can?” Elmo prompted. “Downward? Wherever it goes, it’s got to be better than me there!”