When Sally woke, she knew today was going to be a bad day. She’d broken her leg a long time ago; it had healed poorly and was very painful sometimes. Today was one of those times. She reached down and rubbed it, which helped a little.
As usual, her friends were piled around her. They were about the only thing that relieved the tedium of her days. She struggled to get up as they started bouncing around hindering her ability to move, but she knew they meant well.
She finally managed to get into a sitting position. Her clothing, which she had woven from the pseudo-fur of her companions, was looking quite ratty, but she didn’t care. The same for her hair, as she put it into a ponytail, she idly noted that it too was getting fairly nasty, but again, she just couldn’t care.
Sally mulled over the years she had been trapped in this hell. The only good things she had found were the companions. They were probably really smart but were so different from her that they’d never established any sort of meaningful dialog.
She reached for her walking stick and struggled to get up. With her companions bouncing around her, she walked over to the fire, which had been banked for the night. Leaning heavily on the walking stick, she lowered herself onto her hands and knees and blew on the embers. After a short while, she’d coaxed up a small flame to which she fed twigs until it was burning well. She pushed the rocks close so they would heat up, then watched to make sure everything was going okay.
Satisfied that it all looked good, she worked her way back up to her feet, limped over to the stream, went to the bathroom, and washed her face. A little cleaner, she walked back to the fire and picked up the pot. It was her pride and joy, one of the few things she’d managed to accomplish for herself. Early in her time here, she’d needed some way to hold and heat water, but nothing she tried worked. She’d attempted pottery, but had never found a decent clay, so she’d been forced to make something that would hold water in some other manner. After many failures, she’d finally found a way to weave bark from the pseudo-trees together with her fiber string so that the result was nearly watertight. The idea came from the birchbark canoes she’d heard of when she was a kid.
She filled the bark pot with water that had been filtered through some of the tubers, walked back to the fire, and spit on one of the heated stones. It sizzled and turned to steam, so she used two sticks as tongs and deftly transferred the hot stones into the pot. In a very short time, the water was boiling. After emptying her bag of spices onto a flat rock and spreading them out she selected a few sprigs and put them into the boiling water. Learning what was edible had nearly killed her more than once. After one memorable experiment, she’d puked for days.
Sally snapped her fingers, and one of the companions jumped in the pot. She never did figure out how they replaced themselves, but they were good eating and didn’t seem to care. While the food cooked she puttered about, getting ready for the day. When it had been long enough, she sat by the fire, took out her eating spoon, and ate directly from the pot.
She moved the food around her mouth to the good side, and chewed. When she was done, there was enough left in the pot to last for the rest of the day. She sighed, rallied her meager energy, and struggled to her feet for a trip down the row of rooms to gather more plants. She managed to gain her feet, but on the first step, her bad leg collapsed with a massive jab of pain.
Sally jerked awake with a yell! She jumped up and grabbed her head. Her hair wasn’t a greasy mess, her tongue told her that she had all her teeth, and her leg didn’t ache! She took a few breaths. That was the most realistic dream she’d ever had!
Sally freely interpreted Jon’s unexpressive look as meaning: “Will I have to put down this mad dog?”
“Sorry. Bad dream.”
“I will take your word for it. I have no need to dream.”
Sally sat back down on her bed.
Man! That had been one strange dream. In fact, now that she thought about it, all of the dreams that she’d had last night were weird. Even weirder, she could remember every detail, even from the ones about engineering. To top it off, the absolutely totally weirdest thing was that even now when she was wide awake, they all still seemed to make sense! She poked at the memories. They couldn’t be real, they came from dreams! She decided to let everything sit for a while; most likely the memories would fade. Probably the spider-rabbit meat was making her feel wonky.
Maybe she would stick with her old food for a while and see if she had normal dreams, next time. She went about getting ready for her day, a little more appreciative of how Jon helped her survive. Just for grins, she wanted to try some of the things the dream Sally had done, just to see if they worked. Once she was ready to go, she took a moment to look for some of the dream Sally’s plants in the brush next to the stream, but there wasn’t anything she recognized. She gave up. It was probably just a stupid dream.
She walked over to Jon.
“So. Plans? Looking through the atriums? Or should we tackle the smuggler’s tunnels?”
“Atria. Let’s see if anything’s different, here. If not, we will move on to the tunnels. Maybe they’ll be more secret doors.”
They picked one of the hallways and entered it in their usual manner; hand, Jon, then Sally. They reached the next atrium. It was similar to the various other ones they'd already seen. Jon took a handful of mud from the stream and wrote a big “1” on a window. He told her that this would be a backup to his memories, and she could use them to orient herself if they became separated. Sally interpreted this to really mean if she got lost.
While he was doing his artwork, Sally looked in the little rooms but didn’t find anything other than the usual trash. There was no word from the gods.
Jon finished his masterpiece and waited to the other hallway. Sally checked the last little room and descended to the floor, then headed to where Jon waited, hopping over the stream along the way. She stopped.
“No, it can’t be.”
She turned back to the stream. She did a quick scan of the plants in and beside the stream. She found the bit of familiar bluish green that had caught her eye. No! She counted the leaves; there were three together, similar to a clover. This was one of the plants from her dream! She picked it and brought it to Jon.
“Can I eat this?” she asked.
He tasted it. “Yes, it is reasonably compatible with your biology. Much more compatible than most of what we have found up 'till now.”
Sally tasted it. It actually had some flavor, and didn’t taste like dirt!
She was reluctant to tell Jon she had seen it in her dream. That would sound stupid. Best to see if she could find some of the other plants before she brought it up.
They checked out more atria without finding any more secret doors. While Jon marked the windows with numbers, Sally picked a few more of the blue-green plant. Giving up after a while, they returned to the first room and exited into the tunnels. After Jon splashed a mud “X” on the flat wall inside the passageway, they retraced their route back to the main passageway, letting the secret passage door swung shut behind them.
As Sally trailed, she noted that Jon’s light seemed to illuminate the passage better today than the day before. She could see further into the gloom ahead and behind, and felt she was keeping track of how far they’d traveled, even as the passage meandered. Her memory of the paths they had gone through yesterday was fuzzy, but she could recall today’s route perfectly. Like her dreams, it was weird... but in a good way.
Sally had the impression that Jon was taking them back to the first branch they had come to yesterday. He verified her suspicion, and when they reached it, led them down the passageway they hadn’t explored. After walking quite a way, they came across another dead-end branch. The secret door here opened into the room Jon had marked with an eight. Sally wasn’t surprised, her internal map had matched their current position to that room. She’d always been good with directions, but this was something else!
They continued mapping out the tunnels, and Sally was pretty proud that she could tell where they were, even so far as to know when they had risen above or descended below the rooms they had numbered. And sometimes, she was sure, she knew that the secret doors opened into rooms that had their backs to the rooms they had explored that morning.
Sally was so proud of her mapping skills that she told Jon that she was keeping track of where they were. He didn’t say anything, Sally wasn’t sure he believed her, but it didn’t matter, she was awesome!
Sally’s internal clock told her they had been at this for over four hours, so she talked Jon into taking a rest stop in the next room. It was odd, but she was almost certain that she knew the time to within a few minutes. This was just so strange! She’d have to talk to Jon about it, although he’d probably convince her that she was fooling herself, so she’d save it for later, and bask in her glory, for now.
She ate and drank from their supplies, and they set out again. Sally wasn’t feeling tired at all. As they walked along the latest passage, she was sure Jon had modified his light again. The walls glowed even brighter now, and in a color that wasn’t red, but reddish. She didn’t really have a name for it and wasn’t sure what he’d done, but it was handy.
Very late in the day, they opened a secret door and stepped into a wonderland.
Sally was expecting a typical atrium, but this one was completely packed with plants and even had trees that reached the ceiling. Not scrub, or sort-of-plants, but normal vegetation that looked the way proper plants and trees should.
The stream had been blocked to overflow and supply water to the entire room. It also looked as if something, or someone, had brought in even more dirt since there were signs of irrigation channels, but they had degraded over time.
They went around and checked the plants. Most of them she could eat, even without the modifications she’d had, and the plants that wouldn’t be good food seemed to have some medical use, such as for pain, or as an antiseptic.
Sally immediately tried a few of the different types of fruit. Most of it was somewhat bitter, or old, but all in all, it was much better than powdered branches and the barely adequate seeds. A few of the weeds smelled like they could be used for seasoning. Sally even found two of the other types of the plants she had seen in her dream! Maybe if she dreamt about the broken Sally again, she could find out even more about what plants were useful!
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Once they stopped for the night, she’d have to discuss her dreams with Jon and see if he had any insights.
They used bags and logs to prop the secret door open, then started out to the next room. This room was similar to the first, which wasn’t entirely unexpected since they’d had to walk through water flowing slowly down the hallway from the second atrium to the first.
This second atrium had as many plants as the first, but different ones. Sally thought this whole area was the best thing they could have found. It made her life so much easier.
In Sally’s enthusiasm, she’d rushed out of the first atrium to look at the second, so they hadn’t checked the little rooms. This time Jon put his foot down and they were more methodical. There was only wet dirt in the little rooms on the first floor, but the ones on the second contained various seeds, dried fruit, and herbs in piles and on drying racks. This upper floor was probably used so that the stored produce wouldn’t get wet.
This truly was the motherlode!
The third atrium had been stripped bare; it was likely the source of some of the dirt they had found in the previous atria. The next few were also stripped bare. There was no sign that these had been used for a long time.
Finding nothing interesting, they returned to the room with the secret panel, and searched in the other direction.
The next atrium was also dedicated to plants and stored resources. Then, they found where whoever had set this all up had been living.
Jon’s hand had preceded them into this atrium, but he and Sally stopped at the entrance and stared. It was like, well, a fancy lodge! Sally could see a bed, and a kitchen area with extensive cupboards and counters. There was also a large cooking area with a number of ways to heat things. And it went on! Against the back wall, she could see workstations for doing... stuff, and even some cages outside the little rooms.
Sally drifted into the kitchen area, looking around in wonder. This was magnificent! Whoever had made this had even diverted the stream and put rugs on the floor! She just stared.
Jon was slowly going down the row of workstations studying everything in his typically methodical manner.
“This is wonderful,” Sally breathed, “Who made all this?”
After a time, Jon answered, “Indications are that the things here were predominately made by human hands. The scents I detect indicate that they were other versions of you, for the most part. A few came from other sources. Very probably some of the companions.”
Sally was stunned. There was no way that she could have made most of these things. How different must life have been for the other Sallys so that they would be able to do any of this?
Jon had wandered to the little end room on the main floor. He searched it, and then went up to the second floor. He popped his head out of the last small room.
“You will want to see this,” he said.
She climbed to the second floor and peered into the doorway. This room had a desk and chair, and the walls were covered with shelves. There were parchments and bound books filling the shelves. Jon was leaning over the desk, reading the parchment that was lying there.
“This appears to be a page from a record compiled by one of the Sallys,” he said. Beside the parchment was a book that was partially bound together. It had one cover removed and the existing pages were held in place by a couple of straps that went through holes in the edges of the pages. It was obvious that the parchment on the desk was meant to be threaded on the straps and then the cover would be put on and tied in place to make a book.
“What does it say?” Sally asked.
“It is a record of how to make some sort of jam,” he replied. “We should look through the other records and see what else we can discover.”
“Well, duh!” Sometimes (well… all the time) Jon's manner was that of a pedant. Sally paused for a moment. Pedant was not a word that she would ordinarily use, or even really know the meaning of, but it was appropriate for this situation. Not important.
They started leafing through the various books and parchments and hit pay dirt with a large book on the bottom shelf. Jon brought it to the desk.
“This appears to be a record of all the Sallys that made it here,” he said.
Sally stopped reading about how to get a floating companion to come down from the ceiling, replaced the parchment on its shelf, and came over to look at the book.
“My God!” she exclaimed. “It goes on forever!” There was page after page filled with records that were one or two lines describing each Sally and companion. There was also a column that contained dashes that obviously counted the years each Sally had been here. It was obvious because every so often there was a line that told what was supposed to be recorded in the book, usually after an entry that didn’t follow the rules. Some of the reminders were a little snippy.
“Yep, that is something I would do,” Sally said. “I hate when people scribble stuff instead of following the directions.” She snickered. “Even when it’s me.”
Looking at the time count was shocking. Some Sallys only lived for a few years, some lived decades. One had even written “I’M OUTTA HERE!” all over her entry lines. Sally assumed it was the same Sally. Neither she nor Jon knew what that statement meant. Was she going to suicide, just leave the area, or had she found a way to escape? Maybe there was more information somewhere in these books.
There were hundreds of different entries. Most were in her handwriting, but not all. Sally assumed that might be the companion writing instead of her. She didn’t know why. The entries were numbered, according to the first page of the ledger there was supposed to be a book, or parchment, that corresponded with these numbers, for each Sally. Sally was fairly sure that this might be hit or miss. She liked to follow the rules, but it didn’t mean she always did.
Sally leafed through the ledger. 1,934 separate entries. She just knew without counting. Yes, they were numbered, but it was messed up in a few spots. For some reason, she was sure of her estimate. Another thing to look into later.
The earlier entries in the ledger were very faded. Some were impossible to read.
Jon commented, “One of the workstations is set up to make the paper used in this ledger. I suspect we will find how they made the ink, as well. The ink used on this ledger changes from time to time. The reason may be to correct the fading and blotches we see in the earlier entries.
“Each of the workstations in the main room has a number carved into it or placed on a sign next to it. The number on the station refers to this ledger, which in turn refers us to one or more of the other books on these shelves. These books outline how to use the equipment. This arrangement allows for multiple methods to be applied through a single point of reference. All in all, this is very well thought out, although I can see that it evolved as various ideas were tried and refined.”
It was also obvious the earlier entries were much less organized, and some were quite long. Sally thought about it for a while. Most likely it had taken some time before the final format was settled on.
Sally felt a tear run down her cheek. It was sad. Generations of effort, for what? A few books and piles and piles of heartache. If broken Sally was real, then some of the Sallys had a really hard time. How many had never found this place?
She was crying by now. Jon just let her be, he didn’t try to hug her this time. She had no idea what he thought about the whole situation. She rose from the chair, walked out to the balcony, and sat on the side with her feet dangling. She probably should be careful, but she didn’t care, right now. She let the tears flow.
Eventually, she wound down and the tears stopped. As she sat wiping her face, Jon came out and sat beside her.
Sally spoke. “I know that everything that happened to those people was all in the past, and that I can’t do anything, but I still feel for them. I’m really starting to hate... whoever is running this thing. He has affected so many people. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do something! He’s made a bad enemy.”
She put her arm around Jon. She couldn’t ask for a better companion. If anyone could do something about their situation, it was probably him.
They sat on the balcony for a few minutes, thinking their own thoughts.
Jon spoke up,” It would be a good idea for us to read through the books that are here. There is a chance that a Sally or companion came across information we could use. We can keep investigating the debris pile and the rooms since we have already been successful at uncovering bits and pieces in both endeavors that may lead us to a significant capability.”
Sally thought over what he said. It was a good idea. She was going to read them anyway, just to honor their memory, but maybe there would be a nugget of information they could use against the evil scientist.
Just not right now. She was too worn out.
Sally let go of Jon, stood up, and descended to the floor. She walked around the kitchen area. As Jon had pointed out, someone had carved a bunch of numbers on or next to the workstations, and near the sink. The ones by the sink probably didn’t refer to books about washing dishes, more likely they were about cooking.
There was a lot of counter space, with a sink at one end. The sink was made out of a dished piece of metal with two levers by it. Sally tried one and cold water came out. The other lever didn’t do anything, it was probably for hot water, but she would investigate what it was supposed to do, tomorrow, or sometime.
The cold water tasted bad, so she let it run for a while, and eventually, it cleared up. She went through the various cupboards and found a lot of dishes, a huge assortment of knives, some really strange looking forks, spoons of all sizes, and a lot of chopsticks. It appeared that many Sallys had spent a lot of time making dishes and eating implements. Everything was stored in boxes, and there were a lot of boxes.
In one cupboard, she found a number of blocks of some sort of wax, with stuff embedded in the wax, Sally wasn’t sure if it was food or soap. Something to figure out later. She also found one of the cupboards contained a number of bags full of herbs and other spices. There were many empty cupboards, probably for food. Why there was no food stored here was a mystery. Maybe the last companion ate it all. Sally snorted, she imagined chasing some monkey thing around the kitchen. She could restock the cupboards. There was a lot to do, but that was good, it would keep her from brooding too much.
She took a drink of water, using one of the cups. This felt almost civilized. She would see if they had treated the water somehow, so the other Sallys could drink it. She kept poking around and near where the stream left the room she found a couple of large cupboards.
She opened the first and gasped as she gazed in wonder at the contents. This had to be the most valuable substance mankind ever produced, something even she would have killed for.
Hundreds of rolls of toilet paper!
No longer would she have to rely on the tiny scratchy leaves she had stolen from Jon’s trees.
She shut the doors in reverence, and patted it, then opened the other cupboard. It wasn’t a cupboard at all, but a small and totally functional bathroom, with walls, a pipe that poured water into a sink, and lo and behold... a toilet seat over the trough!
“Thank you, god, gods, whatever!”
“YOU’RE WELCOME!” came an omnipresent voice. Sally scraped herself off the ceiling. She had jumped at least that far.
“JON, JON, JON!” She yelled. He appeared at the door of the library room. “Did you just hear, um...” She trailed off, fumbling about as she tried to come up with a way to describe what she had heard.
“Hear what?” Obviously, he hadn’t.
“Ahhh, never mind.” He gave her one of his non-looks and went back to reading.
What the hell did that mean? Was this place helping her, taking credit for something someone else did, or what?
She couldn’t figure out what the voice had meant. Frigging gods! Everything starts to make sense, and then it doesn’t.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin investigating and experimenting with her new-found nutritional bounty. Tonight, she would take a cautious approach and eat her normal rations. She took her glass of water, gathered the bags of food, and walked over to a table that was next to the kitchen. Sally snickered. It was quite small, but even so, it was probably too large for all the entertaining she would be doing.
The table had three mismatched chairs. The first one she tried was obviously in need of repair, but the second was a stool and worked fine. She sat and had her usual bland meal. It was worse than ever because she knew there was better stuff all around her.
Sally rushed through her nighttime routine, anticipating sleeping on an actual bed. Being a little paranoid, she crawled around the bed and checked that it was useable. The basic construction was solid, and it used a futon, which was in good shape. There were a couple of blankets thrown over the headboard, but these were ragged and tattered, so Sally spread out a couple of their own blankets and lay down.
She thought back to the ledger. To her surprise, she was able to remember every page perfectly. She re-read it in her mind. It was sad that all the Sallys who had made the library were probably dead, but just by existing, the library was a gesture of defiance and a way to keep their memories alive.
She would do the other Sallys proud. She fell asleep.
Her yoga instructor was back. Sally had tried yoga at one time, but she was a solidly built girl, about as flexible as a brick, and she had given it up. In this dream, though, everything was so easy. Tonight, the instructor was showing Sally the routines, and at the same time she was teaching about systems of systems; how they could be designed to exceed the ability of the constituent components, and how individuals could be used to compliment others. It was very advanced, using mathematical functions she’d never heard of before, but also, as in the previous night’s dream, Sally understood it all.