Thursday morning rolled into Valgepalõ along with morning mists from the Talaba lake. Nobody seemed to have any idea that the last night had somehow been different from the others. The downpour in the night was but a distant memory and trash carried around by the winds had been taken care of by the street sweepers long before the sun rose. The cottage district with it’s larger and smaller cooperatives surrounding old farm hearts was located far enough from permanent settlements for it to take days before anybody even discovered the wrecks of the military choppers.
And thus in the minds of Valgepalõ locals there were instead preparations to honor a weekly tradition that for locals from other town nearby had long since become obsolete. And this may have been one of the reasons it had attained fanatical importance from the locals here. For them, although the new Russian era had turned into a fledgling restored republic, a very important tradition had survived the transition – Thursday was Fish Day. Fish Day tradition was carried by all employees of the former fisherman kolkhozes, for whom the only visible change with the fall of communism was that people from the kolkhozes now got employed at the Valgepalõ fish factory. And the fish factory was also used to it’s product having such a popularity once a week.
In Tontla and in the Nameless Town, there was much less focus on Fish Day as a tradition. But Valgepalõ as a lakeside town and a fish factory town could not get over or around it. This however meant that on Thursdays it was impossible to find food with out fish as at least one ingredient. Public canteens, bars, restaurants, even people offering street food. None were exempt. Some local comedians even came up with fish ice cream, which they sold from the cart on corner of the main square. As a curios side note, fish ice cream was not half as disgusting as a competing roe ice cream.
But today, there was a disturbance in the routine of that misty morning – Mariann’s red land yacht, slowly rolling down the wide cobblestone streets of Valgepalõ. While Tontla was a town with streets a little too small for her almost six meter long car, Valgepalõ was the opposite. Streets were big and wide, the only thing missing was traffic to use them. Sure, the locals had their own Zhigulis, Moskviches, the Willy’ses and Sapaks. Some even had Volgas and Chaikas they had picked up or inherited from the premiers of the local kolkhozes, production cooperatives and other important establishments. One fearless man even had a ZIL he had picked up from the Underground Base and which had made him famous for a few months. But still it was more likely to see people simply walking, riding bicycles and even motorcycles. However nobody paid too much attention to Mariann leaving her red car on the side of the road, not even bothering to put up the top.
Valgepalõ had a total of three streets considered as main streets. These ran in parallel through town and ended with a seaside boulevard and boardwalk. Right there, during the Stalinist era, the fish factory and cannery were built. Along them a big fishing port up the coast. The other thing special about the town was a salty mist rolling in from the lake, flooding the streets and burying half the town under it. This was especially abundant in the morning, like now.
Why salty mist would emerge from a freshwater lake, nobody could tell. From time to time, all sorts of meteorologists, lake and weather scientists found themselves in town, bringing along both theories and measuring instruments but nobody could come up with a satisfactory answer. Locals tended to blame Northern winds bringing the mist in from the Baltic sea. But also chemical factories near Pskov and Greater-Novgorod. However most of the time, the Weather Station was to blame.
The locals treated the mist in much the same way as they treated a downpour. During downpours, the bar in Nameless Town was full of drunks, freeloaders and other villagers. Here, the bars were full with both downpours and the mist. And as a strange twist, with downpours sale of beer grew and with mist, sale of vodka grew. And on misty days, it was impossible to find a worker in Valgepalõ who wasn’t at least slightly inebriated.
Mariann exited the car and headed down the sidewalk lined with forged black streetlights, only stopping in front of a three story czarist wooden building. Where one of four or five local bars was. ‘Stunned lamprey bar.’
“Are you sure you can leave your car like this?” Jaan asked with hesitation. “I wouldn’t.”
“Relax.” She smiled. “Everybody in this entire lost county know that this is my car. Nobody’s gonna even lay a finger on it.”
She opened the pub door and headed directly towards the counter.
“What’s good for breakfast here?” She asked.
“Smoked burbot sandwich.” The old man behind the counter replied, without even raising his eyes to look at her.
“I’d much rather have something warm, I’ve been on my feet all night long. Do you do early lunch?”
“I do.”
“Good. Let it be fish, fried, and it better not be zander. Also whatever you offer on the side of that.”
Mariann took her seat at a table not too far from the counter and waited until Jaan finished ordering his share. As was a misty morning tradition, the bar was full of people. But Mariann was just about the only person here who wanted something to eat. Everywhere around her she could see people sitting around tables taking their traditional morning shot which was supposed to drive the mist back to the lake. Didn’t matter whether a person was a conveyor line worker or wore a suit, the tradition was the same.
“What do you have against zander?” Jaan asked when he took a seat at the table.
“I don’t have much against zander nor the Fish Day.” She said. “But those two together have ruined Fish Day forever for me. It isn’t just about zander, it is also about perch, pike and whitefish. Or rather about the pinnacle of Fish Thursday being fish stew with the broth made from just about every part of zander left over after all the good parts have been taken.”
“You talk about it like for you every day has been Fish Day.” The professor said.
“It it possible it once was.” The girl in black replied.
“So could you continue then?” He asked.
“With?”
“With what you were saying in the base before we got interrupted by your watch and had to flee. What happened to those people in the base? What were the things you suddenly remembered when you stepped into the commander’s office?"
“Oh, that.” She paused for a bit. “Very well. In the simplest of terms, the people there learned the true meaning of the world. They discovered knowledge one can only consider as divine and this knowledge doomed them. But they don’t know it yet. They keep existing and working there, sometimes making contact with places they cannot tell whether they have been to or not in order to ingest new talent. But in the end it is all for naught.”
“How do you know that they will never achieve anything?” Jaan asked.
“I did not say they won’t achieve anything, but they will not achieve what they set out to achieve at the start of it all. And that’s because they haven’t achieved it thus far. They have the ability to travel in time or to send the facility back in time. The fact we are not currently living in a Thousand Year Reich or under a fledgling Communist World Government is proof enough that they never succeeded. And since they too see neither of those things when connecting to the worlds from time to time, they keep trying.”
“Doesn’t the multiverse theory state that anything is possible in a multiverse?” Jaan asked. “That there must be a universe where either of those things or both of them exist? Or are you telling me that those things are impossible across all of multiverse?”
“That is certainly one way to interpret things. But I think the issue here is that they have never reached any of those universes because they haven’t even tried. They keep hovering around the part of the multiverse they originated from. This facility could travel forwards and backwards in time, across multiple universes and world fabrics of the same universe. But the people who run this place are interested in none of that. They are not explorers. All they want is a little more time to win the war. World War 2 for the Germans, the Cold War for the Russians, or possibly World War 3 for them too. They want to turn the tide in this century and so the keep hovering around here in this 100 year span.”
“That is strange to me too.” Jaan said, sipping some of the beer the barkeep had brought. “They could just travel into the future and use the technical progress to win the war in the past.”
“Their hope is that if they achieve their goal in one universe, a cascading domino effect will take place in this corner of the multiverse and they find themselves in the center of that cascade, meaning they would be surrounded by endless universes where they have achieved their goal. But the problem with that is that they keep plundering the multiverse they are in for scientific minds to further their goals, which ensures that they will never get closer to their goals but may in fact be drifting further away from them, spawning new universes but also harming the whole and damaging collective intellect, especially in this field.”
“So did you manage to install that little program you had?” Jaan asked. “To anchor it?”
“I did, but they discovered it and removed it. I tried to explain the futility of their endeavors but they’re all idiots. But I did spend enough time in there to find out that the facility is not completely independent. There are facilities outside of it which it can interface with. I don’t know if any of them are located anywhere near here though.”
“Do they know you found that out?”
“They still hadn’t when I left there.”
“Did you at least get to meet the base commander?”
“I did not.” She said. “Nobody meets him. He hasn’t come out of his office for years. People send him their reports and only the department heads know what he looks like. Or rather, they know what he is supposed to look like according to his photos, but even right after meeting him, they cannot say whether he looks anything like his photos.”
“So what you said in the temple. That he might not be completely human anymore.” Jaan said.
“I asked about that too, the temple. Apparently that’s the default destination of all gates. Those small eggs are but artificial constructs they came up with.”
“So what’s that temple really? A labyrinth for a minotaur of some other civilization? Some sort of eternal arena for the entertainment of gods?”
“They have no idea either.” Mariann replied. “I did learn a couple of other tidbits about those gates though. Apparently they need to be installed between two parallel surfaces, either walls or a floor and a ceiling. Just a single pond will not work. Also, all gates seem to be powered by the connection they have to the temple.”
“Again that temple.” Jaan sighed. “Did they at least reveal to you where the base is located? What is that pale orange world we saw at the temple and you saw near the gate room?”
“They don’t know.” She said. “It was surprise when it started to appear in the windows after they untethered the base. And even bigger a surprise when they discovered the temple. Although most of them haven’t seen the temple, as the temple is the sole domain of that secretive base commander.”
“Then what about the young scientists all dying in less than a year?”
“This related to that divine knowledge I spoke of earlier. They only wanted it for a frankly idiotic reason. But they attained all of it. And the facility was not built in one go. Behind it becoming what we saw are the lives of those dozens of young scientists who literally worked themselves to death. Tortured themselves to death with their work. Each of the scientists had solved some important problem or simplified the way the facility worked or how the equipment functioned. But thinking and understanding which this kind of science requires, is superhuman. It exceeds corporeal flesh. The physical bodies of the scientists could not bare the mental pressure caused by the knowledge of principles by which the facility functioned. Comprehension itself killed them.”
“Superhuman comprehension?” The professor asked. “In that case what is Pathology N?”
“Pathology N, also known as numinous pathology.” Mariann said. “Interaction with any of the scientific materials was in essence an experience that countered cognition. Overcoming the anticognitive could only be achieved through pain and tension. Synthesis of new knowledge and concepts after transcending the anticognitive was at it’s core a numinous experience. An apocalyptic experience because a person’s mind learned something that his physical body was incapable of knowing.
“These scientists came here, spent ten months to transcend the anticognitive and the last months to write down the new knowledge with ample clarity before their corporeality gave out. And this wasn’t always the simple part. Scientists who had reached that level were both revered and feared.”
“How did they die, in the end?”
“Their brain matter broke down bit by bit. On one moment they might have been working on new scientific concepts and the next moment their nose would start to bleed heavily, then ears, then eyes, then mouth and within a few minutes they would collapse. By that time most of their brains were usually no longer located within their skulls but had instead drained along with their blood.”
“And the high command let that happen?”
“Of course they did. The scientists themselves let that happen.” Mariann continued. “The facility had to advance as fast as possible. Also, understanding all sorts of supercognitive concepts was nothing short of a narcotic experience. Dying as a consequence of understanding a principle was to become a part of the very principle they were in the process of understanding. Sometimes, the more active scientists were even prescribed lysergic acid diethylamide to soften the effects of them comprehending something. If lucky, it extended their lives a few months. But at some point the outside stopped supplying the substance. Similarly narcotic was how fast the facility developed. How fast new discoveries were made in theory, in practice and in field work.”
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“Can you say what that numinous knowledge consists of?” Jaan asked. “Or would saying it out loud be like a casting curse which immediately takes effect?”
“It is more like poetry or speaking in riddles or perhaps philosophy. Words that are really akin to physics formulae. Without proper context they are just a bunch of unknown word with no meaning. Also there is no single piece of knowledge that can be said out in words in one lifetime. It exceeds all that, the limit of one’s lifetime, the limit of our language. But it can be understood all at once. That’s the paradoxical aspect of it.”
Jaan fell silent, thinking about these words. But also looking at the ample early lunch Mariann was about to start with. Pan-fired fish was but a single part of that meal. This also included yeast free blackbread, a raw egg, some mayonnaise and horseradish.
“In the Cold-Talaba lake system there are more than 30 species of fish, many of them at risk of extinction due to overfishing.” Mariann said. “That’s why weekly Fish Day helps to raise awareness on all the other species the lake is full of and which also make good eating. That’s the reason in the Soviet era they came up with a fish stew made of 5 predatory fish.”
“Did you manage to learn about the history of the base?”
“I did. That is kind of a long story. And the middle section is kind of messy, but if you’re interested I can try. When they started to build the facility, their aim was simple: how does elementary physics work in places with abundant supernatural phenomena. All major nations and countries have done experiments like that since the beginning of times. They have researched chemistry, physics, medicine, biochemistry. But the special thing this time was that it was researched here, in our lost county.
“However here they stumbled upon a strange phenomenon they could neither explain nor control. The core of this phenomenon was the fact that if one left this place they could travel to Reval or City of Glass in the North, or to Yuryev not as far. Or to Perno to the West. But people who come to this place for the first time have never before heard of such places or for them such names are historic only, dating back to mid 19th century. At the same time nobody has heard of our Tontla or Valgepalõ.”
“I’ve heard that story both in the Institute as well as in the bar. I think last year we even had a researcher in the Institute who was focused on collecting such folklore.” The professor said.
“During research one very important and interesting aspect became clear. Mathematics was suddenly no longer universal. Laws which are valid outside out lost county may not necessarily be valid here, additionally, new laws cropped up. One such mathematical equation which was unsolved outside, when they tried to solve it here, it resulted in giving two answers: 9 and -9. I cannot tell you how exactly that was possible but after examining the equation and the solution to it under the effect of various local psychoactive herbs the first written explanations were created, both on the meaning of the equation as well as the concept of a gate as such. The equation was interpreted in a way that a practical application of it could, in theory, bring into reality the same kind of effect as the use amanita muscaria had on human consciousness.”
“I have read of and even taken part of rituals in which psychoactive chemicals allow people to access knowledge not their own and perhaps even supernatural. But this knowledge has never been direct, free of interpretations and technological.” Said Jaan.
“Well, here they were exactly that.” She replied. “Based on that initial info, the first half of the facility was built, then called Mir-4 – the so-called old section with it’s 9 gates. It was built in the Fourth Town, under the local campus of the academy of sciences. The initial version of the facility looked nothing like the one we saw. The center section of the base was a parking garage on two levels, below those were computing machinery on four levels, below that four levels of electronics and electro-mechanics which fed the gates. The gate room itself was almost the same with nine gates in a quarter circle shape around a hall accessible by both large vehicles and also indoor rail. And at the top of the sector was the control room.”
“So they even started with a facility to connect to nine different locations?”
“Not quite. That wasn’t even the goal of the facility. That wasn’t the goal of the gates. At that time the gates were not really gates, strictly speaking. At that time the gate doors hid chambers behind them, each with an antenna with slightly different design and purpose to it. The purpose of the antennae was to radiate out a signal. The nine antennas would create an interference pattern and hope was that there was an intelligence that had recognized a similar principle and they could perhaps establish contact. And they did.”
“What?” Jaan asked.
“It was a surprise to them too. Contact was made and theories were suddenly proven. The 9 antennas not only found a similar signal, theorized to be a similar facility, but made contact. Morse at first, then radio signals exchanging data in hexadecimal form. Whoever or whatever they managed to contact, it gave them further instructions how to modify the facility in such a way as to turn the chambers into gates. So that the facility would not only locate the source of the signal but could actually achieve direct contact and connection with them. And thus, during an experiment with the modified chambers, they managed to create a stable gate to another similar facility. Antenna chambers disappeared and on the other side of the gate doors there was another facility.”
“They created simultaneously 9 Einstein-Rosen bridges in parallel to another facility like that?”
“They created 9 gates.” She replied. “There were no wormholes. It was more like our experience, like a magical door. The door is either closed, or in the next position connected to the antenna chamber or in the next to the concrete wall and in the fourth position, to the other facility.
“Of course, there was more astonishment for them to be had. The other facility they had made contact with looked almost the same! With the difference being that it had the tech but no people. Everything was automated, the information provided to them for modifying the facility came from the microcomputer data storage. The running program had detected their signal and in response provided them the necessary data. It also contained thousands of hours of audio notes recorded by the scientists who had worked there.”
“So that’s how they got the information how to finish the facility with the center section and the other wing?” Jaan asked.
“Well, again, not quite. This was not the end for their astonishment.” Said Mariann. “In this new facility they found the circular center room and also the other wing, with it’s own accesses, garage levels and gates. And if that was not enough, when they turned back into their own facility, it was no longer the same it had been. From their own facility they also now discovered the circular control section and the other wing. To the appearance or existence of which they had no explanation. Ironically they only discovered it only after severing connection with the base. The only thing convincing them that they had not suddenly got lost in the other facility instead was the fact that the vehicle bay door still opened to the Fourth Town.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jaan asked. “I am not gonna say this is not possible, because it feels like I’ve been saying that for 7 hours now but… at moment of making contact with the other facility, the control center and the other wing also materialized in their facility? One reality just overwrote the other?”
“I can retell it like that and it might seem like that to you or to the scientists who had to experience it for themselves. But do you not feel that there might be a much simpler explanation?” Mariann asked.
“A simpler explanation?”
“If you think about as one reality overwriting the other, it seems ridiculous, right? But what if it instead just took it’s place? All it had to do was to switch the exit data. Mir-4 had a regular exit to the world outside, but on Mir-8 it may well be another gate. And since Mir-8 is a mirror facility, it has two exits, one for each side of it. And that would explain why two gates were completely off.”
“Ergo, people built a facility and then found a signal from a more advanced facility, this more advanced facility sent them data to modify their own.” Jaan mused. “When they had undertaken these modifications, the connection was established, at the same time, the advanced facility reassigned the other’s facility’s exit to itself, thus taking it’s place and completely blocking the other one off, except access through the gates.”
“And people who went to the new, more advanced facility, after they had visited the center section, could no longer tell on which side they were. And since the exit was reassigned, it ended up looking like one reality had written over the other.”
“That is a neat explanation.” Jaan said.
“It also lines up with what I learned during my stay at the base.” Mariann continued. “For example the fact that the current scientists working there are not the original ones. Although they still have their original goal, they no longer burn through brains at such a rate and as a result the speed of their scientific advancement has slowed down. The portraits of the dead we saw were of the original scientists.”
“That just raises more questions.” Jaan said. “Like where did the advanced facility come from? And whose marks of use were they? And whose skeleton was it?”
“The first one is one I cannot answer. But I did learn about the other ones.” Mariann said. “In essence, the current scientists are at the moment only using half the facility. The one we saw as clean. The other side is indeed the older and more used one, which they made initial contact with. But there is a problem currently with the center section.”
“What problem?”
“They did not do too god a job elaborating on it, but essentially, it’s on the fritz. Since Mir-8 is a mirror facility, the two sides of it are reflections of one another, functionally. The theory is that for the facility to be in full working order, the two sides need to be balanced in some way, in this case the facility would exist on a certain range of world fabrics, with people on one side occupying one end of the range, and people on the other side occupying the other end of the range. They can travels to either side of the facility, but only see one another in the center chamber, that silver ball, were the fabrics have been reduced to a single one.”
“So what’s the problem?” Jaan asked again.
“The current inhabitants think that it is either their doing or the base commander’s but there was a mistake and they’ve lost the balance. The old section started suffering from extra-dimensional incursions. Strange creatures, people and plants showing up. Probably other stuff too they could not classify. They knew about the roots and the skeleton. And they sad that the base commander said to leave the skeleton where it was.”
“So there could have been something stalking the base at the same time as we were there?” Jaan asked. “Something that eats flesh off bones, leaving them clean and in once piece? That is disconcerting, even in hindsight.”
“It is conceivable. They have been trying to repair the issue, but the only thing they have managed to do was to push back the time of the incursion repeating. That’s why the time between chances to access it has been increasing. At first they thought my presence to be one such incursion. It took quite a bit of explaining for them to understand how I got there. By their calculations, if there was no problem, we could not have accessed it. But I think they are wrong, for several reasons.”
“So them being in the base at the same time as we were, was true?” Jaan asked. “I wonder how did it look for them, during these five and a half hours? Also, how are they wrong?”
“They explained the error and the incursions happening like a buildup of unwanted energy which finally breaks through and releases. But it releases into higher dimensions, breaching world fabrics and either creating breaches or severely weakening the fabrics for a time. However, the timelines are not equally far along. For them, the number of the current year is completely different than it is for us. When the base is inaccessible it is irrelevant at what speed time passes or how it changes. The people inside the base cannot sense it and live and age at the same pace. But they can measure the speed at which time passing changes – the temporal flux. When such a release of energy takes place, the temporal flux remains unchanged, a weakening period may last for hours or it might last a microsecond.”
“Okay…?”
“But when we went there, and when I left almost 4 months ago, the temporal flux became zero and the facility got locked into normal time for those almost six hours. Normal time being the time here. They treated it as an error and as a fault event, reasoning that it would not be possible to establish connection if it worked properly. But it think that they are mistaken. There are protocols on place, either internal to the facility or external, which force it to make contact. However it is yet unknown what kind of event or counter triggers this contact. This is supported by the fact that the Russians knew it would happen beforehand. Also that during the time we were in there, we only saw an empty base, no monster chasing us.”
“So they have two problems, one being a problem with machinery and they other being a problem with the control logic. But they think it is a single problem, the former one?”
“Yeah. And for them it was even more frightening than for you. They knew beforehand that there would be an almost six hour window during which their permanence would be weaken than that of the bases, due to them being on different and on not as many world fabrics as the base. So all they could do was to continue working and hope that nothing would happen.”
“Interesting.” The professor said, eating his warm sandwich. “So, under the 4th Town, these should be an inaccessible original facility, which is only accessible by explosive excavation perhaps?”
“Pretty much.”
“What about the untethering? How would that have happened?”
“Believe it or not, with the nine antennas I mentioned before. Both the facility and our world have an atomic clock. These are tied to radio beacons which radiate the clock signal on certain frequencies. It was discovered that by affecting the function of certain generators in the facility, they could manipulate the incoming clock signal. Speed it up, slow it down, squeeze and stretch it, even reverse and manipulate it in tens of other ways. However this obviously meant that the function of neither the atomic clock nor the radio beacon where the signal originated from was altered, but instead the receiver’s relation with said signal changed. Untethering from space had a different means, but similar mechanics.”
“I imagine you found it the same way, by discovering the clock signal?”
“Indeed. A radio receiver and an oscilloscope to compare signals. A few weeks ago I started to notice that the clock signal emitted by the Center Station and another clock signal I could not triangulate were growing closer in their timings. As you know, this is something impossible under any ordinary conditions. Then, about 72 hours before we made it to the cottage district, the numbers station also became online, letting me know of the opportunity that was about to come up.”
“But how did you get back? If they had and still have a problem of making sure that they can reconnect to the same universe twice. How did they manage to do it in your case?”
“Who says they did?” Mariann asked.
“If they didn’t then how can you be here, unless you’re a Mariann from a different reality?”
She did not reply to that, only smiled.
“Wait, you are? From somewhere else?!”
“Not quite. They opened a gate to a wrong place and at the wrong time. And I had to do some traveling to get back here. Luckily the wrong place was somewhere in this lost county. Had it been somewhere outside of it, things would have been a lot more difficult. Had it been somebody else than me, then also,probably.”
“But you made it back.”
“Nope. I don’t think I have yet, but this is close enough for my comfort and for the most part matches my knowledge.”
“And you’re not in any way unnerved by that?” Jaan asked.
“Why should I be?” She asked in return. “I left behind a world quite similar to this one. All the major aspects are the same, which means I’m in the right ballpark. People tend to think of multiverse in broad strokes, that in a different world they might have been born the opposite sex, might have not acted the dumbass and gotten the girl, killed the bully instead of taking it etc. But each insignificant event or choice is a branching point as well. There are an uncountable number of universes in the multiverse, each branching event creates an uncountable number more. To us, potentially all alternate universes are right beside ours. But thematically, considering how much they differ, they might be light years apart.”
“But still.”
“But still nothing. One literally cannot make difference between them in any meaningful way. Universal constants even are identical to the millionth billionth billionth decimal place. Like I said, I’ve been here for some time, in major aspects this universe is like the one I’m from, and thus I might as well stay here and an uncountable number of me-s have made the same choice across all of multiverse. What matters in the end is if you are willing to accept me as Mariann you’re familiar of, especially if I look the same, act the same, remember the same. Qualitatively, you have but a choice whether you accept me saying that I am not the original, or you don’t, which would mean I am.”
“True.” Jaan sighed. “Just that all of it is so strange. Especially if I trust you.”
“Then don’t. If it helps you.” She replied.
“How many radio signals are out there anyway?” Jaan asked.
“More than you could ever imagine.” She said. “Locally I have managed to isolate about 80 noise signals, 3 dozen encrypted transmission patterns, none of which I can triangulate. Maybe 20 different clock signals and 12 numbers stations. And then there’s of course the radio of the Nameless Town, radiating out with such power that I’m amazed all of our brains have not yet boiled off. In addition to all that an uncountable number of errant transmissions and transmission scraps, which under normal circumstances seem to have no power at all to them but after thunderstorms they grow strangely prominent for a few hours.”
“You live in the Underground Base?” The professor suddenly asked on a completely different topic.
“Sometimes. I know all the ghost stories the Mayor and the bar flies tell about the place and in my experience, most of them are not true. At least not for me. Although I am pretty sure that some of the hauntings people have seen have been me just hanging around in there. Although I mostly keep to the first few levels. Which have mostly been stolen bare from all the equipment capable of moving under it’s own power.”
“What do you do there?”
“It’s my base of operations. A library, a repair shop. A peaceful place to crash for the night when I become tired of sleeping in my car. It feels quite cozy and mystical. We can go there and I can show it to you, but there’s not much to see.”
“You have aroused my curiosity, I must admit.” Jaan said. “But I think not. I’m tired and unlike you, I need my seven hours of sleep to do strenuous exercise like last night.”
“You also ought to drink less.” Mariann said.
“You said something about the Nameless Town having a radio station? I wasn’t even aware of anything like that being active.”
“It only recently became active and with regular broadcasts, something about an agreement with the Boys from the North. The radio tower is used for transmitting it, the studio building is right next to the town hall. There’s probably nothing happening right now, the station is playing old vinyl records on auto-pilot and the host is sleeping off the previous night. But it gets more interesting in the evenings. Some cool old dude named Allan Helde runs his show. And every time he asks at least one local to come to the show to discuss mystical stuff or unusual phenomena which has taken place around town or with the show’s guests. He has extended a welcome to me a couple of times, but thus far I have turned him down.”
“But why?”
“Every time Allan hosts his show, a hundred other fascinating things are also taking place around the county. Starting from heavy downpours and meteor showers and ending with some strange tension in the air which seems to grow stronger as darkness falls. I think it’s an infra-sound of some sorts. It is also much more interesting to listen to Allan and his guests, rather than to be there and speak myself. And some of his guests have such wild stories and theories that… even I’m stunned.”
Mariann finished her meal and emptied the mug of the remaining beer.
“That was good. Not perfect, but good.” She said. “I guess you wanna go home and sleep?”
“It would be nice.” Jaan said. “Although I would like to see your base of operation sometime.”
“I’ll find the time to do some cleaning then. Shall we go?”
She got up from the table.
“Yes.” He replied.