Zach spent the first half of the morning searching. A number of poems popped up, so he searched for anything mentioning rocks, which didn’t help much. Then he realized that the language could be in English, Latin or Sanskrit, since all three languages were involved between the tablet, log and old books from that past assignment.
“Urgh.”
He got up and started stretching out his back.
“Coffee.”
Heading down the stairs, and very lost in thought, he made a beeline towards the espresso machine. Not paying attention, his thumb jabbed the latte button twice.
Could the connection really be a poem or some reference to literature? What if the log referred to a novel. That makes the pile huge. There had to be a way to cut the pile.
“Ouch!”
The second latte spilled over the mug and onto his hand. Zach jerked his hand back. The resulting torque of the motion spun his head forward and onto the top of the espresso machine. Latte continued to be poured into his overflowing mug.
“Whoa! You okay?” He heard someone say.
“Ow.” Zach held his nose with one and shook the other from the prior burn. Latte now spilled onto the floor.
“You’re bleeding! Here, let me get you something.”
He took the tissues, too embarrassed to look at the other person who offered them, and attempted to clean up the mess of latte and blood. The resulting mixture gave a rather unpleasant smell. Another person came by with a roll of paper towels. “Thanks.”
Other hands and arms appeared in his periphery with paper towels. Zach kept his head down, the smell threatening him with nausea.
Wait. “Smell...” Now his brain was going in a different direction. “Safety…” He jolted up. “Ah, I gotta check – Excuse me!” He bolted away, leaving the remaining traces of mess behind as he flew up the stairs.
Back up to his floor, he took a right rather than a left. Charging along the hall he skidded to a stop outside of another door, where another member of the interdisciplinary department was coming out.
“Zach?”
“Where’s Maria?”
“Zach, what happened?”
He huffed. “Gotta go. Tell…” Huff.
“You’re bleeding!”
“Tell Maria…Went to…Satellite laboratory.”
“What?”
“Be back! Safety check!”
“Safety?”
“Air…Tell Maria.”
“Air?”
“Thanks, Brandi!” And he was gone.
The newest member of the department stood there gaping. “What just happened?!”
Back in the lobby, a handful of people milled about near the front desk. All of the seating was empty.
Suddenly a figure dashed through, veering away from the crowd and hopping onto the furniture. “Excuse me!” he blurted as he hopped from one couch over another and back onto the carpet. Thankfully, he was moving too fast for the crowd to notice his bleeding face. The figure slammed into the door and out of the building, leaving the crowd frozen and gaping.
“What the…”
Outside, Zach stopped for a breather at the crosswalk. To get to the satellite lab and office, he would need his car, which at his apartment. Oh, right. Directions! He pulled out his phone.
A few minutes later, he was in a clean shirt and tie, on the road and finally bothering to fully clean up his face.
His company had a long-term contract with a nearby engineering company. As a result of the long-term partnership, Solutions maintained a satellite office and lab at the engineering company. Due to the structure of the buildings and other factors, the satellite laboratory was deep in the engineering company’s basement. Since the satellite lab had to meet the engineering company’s safety requirements as well, their documentation was in far better shape than other parts of Solutions.
But that was both part of the reason why everything appeared to be in order and not in order. The engineering company had its own protocols, which differed from Solutions. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as certain aspects, such as safety, tend to be more thoroughly documented, but the order and focus were swapped around. Between that and all of the other headaches from the other departments and it was far too easy to miss something.
That something was an occasional complaint of smells. While one could try to dismiss the claims as part of working in a basement, this wasn’t a normal basement. It was a deep basement. Deep enough that mining safety protocols could kick in. Historically, bad air was life threatening to miners, and still is, so extensive air safety protocols were developed for any area or person working underground. If that was the case here, any smells are required to be immediately identified and fixed. If anything, the air quality should be better below ground than above. The fact that any smells existed was suspect and potentially dangerous.
Stolen story; please report.
The satellite office was about an hour’s drive away. The entire trip would take most if not all of the day. If nothing was amiss, he could still meet the initial committee meeting deadline. If not, well, that’s what his boss is for.
His phone vibrated once, meaning a text, probably from Maria.
Instead of checking the text, he turned on the radio. Some fiddling with the stations later and some Gregorian chant echoed into the car. Not sure why that popped up, he nonetheless left the music be.
Calm. Calm is a good idea right now.
An hour later, the investigator was pulling into the visitor parking lot of the engineering company. Before getting out, he finally pulled out his phone to check the text.
Yep. It was from Maria.
What nonsense did you say to Brandi?!
Call me when you get there.
The message ended with a dizzy emoticon face.
He braced himself before dialing.
The phone rang twice.
“Hokay,” came the voice on the other end, “full explanation.”
Good. She’s not too mad. “So, I remembered something about the documentation from the satellite office.”
“Which one?”
“I only got…one… Oh, no…”
“Yeah, you were supposed to get two. Moving on.”
Zach contorted his face in frustration. “There were a couple of comments about nondescript smells in the deepest areas of the lab. There had been attempts to find the source, but nothing has been found yet.”
“Okay, sooo…”
“I need to check if underground air protocols apply here and if they are being followed correctly or not.”
The sound of realization flooded his ear. “Ooooh!”
“And I’m under a time crunch.”
“Got it. So, that’s why you darted away after the ‘Air’ part.”
“Yes.” Phew! Safe!
“And the bloody face part?”
“Uh, um, err…I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I made a mess of the espresso machine.”
“What does the espresso machine have to do with a bloody nose?”
“Well, I thought I hit the expresso button, but somehow pressed the latte button twice.”
Silence. Zach could just see her face mouthing, “How?”
“And the extra latte spilled over onto my hand and when I pulled back my hand, I hit my face on the top of the espresso machine.”
“Wait. Back up. How did you hit your face? Are you saying that you burned your hand, too?”
It took a couple more tries to fully communicate the mechanics of the incident and that he was not as injured as he may have appeared to be at the time.
“Alright, I think I get what happened now. Your hand isn’t still hurting, is it?”
“Um…”
“Get that wrapped up before walking into that office,” she snapped. “We don’t need inadvertent hypocrisy muddling things.”
“Right.”
“And you do realize that things like forgetting your burned hand are the reason why I assigned all those safety protocol tasks to you, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Aaaand I thought of something else. Did any of the coffee or blood get on your clothes?”
“I changed already. I remembered that one!” Suddenly he thought of a way to lighten the conversation. “Although, if I had forgotten, I could have pawned it off as leftover makeup from a zombie walk.”
Maria was not amused. “Zombie walk? In May?”
“There might be some diehard zombie fans out there.”
His boss chuckled. “Okay. Okay. Get that hand fixed up and I’ll let you be.”
“Got it.” Zach hung up and searched around his car for the first aid kit. He lightly wrapped up his left hand. Any tighter or thicker and his hand would have hurt worse. With that done, he pulled out the small, tattered briefcase his used for work trips, containing extra copies of credentials and security passes, plus a large tablet, its accessories and the two files with information about the satellite office.
Thankfully, the main entrance was within view of the visitor parking. Rather annoyingly, though, the door was locked, so he had to knock and wait for an administrative assistant to appear.
The assistant stood on the other side of the glass door with a puzzled look and no intention of opening the door.
In response, Zach pulled out his company badge and held it up. The assistant squinted at the badge, still refusing to open the door. He sighed and pressed the badge against the door.
Oh! The assistant mouthed.
Instead of opening the door, however, she went back to her desk and pressed a button there. The door buzzed on Zach’s side, signaling that he could now enter.
“Apologies,” the assistant said as soon as he stepped into the lobby. “I was not aware of anyone stopping by from your HQ today.”
“I only just sent a message about it about an hour ago. This trip was last minute.” He set down his briefcase and pulled out one of the files to check for one of the listed names of the satellite employees. “I sent it to John. Uh, in case he was delayed, could you call him for me, please?”
“Ah, yes.” She pulled up the company contact list and scrolled through a bit.
“The John from your company, right?”
“Yes.”
She reached for the landline and dialed four numbers. “Yes, hello. John?” She paused. “Could you get him for me, please? He has a visitor…From Solutions HQ…Yes, your HQ…Okay.” She paused once more and for far longer than the first round. “Yes. Hello, John. A Zach Smith is here to see you – What about Josh?” She paused for a third but brief time. “Okay. I’ll tell him. Thanks, John.”
The assistant hung up the phone and then picked it up again. This call was much shorter.
“Hi, Josh? This is the front desk. A Zach Smith is here from Solutions HQ…Thank you.”
She hung up and turned back to the visitor. Without any prompting, she explained, “John did get your email, but wasn’t able to come up here to greet you. So, he asked Josh to greet you and bring you down to the lab underground.”
“Josh?”
“Josh is from our company, but he often works with the Solutions guys. He’ll be here momentarily.”
Zach nodded and started to look around the lobby. Old, faded photographs lined the walls, as did some shiny new furniture. Very, very shiny furniture. What did they do to get the glass that shiny? He touched one of the chairs and decided against sitting down. The padding was strangely hard for cushioning. Zach started to wonder if the various pieces of furniture were actually sculptures when a heavyset man walked in.
Both men greeted each other and exchanged the usual pleasantries.
Josh jutted a thumb back the way he came. “Let’s talk while heading down.”
The investigator agreed.
“John was scratching his head,” the host started, as they walked down the bland hallway, “when he got your email.”
They passed by various, plain, ecru doors, some cracked open but mostly closed.
“Not in a bad way, mind you. We haven’t been able to pinpoint that smell for a while and wouldn’t mind having another person take a look. Your visit was just…sudden.”
“Ah, there’s a deadline that’s – ”
“Sudden deadline?”
“There were…various factors at play on that.”
They stopped at another of the plain, closed doors. “Hm, is that one of those things that you can’t talk about too much?” Josh pulled out his badge and held it in front of the lock on the door.
“No, it’s not that…”
Josh kept waving the badge at the door.
“Um…”
A quiet ding came from behind the door followed by a click. His host now opened to door to reveal what looked like elevator doors.
The investigator stood by, dumbfounded.
“It’s an old building,” Josh chuckled as he pressed the down arrow elevator button. “There are odd refitting patches that accrued over the years.”
The elevator door opened like any other and they entered. The inside, however, appears to be lined in the roughest, but also toughest metal. The elevator itself clunked and rattled as they descended.
“I feel like I just walked into a bunker.”
“Well, we kinda did.”
Zach raised an eyebrow.
“The lab is in the old prototype bunker. This elevator is one of only two ways in or out.”