Mariann stepped into the large hall decorated with dark wood. The whole facility on this side had thus far been full of cold concrete and metal, with only one or two pairs of wooden doors for staircases. Compared to that, the library was very luxurious and lavishly decorated. The tall walls were covered in panels of dark oak, the reading area was full of massive dark desks and the same style followed the counters and work areas of the assistants and the archival workers. Above the latter there was even a big sign in Russian saying “archive for Station Mir-8”.
It seemed like the archive was divided in two sections. The first section was the one they had just stepped into. It contained a large reading hall and a library full of materials copied and bound right here. Further away, behind tall metal doors was the real archive which reached to the second and third floor above their heads.
Also the archive seemed to be the only large room in the entire complex in which all the lights were constantly on. In the reading hall reaching through three levels, in addition tot he small library and a huge archive there was one other thing: A commemorative tableau. Large section of a wall with flags of the Soviet member states on both sides was covered with tens and tens of black and white photos in white wooden frames. Under every photo there was the name of the person and in the right corner, a small diagonal strip of black ribbon. Above the photos there was text in large letters “Brave heroes who gave their lives for Mir-8!”
Right in front of the wall full of portraits there was a small stone pillar, atop which burned a lone gas flame.
“This indeed is real military base!” Jaan exclaimed. “So many soldiers have died for this peculiar undertaking. And nobody has thought that this should be discontinued! There must be 100 portraits here!”
“81.” Mariann said. “In three rows. Thirty photos in each. And the wall has room for more that a hundred more. But.” She walked closer to the wall, examining the portraits. “These are not soldiers.”
“Excuse me?” He too approached the wall.
“These are the portraits of the scientists.” Mariann said. “All the people who died here were scientists. And although a great number of them have Russian names, there are those as well with English, German and French names. This already speaks volumes of the exceptional nature of this endeavor. Had these Western scientists been forcefully brought here and threatened into working, they would not have received commemoration after death. Meaning they had to have come here voluntarily or had to be working voluntarily after finding themselves here.”
“Yeah, but why?” Jaan asked. “What would be worth of so many scientists dying here during the time it was under Russian control? We’re talking about a span of only maybe 15 years?”
“Are we?” Mariann asked. “Do you know what year it currently is?”
“I do, right now it’s...” the professor fell in thought and did not say anything further.
“There is a commemorative book here as well.”
Indeed, behind the pillar with the eternal fire, there was a small stand with a leather bound book on it which Mariann now started to browse. Every page in the book was dedicated to one dead scientist. The first thing she noticed was that most of the scientist were relatively mediocre in their contribution or even education in traditional sciences, but according to this, their contribution to the project was immeasurable. Also, most of them were very young and has managed to work in this facility for less than a year before they died. At the same time, each of them had some major contribution into the science perpetrated in here.
“Vladimir Andreyevich Kerchin. Mathematician. Born in Chusovoy in Perm Oblast. Studied in Perm national university named for A. M. Gorky. Started work in Mir-8 in the department of theoretical physics on April 01, 1965. Took part in 25 exploratory missions. Established a mathematical proof for mirror complex theory. Left us on March 27, 1966.” Mariann read out loud.
“Olga Dmitreyevna Richtera. Physicist. Started work on December 2, 1965, died October 13, 1966. Was first to complete the functional description of the type F4 reactor.” The professor read, having stepped behind Mariann.
“The book is full of such descriptions. Young scientists. They came here, died less than a year after getting to work, yet each and every one of them gave an unfathomable contribution to the development of the facility.”
“But why did they die?” Jaan asked. “Was it some kind of pathology caused by them being here or was it a decision by the higher-ups to remove them after they became useless?”
“Or maybe the high command decided to remove them because they learned too much and became too useful.” Mariann said.
“Who was the very first to perish?” Jaan asked.
“Maksim Dmitreyevich Makarichin. Died August 16, 1950. Located Object 23 based on the documents the Germans had left behind and measurements of electromagnetic fields.
“So this very facility is designated as Object 23?” Jaan said. “I’m curious, who’s the last one.”
Mariann kept browsing the book and took a look at the last pages in it. A strange smile appeared on her face.
“You don’t want to know.” She said.
“Okay, at least tell me his date of death.”
“There is no date of death. Only a remark “missing without a trace since December 12, 2013.””
“What was the year? 2013? How is that possible?! That is a date in the future! Show me.”
She did not attempt to stop the professor, handing over the book. He grabbed it, turned the page to the last entry and started to read out loud.
“Ivan Tõnuyevich Kotkas. Established a solution to turn back protocol B. Missing without trace since December 12, 2013.” Jaan lowered the book. “What’s so special about that?”
“That’s you.” Mariann said. “Jaan, son of Tõnu, Kotkas. That is a photo of you, isn’t it?”
The professor turned his eyes towards the wall and stared intently at the last photo on the bottom most row. On a black and white portrait, there was a young man, aged around thirty at most. He did have some external similarities to Jaan, especially to how he remembered himself looking some twenty five years ago. But he certainly could not say that he recognized this as a photo of himself. Also, his mind was also occupied with another matter now. If this really was him, then what had he been doing during his 20s? Right, several years of field work in the Southern Ural range, researching the daily lives and mythologies of the native tribes. And this was something he had a recollection of. Working in an unknown and non-existing underground facility in a South-Eastern corner of some Soviet Republic was something he did not have any memories of.
“It cannot be me.” Jaan said. “I was doing field work in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region. This was right after I finished the anthropology department. I wanted to go and do some field work in the West but could not get a permission for foreign travel. Never mind that whole 2013 aspect. That’s impossible.”
“What is future for us, may be distant past for this facility. The temporal incongruity may be the simplest question to solve.” Mariann said. “In any case, this you seems to be the only scientist who has ever survived this place.”
“Not me. Some other Jaan Kotkas.” The professor was resolute. “I have a better question: why did all the young scientists only last slightly under a year in this place? Was it some sort of environmental factor which destroyed their health and which we should also worry about or was their death planned from up high to maintain the secrecy of this place?”
“If that is what interests you, you are in luck.” Mariann said. “To get rid of the bodies, a crematory had to be built into the medical corps. That very same crematory was also used to destroy documents and sensitive materials from the archives, as well as biological samples. This is also reflected in how the levels of this place have been set out. Above the archives is the medical section and above that is the biological section. The highest level of the archive is the fourth sub-level, which is the medical archive.”
“Which means we need to climb up four floors to reach the medical archive?” Jaan asked. “And they yet another floor to reach the medical corps?”
“Yes, the medical archive should not be too extensive. It should only contain base employee medical files, autopsy reports and other similar documents.”
“Do you think that or do you know for sure?” The professor asked.
“I think so.” Mariann said. “Not much information or documents leaked out of Mir-8. Looking into the whole structure of the base itself took an insane amount of time and dozens of different sources. And even then, some things still remained as conjectures.”
“Let’s get going then.” Jaan said. “I don’t know though how much time there remains on your clock.”
“A bit less than two and half hours.” She said, glancing at her watch. “Enough time to get back to the post office.” She pointed at the spiral staircase in the corner of the reading hall. “We can get to the fourth level with this. Bring along that book of remembrances. We should be able to find out from the medical archive what these scientists really died of. I have a very suspecting feeling in that regard.”
Mariann started walking, and soon they ascended a wide stone spiral staircase. The professor did not get too far behind her, but he was evidently weighed down by his thoughts about this base, his similarity to that one scientist and the cause for so many sudden deaths.
“That book of remembrances. It was left behind the pillar of eternal fire, where it should have been placed after all.” The professor said. “Does this mean that we are the first people here after the destruction of this facility?”
I wouldn’t say so.” Mariann said, stopping on the stairs. “It is possible that somebody is still walking around in this base. Tired to death of having to recover that book from different places to put it back to where it belongs.”
With a peculiar smile the girl fell silent, looking at the professor trying to think through all this.
“Maybe all the people in this base are still living and working in here, just that they are located a certain amount of world fabrics away from us so they cannot see or sense us. Not even in a spatial sense.”
“How is that possible?” Jaan asked. “In essence you are saying that this facility, this base is somehow spatially and temporally more permanent than the people manning it. How can there be this kind distinction between a human being as a physical object and this base as a physical object?”
“The difference is very simple.” The girl in black said. “One is alive, the other is not. One is changing both in time and in space. People don’t grow in one spot like trees, they move around. They also do not remain unchanged. They grow and age, they are born and they die. Those two aspects together are something much more fluid than wood or concrete. If time is linear and uni-dimensional, then matters may be just like I said. In a space-time we can perceive, we take this book from its location and somebody else we cannot sense and who cannot sense us later brings it back after you have discarded it. But nobody will see you take it and nobody will see it hover around. It just disappears from this place and reappears at that place. I think in our world it is called haunting, is it not?
“However if time has at least two dimensions then sychrony may be an option. Meaning that it becomes possible that whichever move we make here, it will instantly be transferred to the world fabrics they are on. You hit a shard of concrete out of the wall and at the very same moment, in their continuum a shard concrete mysteriously jumps out of the wall. And nobody can tell you why or how. Again, if we were to see that in our world we would call it haunting or poltergeist activity, right? And in this corner of the world we would think nothing of it.”
“True.” The professor said. “Although it still feels like there is something in your explanation that does not suit me.”
“I’ll continue then and you can tell me what it is when you have figured it out.” Mariann said. “Continuing from my previous thought, it is possible for events to not be openly synchronous. You hit a shard of concrete out of the wall. None among the inhabitants of this facility see it happen, but at the very moment you break it loose, they notice the shard and the gouge and wonder if it has always been like that.
“However if time is three-dimensional then spatial memory might be a thing. Meaning space saves the traversal of bodies within it and is capable of playing it back in a fashion more or less complete. Like people seeing phantom soldiers or hearing battle noises of ancient fields. Or seeing Russian soldiers scaring people away from abandoned and long since moss-covered military bases. Person A traverses a section of space between k and l during the time period from x till y. Now, if people B and C traverse that same section of space at a time period from z to w, which takes place after k to l, the matter in that space may play them back the trajectory of person A. And again...”
“...we would call it haunting?” Jaan asked in a sarcastic tone.
Mariann only gave a mysterious smile, not saying anything else.
“Your theory lacks two important things.” Jaan said. “First, the conditions under which space records the motion traversing it. And secondly the conditions of playing them back.”
“I don’t know.” The girl in black shrugged. “What were the exact conditions on that stormy night when somebody made a phone call to a friend from that lone phone booth in the Nameless Town? What were the conditions that allowed his voice to be burnt into the airwaves? What was the defining condition for an electrical signal in the telephone wires to be turned into a radio signal in the air and then into a so-called spontaneous radio emission. There are complicated things I know, there are things with average difficulty I have theories on and there are simple things I don’t know.”
Mariann continued ascending the stairs.
Jaan fell back into thinking about all these dead scientists. The question of what was it to drive all those people to death in less than a year was still something that unnerved him. There had to be something that was way clearer and simpler than what the strange girl before him had just spoken of. Something else than theories which demanded a person to exercise all their faculties at once to perceive ghosts of one variety or the other. Which even made Jaan to look behind him more often and created a deceiving feeling that he and Mariann were not the only people in this base.
“When you gathered information about this military facility, did you not discover any secrets about chemical, biological or radiological dangers?” Jaan asked. “That there might be fields or particles which have dangerous effect to people constantly working near the gates and the reactors?”
“I can understand your fear, but do you really think that even if such a danger existed and the scientists in here forwarded the info to the base commander, that he would let this information out? No way in hell! Just like in Chernobyl and at the Mayak production facility, the information about dangers to civilian workers was classified at the highest level and people who tried to interfere with the work of the base or spread fear were neutralized at once.”
She glanced back at the professor.
“I did not find any such document or rumor but I would also not use this lack there of as basis to suppose that dangers like that do not exist. The true answer lies in the medical archive. And if that is not enough, we still have the office and the living quarters of the head medical officer. I am pretty sure that we can find something between all of those.”
The stepped onto the fourth level of the reading hall, now looking down toward the floor. The professor had not planned on looking down, but now that he did, he noticed something he had not expected to see. There was a slightly brighter section in the wooden parquet floor, depicting a pentagonal shape which lined the numbers 27-27.
“Now that is interesting.” Mariann said, also looking over the railing. “This is almost mythological. And also almost the reason I really came here.”
“I wonder why we didn’t notice it when we were down below?” Jaan said.
“Because the wooden pieces making up the floor have been cut in a specific way to reflect a slightly different color when viewed at a certain angle. Like plastic reflectors. It is much more interesting to consider why would the numbers be put here at all, especially after the base itself was built.”
“Why did you come here?” Jaan suddenly asked, now noticing what Mariann had said before. “For real.”
“For real?” Mariann said, falling in thought. “According to Newtonian mechanics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If the space the facility lies in has been twisted in a certain way to act as a bridge between two points in the same world, then it is quite possible that if a person were to cut the power maintaining the twist, the facility bends back, assuming it’s original shape. However it may not let go of the world, in turn bending it out of it’s normal shape. Maybe the strangeness of the world around the Nameless Town is connected to that. Even if Mir-8 is not the prime mover, it still has some connection to it. But to understand the connections, we should continue.”
She opened the wooden double doors with a small vertical window in front of her and then used the black rotating switch on the wall, turning on the lights. This revealed long rows of shelves with narrow aisles between them and the ceiling lamps exclusively hanging above the aisles.
“That the facility here is the prime reason for all the troubles in our corner of the world?” The professor asked.
“No, quite the opposite actually. It may be a reason for some of the troubles, but certainly not all of them. But we have to begin understanding it from somewhere. Even if the beginning has not been anchored anywhere but stands in the air like a cloud or morning mist.”
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She walked along a long and narrow space between the rows, looking for the correct aisle.
“Personnel files, personnel files, where are you?” She quietly said to herself.
It wasn’t about having issues with finding the personnel files but rather about finding those exact files she was looking for. There were plenty of documents about the base commander, medical staff and countless soldiers, engineers and drivers and one could lose their mind reading all of that. But this in no way helped to understand what happened to the scientists.
At that moment Mariann actually felt a tinge of regret. A uniquely rare opportunity had presented itself. She had grabbed onto it and now she was clearly sensing the time disappearing like sand through her fingers. With each and every passing moment, she had less time to contemplate this facility, what transpired here and the effects it had had on the world. Deep down she wanted nothing more to just sit down and read each and every file, document and a scrap of paper in this archive. And then to move on, scouring each and every office from lowly doctors to officers of every kind.
But time was lacking and the dim hallways bathing in that weak electric light were endless. The silence in the air was deafening. As long it was a silence suddenly torn apart by soul-rending screech when some metal scaffolding or machinery submitted yet a little bit more to some force of nature. The facility may have disappeared into some unthinkable and imperceptible world but this did not mean that whatever lied out there was not nature. Nature that was strange and utterly alien compared to what they had been familiar with thus far.
“Give me that book full of obituaries.” She said.
She opened the small book and then let the pages slip through her fingers. From cover to cover. She then lowered her gaze to the open drawer of documents before her. With a disappointed sigh, she kicked the drawer with her knee, closing it.
“This has the medical histories, but none of the scientists nor top officers. Only assistants and lower ranks. I don’t even have to open any of these files to know what they died of. Let’s go.”
The girl in black walked the aisles between tall metal archive shelves with such a sense of experience that it looked like a home library and not an archive classified beyond top secret in a forgotten almost non-existent military facility.
“What did they die of then?” Jaan asked. “Most of them probably from accidents with mechanized equipment of all sorts, I would imagine.”
“You are partly correct.” Mariann smiled, not slowing her pace, her destination being another set of double doors leading to another staircase. “There were indeed many accidents. An unbelievable number of people managed to get run over by wheels and treads of various military vehicles. There were also those who were exposed to radioactive emissions or got cooked alive in powerful RF and microwave fields. The main goal of Soviet military tech was function and reliability in extreme conditions. Safety was least of the concerns. But the greatest amount was attributed to suicides.”
“Suicides?” Jaan asked, surprised.
“Yes.” Mariann started to ascend the stairs. “Almost half of all deaths. I was lucky to notice this trend at all. With some of the earlier named in that drawer it was written explicitly that the cause of death was suicide. With later ones, almost exclusively the cause of death is labeled as the SU Syndrome.”
“SU? Samoubistvo? Suicide in Russian.” The professor asked.
“This got so dark in fact that the head doctor suspected some sort of bug brought along from outside somewhere which caused people to kill themselves. The main ward of the medical corps suddenly became an isolation ward full of people restrained to their beds. Some were only suspected of being afflicted, others had unsuccessfully attempted suicide.”
She pushed open a set of double doors labeled “Hospital” in Russian.
Before them was a large lobby not too dissimilar from civilian hospitals Jaan had seen before in his life. The floors were covered in scratch-resistant material reminiscent of some plastic, which seemed to have been poured in one go and then polished afterwards. The walls were light brown and the ceiling and all doors were white. In the corner right next to them was a large registration area with the center section of it surrounded with tall glass windows. However, unlike civilian hospitals, these windows had no openings to pass documents or for voice to reach the other side. For the latter purpose there were sets of phone receivers, lined up in long consoles on either sides of the glass. Jaan managed to count about 30 receivers on the closest side, every tenth and eleventh phone were red, possibly with some priority to them.
On the other side of the registration there was a wall and elevator doors. The professor noticed a total of six pairs of elevator doors with wood grain imitation. There may have been even more of them behind the corner. To the right there were two hallways labeled “operation” and “x-ray”. And straight ahead were the “doctors” and “wards”.
“Doctors and wards are together?” Jaan asked.
“Indeed. The workers in the medical corps lived, worked at slept in this section. They were only allowed out to visit the archive and for recreation. But that too was often restricted. The patient rooms here are large, like in all military hospitals. Only contagious patients were secluded from others, all others were together, whether the diagnosis was overwork, insanity or recovery from major surgery. Even those dying and permanently bedridden were in here. These last ones often followed the dying ones, usually with the decision from the base commander. The resources of the base were limited and the level of secrecy was high.”
Mariann led Jaan along a dim central hallway. In the walls on either side, after approximately every twenty meters there were wide double doors. There were also large signs detailing which doctors lived and worked in each subsection, along with their names. Generally they were organized by organ groups they specialized in. Plus military EMT, surgery and contagious illnesses.
She finally stopped before another set of double doors, which like the others had only darkness visible through the windows. Above the doors there had once been a sign but now only marks of it being ripped off the wall remained.
“Here lies what I told you before.” Mariann said.
She opened the doors and they entered a wide hall. Jaan felt his ears affected by the air pressure, and it took several swallows to equalize the pressure in his inner ear.
“There is a pressure difference here.”
“Indeed.” She replied. “The whole medical section is under pressurized to keep possible contagions inside. For the same reason, all widows and doors have rubber seals and main entry and exit doors have been paired into airlocks. There doctors’ living quarters however are over pressurized. In this hall, there also should have been over pressure but… some of the peculiarities have change the pressure to be kept here.”
Only now did Jaan pay attention to what was before him. Initially he had only thought of this as yet another dark hallway full of offices and living quarters of the medial doctors of various sub-disciplines. Instead however it was a ward with two rows of beds, a row by either wall. The only source of light was two mercury vapor lights above the first beds, the rest of the rows faded into darkness in the distance.
“They put the SU ward here?”
“Yes.” Mariann said. “And on the other side of this is the office of the chief medical officer and the offices of the board of medical corps. The SU syndrome was one of the more important medical problems to resolve in here. And after they managed to figure out that it was not contagious, they put the ward with the patients here for easy access to the chief medical officer.”
“But what was it then, that caused people to suddenly want to take their own lives?” Jaan asked. “Maybe it really was something contagious…?”
“You haven’t tried to kill yourself since stepping into the facility, so don’t worry about it.” Mariann said. “The reason so many people tried to kill themselves was more about their thinking than about this facility. That’s why I’m not surprised so many people tried to kill themselves here, because it may have looked like the only way out.”
She sat down on a bed in the ward.
“What happened, then?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out yourself by now. Anthropologist and researcher of mythologies as you are.” She said. “The issue was that their minds simply could not handle the peculiarity of this corner of the world and this facility. What killed them really was scientific thinking. Trying to make sense of it all. They lacked the skill to change their thinking from scientific to mythological while still continuing with real science they were being demanded at every step.”
“You mean to tell me that their minds broke under all this supernatural?”
“In simple terms, yes.” The girl in black replied. “To us it may seem unbelievable and just plain weird, but that’s what happened. A person with mythological thinking explains everything with forces and rules issued by intelligence from above. His explanation is his understanding. A scientific man however is trying to understand something he cannot, instead of explaining it as he understands it.
“The people who live in the Town and whose ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years have long since grown used to the unexplainable ways things are done and don’t worry too much about it. But people who visited this corner of the world from elsewhere, who wanted to explain things scientifically, bumped against a world that would not submit to scientific cognition. The order and practices of which would not submit to their thinking and understanding.”
“That sounds like a very extreme example of a cultural shock.” Said Jaan.
“Which it is, in essence. In part. The other part is the environmental shock. What doomed them was the effect from both shocks at the same time. Their thinking lost it’s flexibility and broke.”
“They had left their familiar Soviet world and come into our world the order of which they could not comprehend. And then they came into this base and lost their contact with that peculiar world outside of it. And they also lost their connection with other people. Science which could not have been logical, worked. And nobody really thought that had lost anything.” Jaan spoke, in thought. His gaze fell on Mariann. “I was just imagining how I would feel.”
“It indeed was something like that.” She replied.
“Meaning the scientists in that books or remembrances died the same way in the end?”
“No.” Mariann got up. “Their demise is much more mysterious and interesting. And that’s what we came to look for. The office and quarters of the chief medical officer are over there.” She pointed into darkness. “Let’s go.”
Having walked several dozen steps, they appeared before a thick wall of several layers of plastic curtains. On the other side of these curtains there were three white work desks with telephones and beyond those, three white doors, with large Russian signs on each door.
“Director of medical personnel. Chief medical officer, supreme commander of the medical forces.”
“I can understand the first two.” Jaan said. “But whose the third one?”
“Supreme commander of the medical forces comrade polkovnik Anatoly Samolin.” Mariann said with disdain in her voice. “A career officer who could not make heads or tails of what really went on in here.” She turned her face towards Jaan. “You asked something, right? The director of medical personnel was in charge of the nurses and orderlies. The chief medical officer was in charge of the doctors and polkovnik Samolin was there to remind the former two that they work in the interest of the facility and not the other way around. We can disregard the quarter of Lyudmila Kornilova who was in charge of the nurses. But we should go through Samolin’s and chief medical officer Chischev’s quarters. You take one, I’ll take the other.”
With these words, she opened the chief Chischev’s office door and entered it.
Jaan took a deep breath to calm himself and opened the door to the offices of the polkovnik who had been in charge of the medical section. Feeling around in the dark with his hand, he managed to find a rotating switch and by turning that a crystal chandelier in the ceiling lit up. He closed the door behind him and then froze. The contrast between the rest of the base and the office of a high level officer and a party member was so profound that for a few moments, it paralyzed his thinking. Comparing one to the other, one was like a stage in a theater, with the items there only being props and the action there only a spectacle.
While the rest of the base looked unearthly and driven by pure functionality, in this office, it was all upside down. The base looked like it was created for heroes of socialist labor who only required sleep and food to continue working and whose work was also their sole purpose in life. But here he saw a high painted ceiling, a crystal chandelier. On the floors, instead of concrete or that weird plastic coating slippery with dust, there was wooden parquet in fishtail pattern. Walls covered in decorative wood paneling.
The centerpieces of the office was a massive writing desk of dark wood and a wooden swiveling armchair with thick padding of dark red leather. At the back of the office there were large chests of drawers made of precious red wood, and on the wall, there was a large painting of some historic city skyline, which at closer look and according to the title was Kazan. On another wall there was box with a glass cover and a Mosin-Nagant rifle contained within.
The desk was full of various yellowed papers, the position of which made Jaan feel as if work was still on-going in here and the person working on them had just stepped out of the room for a moment. At one corner of the desk, there was a czarist-era globe and on the other corner stood a strange piece of art looking like a pair of cubes connected by their corners with a metal bar and centered on a stand by that bar.
He looked around for a few seconds more as if to be certain that nobody would come to disturb him. He then started looking closer at the paperwork on and in the desk. Setting aside everything that could have been of interest to the girl in black, he moved from drawer to drawer in the office, finally getting to the chests of drawers of red wood.
As much as he could tell from everything he had glanced over thus far, the work of commanding the medical section was unbelievably boring and monotonous. The main bulk of the documents consisted of redacted versions with heavy blacking out. With references to unredacted documents being passed to the base commander. It seemed like the chief medical officer Chischev and polkovnik Samolin had a serious and long-standing conflict over how the medical section conducted it’s work. The chief medical officer wanted to treat the patients, to fight for every life and find the cause for the various ‘letterform syndromes’ which affected the patients. The section commander however wanted that all medical cases would be solved by the most efficient means. That meant both soldiers and medical workers as manpower as well as medicines and time.
Kornilova who was in charge of the nurses, which made up more than 80 of the medical personnel was constantly forced to navigate between two headstrong men both in her speech and her actions. Men who had radically different visions about military medicine. Thus there remained the letters exchanged between Samolin and base high command on Chischev and his ‘letterform syndromes’.
The letterform syndromes were a collection of 27 pathologies of body and mind which only manifested in the people living and working in this base and which had no equivalent in known medicine. The most infamous of those were syndromes N and SU. While the latter one was discussed openly and polkovnik Samolin had been of the opinion that all who suffered from it should have been shot at once, the former, syndrome N, was something that wasn’t explained properly anywhere.
It was pure luck he even found these few references to it, as most of the documents referring to it had been heavily redacted with black ink. It was also evident that even the name ‘syndrome N’ was being redacted at one point. It was clear that all the documents he could find from Samolin’s office were either photocopies of originals or produced with carbon paper. Which meant the originals had either been destroyed on stationed within the base commander’s archive. Or long since sent to Moscow as the third option.
Suddenly Jaan felt that he was no longer alone in the office. He knew only one person who could step into the room without anybody noticing and it was that very same person who had brought him into this facility. Because of that he did not allow himself to be distracted by that presence.
“Hey Mariann, I found…!” He raised his gaze.
The office was empty.
Jaan was still alone in the office. The door outside was closed. However a side-door to Samolin’s personal quarters moved as if it had bounced back from the wall. He put the folder in his hand back onto the cupboard and then went to look if perhaps Mariann had passed him by and entered the base commander’s quarters.
The answer though was ‘no.’ Large living room right next to the office where polkovnik Samolin probably spent most of the little free time he had, was empty. Same for the bathroom and the bedroom. Those same three rooms were the source of another surprise for him, about the contrast between the base itself and the living quarters of the top command. The base was cold and desolate, the living quarters however reflected a warm life frozen in time, now laid bare before Jaan. While the office at the front was “official” and grand, prudent for a top Soviet officer, the living quarters felt homely and perhaps even rustic.
Floors were covered in slightly brighter fishbone pattern, but covered in carpets. The walls of the rooms were covered in lighter wood paneling up to about four feet of height and above that wallpaper with vertical stripes of yellow and purple. In the ceiling there was a chandelier more modest in design and in the corner there was tall cocklestove with white tiling. In the other corner there seemed to be what could be regarded as modern technology for it’s time – a record player with wood framing, large buttons made of white bakelite and fabric covering the speaker and as background for the illuminated radio dial. There was also a reel to reel tape deck with similar design. Instead of the red phone in the office, there was an even older model on a small table in the living room, decorated with both lighter golden wood and darker walnut.
By the wall there was another small table and two chairs with a doily and an empty crystal vase on the table. In the corner by the door there was curio with a mirror in the back wall full of crystal and porcelain which made sound every time…
Suddenly Jaan stopped. He then continued walking, towards the curio. Silence. The porcelain and crystal in the curio did not make a sound. He quickened his pace, ran across the room, even jumped. But still nothing. As if he really wasn’t in this room. As if he wasn’t touching the floor at all, as if the floor under his feet was in no way tied to the floor on which the curio stood. A strange feeling started to rise in him. A fear about all the unknowns he could not sense.
He carefully opened another side-door between the living room and the bedroom. That one was a washroom, cold and desolate like a soviet-style military washroom should be, as if to remind people at their most vulnerable the place they were in. Pale white tiled walls, dark red almost brown small tiles on the floor. Toilet bowl of white porcelain, cart iron bathtub with heavy white enameling and a sink of stamped steel, also enameled. All piping exposed and painted with thick layers of enamel paint to protect against rust and leaking connections. The shower with rotating valves was also something very familiar to him. In short, this was just about the only room which was true to it’s age in this facility otherwise filled with strange devices and machinery, personal quarters which looked like a stage and unexplainable architecture.
From the washroom he could step into the bedroom which again was everything but desolate. In professor’s honest opinion it looked surprisingly and perhaps even fearfully common. A large twin bed made up with military-style perfection. Tall and wide wooden wardrobe covered in thick clear lacquer, reminiscent of Soviet era wall units. An ashtray, pack of cigarettes and matchbox on nightstand next to the bed under a small lamp. There was a heavy carpet on the floor and an armchair in the corner with a parade overcoat resting on it.
Suddenly Jaan felt that something in the air had changed. Sharp smell of unfiltered Soviet cigarettes assaulted his nose. He turned his gaze back on the nightstand and saw a thin gray line of smoke rise into the air and freeze there like a strand of spider silk torn from the web. But what unnerved Jaan the most was that there was no cigarette in the ashtray from which the trail of smoke was rising. There was no cigarette, no extinguished stubs, not even any ashes. Ashtray made of thick pressure-formed glass was pristine. The thin trail of smoke had also dissipated by now, but the strong nostalgic smell of Russian tobacco still lingered.
However what happened next made his blood curdle. He heard the door open and then heard and felt steps walk across the bedroom floor.
“So what did you…?”
He turned around and his words stopped at once. He had hoped to find the girl in black behind him, but there was nobody. He was still alone. He walked back to the living room and now heard steps again, this time rushing over the floor towards the office. And he then saw the door opening and bouncing from the wall with such a force as if somebody had forced it open and then slammed it afterwards.
After that, silence fell and slowly grew to become deafening. Only broken by ghostly creaking on the floor and sound of invisible steps approaching the bedroom. And then suddenly the floor creaked right next to him, and he could feel the wooden tiles slightly buckle and bend under what was now the weight of two people, one of them invisible. Then a pressure assaulted his body as if he had stepped into a strong gale. But there was no wind. And this was inside, and the next moment the pressure was gone and the floor next to him creaked.
“Cool, isn’t it?”
Apprehensive silence was suddenly broken by the girl’s question, which for a moment froze the professor’s thought, heart and breath.
“Dammit! Do you have to startle like this?!” He asked with an angry voice.
“Startle you?” Mariann asked in a hurt tone. “Me? You? Don’t make me laugh.” She looked around in the room. “Don’t blame me if you spend your time spying after ghosts and pay attention to little else.”
“Spy after ghosts?” Jaan asked, now calm.
“Indeed.” She smiled. “It would seem my theory is proven true, at least in part. But also that the world it much stranger than I had thought. For us and the polkovnik, the room and the furniture are the same, even the smell of the cigarettes is the same, sound is the same. But smoke is not, cigarettes placed in the ashtray are not. The polkovnik probably felt that very same strange wind when you two occupied the very same three spatial dimensions. The only difference between you lies in the fourth, packaged dimension. The polkovnik is probably thinking that his cigarette smoke is dissipating into air as an invisible thread of smoke. And not that it would cross the fourth spatial dimension and reach our world fabrics.”
“You found something?” Jaan asked.
“Something.” She smiled, lifting a thick stack of cardboard folders. “The base commander stood more than a few levels above the rest of the officers.”
“In what sense?” Jaan asked. “He had more benefits than those two of them here?”
“He had two offices.” Mariann said. “All sorts of guest from Moscow were received in the base at the officers’ wing on the highest floor. But all his personal documents, working office and living quarters a located in...”
“In?” Jaan asked. “Where?”
“In experimental laboratory section. Right above the reactor level.”
“The reactor level is the lowermost...” Jaan said. “We have to descend some more stairs?”
“I’m afraid so. There is an upside though. From the base commander’s personal quarters there is a direct connection to the gate rooms.”
“Is that ‘direct connection’ a set of elevators you’re so afraid of?”
“I just don’t like them.” Mariann said. “But no. According to the documents, straight connection means something else than elevators. It also has not been elaborated further, just a term in Russian ‘direct connection’, what it means, we will have to see for ourselves.”
“How much time do we have?” Jaan asked. “I remember I haven’t asked you about it for some time.”
Mariann gave her watch a disinterested glance.
“Yeah… If were to start rushing up the stairs right now, we would just about barely make it to the gate room.” She gave an apologizing smile. “Our only chance is to traverse the commander’s office on the laboratory level.”
The professor fell into contemplation, not able to really decide whether it would be better to barely not make it through the gate or to follow the girl and discover something else of importance before the time is up. His train of thought was broken by the floor once again creaking in the living room. Based on the location of the creak, it was almost possible to predict where the next invisible step would fall.
“It would be better for us to get going.” She said. “Before they figure out we’re here.”
“It is possible for them to sense we’re here?!” Jaan asked surprised. “Did you not tell me that for us they are only ghosts? And some story about the memory of earth or the base when people within are constantly moving around.”
“I have said such things.” Mariann said. “However things are a bit different here. If we are located on different world fabrics then for them, we are ghosts and vice versa, as I said before. It may even be simultaneous. But it does not mean that our world fabrics would be equally along on the timeline. The difference in such points between us and them may be in decades, and from our point of view, into the past or into the future. But the main point is that this is not news neither for me nor for the inhabitants of this facility. Meaning they most certainly have equipment to discover us if we stay in one place for too long. To speak in visual terms, as long as they go about their business as usual, and as long as we a re doing the same, compared to the base and the stationary equipment within, we are impermanent, and even more impermanent compared to them. But if we stand still, our permanence increases, until we begin to bleed through.”
With a quick jog, they headed back towards the main staircase.
“But these strange scientists? Who only survived 12 months in their positions?” Jaan asked, trying to catch his breath. “Did you find any new info? On them?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “It is classified so strictly that not a line is available in here. The head of the medical corps had a massive conflict with base commander over this. They kept putting together accounts and reports and sent them up the chain of command. But the commander did not send them to Moscow as he was supposed to do but instead collected them to his secret office.”
“To the place we’re now going to?” Jaan asked.
“Yes. And I also remembered the most important piece of information which allows us to get there, the parole.”
“It is locked up somehow?”
“We’ll see. Again it is something I know of somehow, but I cannot explain, how.”
Again they quickly slid down the stairs in a staircase with pale walls and even paler mercury vapor florescent light. Four floors again to get from the medical corps level to the archival level and then another four floors down to get to the laboratory level.
Here, there were not wooden double doors with windows between the staircase and the section, but thick windowless metal doors. Gray in color and with obvious rust spots. Their creaking had a positively deafening echo, when Mariann pushed the door open for them to continue.
“Do you feel that?” Jaan asked as soon as they had taken their first steps on the gray floor under the endless darkness above.
The question arose due to a strange pressure he felt in his mind as well in his sense of hearing. A low-pitched vibration which did not reach them through the floor but instead seemed to be all around them in the air. The eerie feeling was elevated further by the partially lit wide hallway before them. He could not see walls nor the ceiling. It was almost like standing in the middle of some underground runway. The floor too was as smooth as glass, looking a bit like frosted glass. Light sources of which he could not see, only illuminated the center of the hall, leaving the edges into darkness.
Also the death-like lack of sound was was often cut into by different metallic mechanical noises echoing along the hallway. Rubbing, creaking and rattling which repeated as if on some schedule. This is why it felt more like the work of metalworking machinery than a high tension mast swaying back and forth in the wind.
Carefully, they advanced along the hallway. The light was just strong enough and just directed enough to not let their eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. Also no doors or any kind of intersecting hallways were visible in the darkness. As if the whole section was but a single long tunnel. In the middle of which stood a strange statue.