“Brock! Nova!” Darius treaded water and pounded his fist on the wall of the water tower, making it “boom boom boom” like a steel drum. He had forgotten how long he had been doing this, but he knew it had been a while. He wouldn’t let up. He knew his friends would be looking for him. He counted on them being there, eventually. He just knew he had to have patience and let them know where he was. He pictured them looking everywhere for him…

“Boom boom boom”

“Hey guys!?”

When they finally answered, he wasn’t surprised, but to be honest, he was also a little relieved. It had started to feel like he’d been floating in the water for a long time. He thought about those things he had heard about—isolation chambers. University students or soldiers being put in them, and how they would lose total track of time. To him, it had started to feel like he wasn’t sure how long he had been inside the dark tank.

“Uh. Ya?” It was Brock’s voice. He sounded far away. Outside somewhere. Darius grinned in the darkness.

“Hey! Hey, man! Hey! I’m in here!” He pushed off the wall, sloshing water against it, and swam to the center and called up to them through the open trap door. He could see the sky had darkened further. Black clouds boiled in gray.

“Where have you guys been?”

“Uh. Well. You know… around?”

“I feel like I’ve been yelling for hours in here. What a relief to hear your voice! Can you guys get me outta here!”

“Tell me, ah, where are ya?”

“Watta ya mean ‘where am I’? Quit being a jerk. This isn’t funny. I’ve been trapped in here for a long time.”

“Ah. Ok. Sorry man. How did you get, ah, IN there?”

“Badrik tricked me. He’s all like, ‘Hey, water is safe. It fights chaos. It always finds its equilibrium.’ Voodoo stuff. I don’t know, man. But he got me in here, and now I want out. There is no ladder in here, and the trap door is too high up to reach.”

“You’re in water?”

“OF COURSE, I’M IN WATER! I’ve been swimming in here for HOURS! There may be a coil of rope in the barn. Or maybe a couple. You may have to tie them together. Loop them around you and climb up that back ladder. Tie one end to the top of the ladder and drop the other end down to me. Hey, where is Nova anyway?”

“So… Badrik tricked you into jumping into the water tower?”

“He stupid. Water tower! Stupid voice doesn’t know nothing. Why you ask stupid question?”

“Nova, what are you talking about? Will you guys go get some rope and get me out of here, please?”

“I asked him because maybe we should try to understand what is actually going on,” Brock replied.

“Oh. What going on? I tell what going on! Ok? We birds.”

“Will you guys quit talking and just get me out of here?”

“Ok,” Nova called. “Hold on to horse.” Her voice was distant, like Brock’s, like they were far away.

“No.” He could barely hear Brock’s voice. “Now it sounds like you’re teasing him. He already said he doesn’t have anything to hold on to, and he’s been treading water for hours. What you say is ‘hold your horses.’”

“So he say. I tell you voice is crazy. Ok. Whatever…” Nova’s voice came louder this time. “Hold on horse!”

“Now you sound like you’re calling him a horse. It’s hold your—”

“Shud-up.”

“Can you guys just quit arguing and get me a rope? Please!”

“Give one moment!” Nova yelled.

Inside a cavern, two birds stood side by side on an acre of flat cement. Both birds had been fitted with equipment and goggles. To their front was a wall of crates stacked neatly on metal shelving. Rows of towering shelves dotted with crates stood off behind the first rank-and-file into a cavernous darkness. Both birds stood, pondering this great obstacle.

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One bird was smaller, slender in white and black plumage, with large eyes and orange cheeks. Mechanics began at the base of its neck. A thin metal collar suspended a pair of delicate mechanical arms.

The pretty bird looked away from the crates and glanced to its side up at the ostrich that towered over it. The mechanics on this bird were also a set of arms but on a much greater scale. They hung from a heavy harness, like a horse collar, built of yellow plasteel, and gave the appearance of miniature cranes.

The small bird reached up with hands that glinted silver in the dim light like surgical scalpels and adjusted its goggles.

“If these things not sit right, they bend my sight. So… he wants us to find rope. We hear Darius voice from giant room filled with boxes. This room is size of baseball stadium. And he says find rope?”

The head of the ostrich peered down at the smaller bird.

“Well, for some reason, he thinks he’s in the water tower, like, swimming around in there. He thinks we can drop a rope through the top hatch and pull him out.”

The big ostrich's eyes blinked at her. Brock’s voice coming from the ostrich was entirely too unsettling for Nova.

“Stop looking at me,” Nova said. “Is weird. You big googly eyes with goggles. Look stupid. You are not allowed to look at me.” The small bird held up a hand, flat, in front of the ostrich’s beak.

“What do you mean it’s weird? Of course, this is weird. You’re a bird, too, you know. You look as weird to me as I do to you. You're even weirder.”

“No. You more weird.”

“Hey! What are you guys talking about?” Darius’ voice called from somewhere in the crates.

The small bird caught itself looking at the back of its own hand, flipped the hand over to view the palm, and then the metal fingers moved—all metal.

“I can see through my hand,” she said.

“Well, it's not really your hand, now, is it?”

“Where is real hand then? Smarty pant.”

“It’s ‘smarty pants.’”

“Shud-up.”

“What…?” Darius’ voice called out from the bank of stacked crates to their front.

“Nothing, buddy. Say, you sure you’re in the water tower?”

“Ok, that question still isn’t funny. I think my skin is starting to get pruney.”

Nova’s voice came in a stage whisper. “We saw bird in dream Darius showed us. When we sat with Badrik in circle.”

“Yes. I remember. Just like this.” Brock looked at his own hands. “This is the same thing.” His gaze went to his own arms.

The ostrich stretched his head up to the top shelf like a giraffe would. “Hey, buddy. Darius. Just one more question.”

“What for damnit sakes?”

“Where do you think we are?”

“Who are? Who is?”

“We. Us. Me and Nova?”

“Standing outside the water tower. Where else?”

“Ah. Ok, man. Just, like, checking, or whatever.”

Beside the ostrich, the small bird jutted its head straight out in front of itself.

“If not looking at arms, you still feel like person. See. Put arms down. Don’t look at arms. Now walk around.” The secretary bird jutted its goggle-wearing head too far out in front of itself and started to march in circles around the big ostrich. “See? It feel like always walk, but with goggles on face. I walk like this from now on. I feel like I Nova with goggles and not bird.” The bird stopped and craned its neck down. Looking at its own feet, it blinked, “You walk behind me from now.”

“We’ve got to find him. He’s up there somewhere. Maybe he’s just the ring part, like, he’s gotta be put on a bird, like us.”

“Don’t look at feet.” The little bird nodded to itself. “Don’t look at hands. Don’t look at feet. I don’t look at you. You walk behind me. I not bird. No problem.”

Brock remembered reading the printing on the case that he had seen when he had found Nova’s voice.

“Secretary Bird Brain—fully downloadable.”

They… well, not “they,” their birds, had both been locked in some type of incubation stall. There had been grain and water but nowhere to move. Like chickens on a nest, they had nowhere to go. Brock realized their “arm rings” must have been lowered onto their birds at some point. He had seen an apparatus above his stall when he had become “aware” and could see properly. He thought maybe once the arms were lowered onto the bird, the arms had some type of automatic program set to lower goggles onto the bird’s heads. Nova was right; if the goggles weren’t sitting right, Brock’s sight was distorted, skewed.

He and Nova were avatars.

“Well, I totally agree with you there. Let’s not look at ourselves too much. It’s unsettling. Let’s just focus on finding Darius.”

“Maybe we find robot. In all these boxes we find robot.”

“Uh, why?”

“Why birds? Why not robot? We find robot. You put me in robot. Nova happy in robot. Birds pooing. Robot not pooing. I will not be happy if I pooing everywhere... on thinking, maybe you walk in front of me…”

“Did you see any others like us down here wearing arms?”

“No. None like us. Lots of birds. Lots of birds down here. None wearing necklace with arms. I know, I won’t eat.”

“You’ll have to eat, eventually. His voice does come from here, somewhere close, doesn’t it?”

“How long you think we trapped in birds? Yes, Darius calling from closer now.”

“Don’t worry about it. Maybe your bird ate right before we got here. You could poo at any moment.”

“Idiot! I’m not worried about poo. I’m worried how long in bird.”

“Hey!” Darius called. “What are you guys talking about, exactly?”

“I don’t know how he in box.”

“Let’s just start opening crates.” He looked down at her slender form, the delicate arms and hands her bird wore. “We’ll spread out and search for him. I’ll start prying open crates till we find him.”

Beyond the entrance doors behind them, occasionally, birds strode back and forth in the hallway. Nova and Brock had first walked through a type of hydroponic crop area, and as in the rest of the complex, only a few of the overhead lights had been working. In their search to understand where they were, they had passed through a dark cavern with a waterfall spewing from a rock cleft to collect in a small lake. They had found most of the birds there. Lichen and moss covered the rocks around the pool. They hadn’t yet wandered through all of the rooms of the complex that seemed to go on forever, but then they had heard Darius calling.

“You guys find a rope yet?” The voice was definitely closer, from behind Brock, up higher on the bulky metal shelving. A bank of crates was stacked there. To Brock, it looked like there could be about a thousand crates on that shelf.

“Ah. No,” Brock said. “No rope yet.”

“What’s taking you guys so long?”

“You have no idea.”