Fine, be that way. I started looking around the place. It was my place. Kinship buzzed warmly up my legs with every footstep…it’s hard to explain. Like coming home from a hard day at school, a lousy day at work. Those places were mean and unfamiliar; this place wasn’t familiar or nice, but it was mine.

My Human readers won’t get it. The Tenders of True Hive understand, though I hadn’t met them yet. Maybe the Amniotic Sea could explain it better. I’m just a dumb Human, through; MINE. I don’t know how else to put it.

The fact that the Observatory was rather nasty and unkind? Like I said: mine. There’s a lot to be said for maintaining one’s brand.

This place had been deserted for some time. Harrigan’s island hadn’t been well-kept, with manicured topiary animals cut from shrubs, or neat lawns and white statues of naked ladies pouring stuff into things. But I’d been able to tell people had been living there a while.

Not here. I’d read a book called Robinson Crusoe as a kid. I hadn’t liked it much; a guy lands on an island and fumbles around a while until a local he names “Friday” saves him from dying of exposure and starvation. The hero spends the rest of the time bossing Friday around: build me this, feed me that.

I always wanted Friday to go back to his wife Wednesday and their kids Labor Day and Arbor day, let Robinson deal with life himself for once. But I had this big building here…

“Radio, do you read me? Over.”

“This was the very Ether Box in question, Voice of the Slice, pounding brass and ready to spin some static for you!”

It was blasting from within the treeline over there, just past the beach. I picked my way through the jungle and found a monolithic black stone, irregular and tilted. The Radio was firmly planted into that stone, and its vines weren’t present. That top speaker was huge now, the tuning window blazing. The Radio looked like part of the architecture, so to speak. Home sweet home.

“What am I supposed to be doing, please?”

“Our dodo needed to hit the ground and do some ground-level recon. Owen had to find a way into HQ, and the Radio was here to help as always.”

“That’s nice of you. What’s safe to eat here?”

It described some of the fruit hanging off the trees, as well as some dark green melons on the ground over on the other side of the island. It was the first meal I’d had in this body, and it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. Absurdly sweet and juicy; the melon was yellowish inside and the fruit was like a Hawaiian Punch in solid form.

After making a heaped pile of rinds and pits, I felt a lot better. I hadn’t realized how hungry and thirsty I’d been. “Thanks, Radio.”

“Don’t sweat it, Jackson. But Owen was well aware that he needed to get in, and that program was beginning as of NOW.”

It began playing that odd song, the one where the woman sang words in a barky language and would screech EEEEEEYAAAAGH at the end.

“Change the station please.”

“Owen knew he had to hold his horses. This was just the way the ball was bouncing.” And it started that song over again. Eee-yaagh.

Over and over again, that song.

After a while I tuned the song out, and the Radio wouldn’t answer my questions. Just that song. Eee-yaaagh, the lady sang. Screamed, whatever.

Some observations:

1. I found a tiny pool, a spring, maybe, with a trickling waterfall. I didn’t know what a spring looked like, but it wasn’t salty. I drank without boiling the water, as I had no way to make fire. I’d left my arson toolkit on Harrigan’s island for the next Owen Walsh to go full Godzilla if he needed to.

2. A sobering thought. If I didn’t make it, for whatever reason, there’d be another Owen Walsh. And I hadn’t done anything for him.

3. Because I’d be the last one of us, that’s why.

The structure itself was a mishmash of things: old metal that wasn’t rusty at all, but was pitted and weathered. Black stone. A huge network of tree roots that infested the whole thing and I thought might have to be burned out.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

With further observation, I realized that they were holding the whole thing together. More inspection revealed that the stone and metal elements were built AROUND the tree; it served as superstructure for the entire complex of buildings. The tree roots were important.

That central dome taunted me. I suspected the thing hadn’t been built by humans. No offense, Human readers: this kind of thing is beyond you. It was a ruin, but it had been futuristic and cool once. The entire curving roof was built of the black stone with the occasional forbidding gothic spike, like you get in downtown Mordor.

It did have windows: regularly-spaced square gaps in a row around the high-up dome’s base. No glass, just dark rectangular pits.

I shouted up to those windows. Calls to enter. Requests for aid. “Friend” in Elvish. No response. I threw a rock up there, got it right through one of the dark rectangles first try. I heard it strike something: CLANG, and then a tinkling of breaking glass.

The Radio stopped its music. “Owen, with a sudden thrill of alarm, realized he was far from any medical assistance. He also suspected that the Observatory had automated defenses that would strike him dead, Steward or not.” Then that song again. Eeeh-yaagh.

To either side of the dome were two sweeping metal structures, symmetrical with one another. They didn’t have rooms or windows that I could see. Sort of a jetty setup to create a harbor, perhaps.

The island or building, whatever it was, had some size to it. Walking from one end to the other took what felt like a half hour. It had a nice, clear lagoon in the center between the “wings.” There was a beach on one side of the place and by God that beach had waves one could surf.

Good waves. Great shape, nice drop. I was all business, though, and did not partake. I had to get in there. It was my damn Observatory. Also no surfboard, just that burned raft with my initials carved into it.

Night was coming and I couldn’t get into the Observatory.

“Radio, pause please. I need to sleep and not be killed by jungle creatures or other local citizens. Got any hints?”

“Owen knew he could build a simple shelter with the items found in the central lagoon,” it said, and kept playing that damn song. Despite further attempts I got no other help from the Radio.

The items in question were there, all right. Tucked under dense bushes and very old. This metal was light and formed curved surfaces, held together by tiny rivets, like that Art Deco Maker. Rotting wood struts crossing at right angles supported the metal. The shape was strange, familiar.

I leaned it against a rock. Long, maybe ten feet, torn and eroded at the edges.

“Is this a wing?” I shouted to the Radio over in the jungle. No answer. Well, eeh-yagh, of course.

Another fragment I could use for a roof, perhaps, was in the jungle. This one was even more confusing: a flattish wall of the metal-and-wood, light enough for me to hold overhead and carry to the shore. When I leaned it against the other piece I saw an honest-to-gosh painting there.

A buxom woman with a chunk of early twentieth-century dark hair, painted in profile. She wore an evening gown, red, probably, though the sun had faded most of the color. She was showing a lot of leg and a her dress barely covered her forties-style breasts. She held a microphone, mouth open in song.

Beneath her were the words THE BIG BROADCAST. Behind the entire design was a comically large wooden cabinet, one with a big ornate speaker, a tuning window and a silver knob.

The Radio, over there in the trees on its big stone, stopped the scream song and blared a commercial loudly enough to frighten birds into the air:

"Are those Kraut nests giving you the heebie-jeebies? Spot those enemy hidey-holes and we'll mop 'em up faster than you can say 'hot diggity dog!' How, you ask? With the Douglas B-18 Bolo, the new eager beaver of the skies! This sweetpuss used to be just another bomber, but now she's an ace at playing I-spy!

"Tune in to the Big Broadcast of 1941, it’s a honey and so is SHE!"

A chorus of wolf-whistles. Then back to the other song, the one I was heartily tired of.

I was about to grumpily turn away when I heard a yell. A moan, an honest-to-god ghostly wail. It was coming from the windows of the dome.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Uh…you okay up there?”

It cut loose again with another despairing howl. A man’s voice, one that had a fuzz of static at the edges.

“You need help, dude? Let me in and we’ll help you!”

“Nnn,” it said. “No, no no! NO! Dark! No! Help, help me God, help!”

I kept hollering to open the door and I’d help, but no dice. Just shouting and wailing from up there. Finally I stomped over to the Radio.

“Do be a dear and tell me who’s screaming in my Observatory, Radio old pal.”

“The Green Radio detected no living being in the Observatorium Sapientiae.”

“So what are we talking about? It seems to me we’re discussing, like, a g-g-ghost, Scoob. Cough it up.”

“Owen knew he had a visitor who needed his aid, approaching the lagoon. Security measures would allow the visitor herself but no external cantrip, augur, enchantment or curse,” said the Radio, “No magic aside from what the Steward permits.” And went back to playing that song I hated.

“What?” But I was already hitting the beach.