The door opened with a slight hiss of air escaping, before the door shifted right into a hidden pocket in the wall. Mazelton frowned.
“Three for three. I want to know why the air pressure is higher the closer we move into the main bunker. Also how the hell did the Bo make the seals airtight? I’m not seeing gaskets.”
“You’re asking me, but who should I ask? Let's go. Keep that mask up, purifier cores running and TOUCH NOTHING.” Lettie sounded calm, but Mazelton could see the twitch of the vein running next to her temple. Heart rate elevated. Fair enough.
The two carefully shined their light cores into the hall. The rocks that lined the hallway were mottled gray, polished to a high shine then coated in a thin layer of gunk. They held their breath a moment, waiting to hear something, anything. Nothing. Then-
A faint tap tap tap.
A sound at the edge of hearing, a long groaning noise.
Tap tap tap.
Mazelton slowly drew his belt knife and crouched down, slowly dimming the light from the core. Was the tapping getting closer? He couldn’t tell. But whatever it was, was fucking DEAD the second he…
“No, it’s fine. That’s just mine noises. All pretty standard for being under thousands of tons of rock.” Lettie said in a casual voice. Mazelton didn’t quite slam his head into the roof when he jumped.
“Lettie, what in the hell?”
“Hell? Funny, most cultures seem to think that Hell is underground somewhere. As is the underworld generally. On the other hand we are most of the way up a mountain. Are we underground? Who can say.”
“Ho ho ho. What do you mean, mine noises?”
“Oh, yeah, if you haven’t gone prospecting much you wouldn’t know. The earth is anything but silent. All kinds of noise. Rocks shifting against each other as the world heats and cools, that kind of thing. Transmitting vibrations from who knows how far away. Echos that get very, very weird going through long tunnels. Mine noises.”
“Got it. Now if you will give my heart a second to resume beating, we can start nosing around.”
Lettie chuckled and strode out the door. She flashed her light left, then right, then resolutely turned left. Mazelton trailed behind her. Easy to see why she went left- to the right was a blank wall with a small table on it. Mazelton would have said it was a table for displaying skulls, but it was missing the usual stand.
The hall had doors on either side, still unmarked. Still without any obvious wall decoration. It was uncannily blank.
“There is something we aren’t seeing.”
“I see kind of a lot, you know? This place is downright restful. Lots of organic molecules that volatilized thousands of years ago and turned into, to use the scientific term, gunk.” She waived at the walls. “Maybe they were all hooked into a computer network and had some sort of digital overlay of their eyeballs, marking everything they needed.”
“You know they didn’t. You just did the damn autopsy.”
“Oh, that was just poking around. You gotta dig way, way deeper before you can call it an autopsy.”
“They absolutely did not have anything that ran off electronics anywhere in that apartment. The eyes were basically gone, so I can’t say what they were like, but it sure looked like the skull was built for two human eyeballs.”
“True enough. And yet-” She waved at the hall, as they walked past the sealed doors.
“And yet. No, this is wrong. Even if every person in this bunker was one hundred percent blind, it wouldn’t look like this. Blind people put up markers so they know where they are. This hallway has, what, twelve completely identical doors? All lacking any sort of decoration or marking to indicate what, or who, is behind them?”
“It’s a mystery.” Lettie grinned, walking a little faster. “Come on, let's try to get a sense of the space before we start opening doors.”
“Did anyone check in on Brother Lem? How’s he doing? Oh, gosh, I didn’t think about poor old Lem. I’ll go check on him right now. What room is he in again?” Mazelton waved at the doors.
“This really bugs you, huh.”
“It’s kind of major, if you think about it. Intersection- left or right?”
“Left.”
“Both ways look identical.”
“Yep. But you go left until you can’t go left any more.”
“You do?”
“You do. That’s the rule.”
They turned left and continued down the eerily unmarked hallway. The gunk was omnipresent, a thin residue of something coating every surface. Mazleton looked back. They would not be getting lost as their footprints were quite clear.
“No automated cleaning systems. No automated filtration system clearing out whatever this gunk was.”
“Mmm. Another nail in the coffin of an electronic civilization theory.”
“Any sign of the fungus?”
“Nope. As far as I know, it’s part of the gunk coating the floor.”
“Hooray. How long can spoors lie dormant for?”
“Dunno. Usually not multiple millenia, I would think.”
They kept going down blank hallways, trying to find the end, or really, anything different at all. No such luck.
“Screw it, I’m going to pop open a door, see what’s in there.”
“Usually I would tell you horror stories about when that philosophy went wrong, but at this point… go for it. Which completely identical door calls out to you?” Mazelton glared at the doors, and selected the closest one. He put his pinky in the hole by the door, then frowned.
“That’s annoying. And should have been expected. But it's still annoying.”
“Let me guess, needs a different key?”
“Yep. And I really don’t feel like spending more time in this hallway, trying to open a random door. Speaking of time, what time is it?”
“About dinner time, if that’s what you are getting at.”
“I am. Let's go back to the apartment and set camp.”
“You want to sleep in the fungal murder house?”
“Yes? I mean, everything that was alive in there could hardly be more dead.”
“Kind of my point, yes.”
Mazelton chuckled and started walking back the way they came.
“Didn’t I tell you about my little hideout?”
“I think you said it was in the catacombs?”
“It was. Did I tell you where in the catacombs?”
“I am suddenly very worried that you will tell me.”
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“In a heap of ribs, stacked thrice as high as my head. It took me ages to weave them into a sort of wicker structure, giving me a hidden little warren all snug and warm down among the dead things.”
They walked silently for a few more minutes.
“The fucking Ma, I swear.”
“Oh please, Madam “OOOH the glowing skull is such fun!””
“No, that is seriously morbid, ok? I mean, yes at a certain point it's just funny shaped calcium, but come on! A wicker hut made of bone?”
“You haven’t asked me about the furnishings. That’s hurtful. It was a lot of work.”
“No. Nope. Nooooope. I am changing my position. You are no longer a prime example of a sophisticated mathematical theorem, you are just cursed. Didn’t think curses were real, but now I know better.”
“Cursed with beauty?”
“Not going to lie, the androgenous thing you have going is a complete turn off.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Huh. That stung.”
“What can I tell you? I like what I like. And you aint it.”
“So what do you like?”
They got to the apartment and, by silent agreement, started rolling out their bed rolls in the main living room. Nobody was going to chance the furniture, or wanted to sleep out on the “back porch” with the corpses.
“Unabashed fetish for extremely exaggerated masculine features here.”
“Wait, like a huge-”
“Part of it! But also no, not just that. Genitalia is an important piece, but far from the whole. No, I need a brooding brow. Strong, craggy, near cubic shaped jaw line. A neck made of corded steel disguised as muscle, stretching from behind the ears down to the corners of his shoulders. A physique like an exaggerated anatomy textbook, softened only by thick layers of body hair. Sometimes they need to be completely hairless so I can better appreciate the huge muscles. It varies. A chest length thick beard adds plus sixteen to charisma.”
“Adds what now?”
“Never mind, the numbers are meaningless. Just a way of comparing.”
They made a cold dinner, sharing their trail rations. Lettie seemed to really like the weird flavored seeds, to Mazelton’s bewilderment. She had some dried bread that looked like it could do double duty as roof shingles. She tried the sink. To the complete amazement of both of them, after a few minutes of noisy gurgling, gravity managed to pull some water down to the basin. It was crystal clear and apparently free of any contamination. They just looked at each other and shrugged, as Lettie carried on talking.
“Yeah, I like the complete, hypermasculine package. Ideally they are kind of dumb too, but that’s less of a, you know, a hard requirement.”
“You like dumb meat heads.”
“Eat ‘em up like candy.”
“You, scion of the Pi Clan, love your Man Candy.”
She chuckled softly.
“Yep. Look, it’s… do you ever meditate? Or, like, look at the scenery and just lose yourself in it?”
“Often.”
“Well I don’t. I can’t. The whole world just… yells at me, all the time. I can focus on my breathing all I like, but there is still, always, a part of my brain that is alert and cataloging the world around me. I can’t shut it off. Drugs and alcohol just make the information less reliable, not less present.”
Mazelton smiled. “You want someone restful.”
“I want someone who looks like exactly what they are, in every detail. I want simple. Someone so without guile, they cannot conceive of its existence. I want a guy who thinks stone axes are shoddy, unreliable, newfangled technology, and a REAL MAN punches trees into logs! And then goes and does it.” Her eyes went hazy.
“I want him to come home with a bloody club and a deer slung over his shoulder, dragging the corpses of the eight raiders he met along the way. His long hair held back by the headband I wove for him, loincloth barely covering his supreme endowments. His muscles, glistening, brought into glorious focus by the blood of dinner and his enemies. I smile and walk up to him, as he dumps his trophies on the ground. I sit him on a stump and wash him, with a rag and a bucket of water I pulled from the river. And then, when he is refreshed and his hunger for new game rises, he pushes me down, and…”
“I’m going to stop you right there.”
“But it’s the best part!”
“I’m good.”
“But I’m not.” Lettie muttered.
“Suffer in silence. Oh do try a bit of this- it’s a sort of mushroom jerky, pretty good I think.”
“Savory. Nice. But yeah, thick as a post caveman types. Duane is on the lowest end of the physique range that works for me, and frankly, he may be too smart. Very quiet though, which is in his favor.”
“First of all, you stay the hell away from Duane. I am still debating which God he is the most perfect angel of. Keep your grasping claws to yourself, thank you. Also, his physique is on the lowest end of what works for you? I low key believe he had some auroch DNA bred in at some point.”
“I like what I like, damnit.”
Mazelton crunched on the hardtack. It was only edible after soaking in water, and even then “edible” was stretching it.
“Oh Mother Moon’s mercy, you aren’t.”
“I say nothing!”
“You are. You absolutely are. No wonder you can’t wait to break in here.”
“Slanderous lies without a shred of supporting evidence!”
“This is the most Pi thing I have ever heard. You want to make your perfect man. You want to customize him and make sure you get all the optional extras. Do you have a plan for retractable hair?”
“It can shed at will, then regrow in a day with the right nutrients. I have a whole program, it’s awesome.”
“The beetle brow, the hanging, lantern jaw…”
“I have more than a hundred models memorized, each with a subtly different bone structure. I may have to try out a few dozen, see what I like.”
“The rippling cords of flesh, nay, thews like iron!”
“Auroch DNA be damned, I can build in muscle hypertrophy while he’s still on the slab. Mmm. Hypertrophy. Mmm.”
“I assume he would be tall, towering over you.”
“Oh yes. So tall. Like a sheltering tree. If I find a base stock I like in other ways I can just break their legs and grow the bone out to a length I like. And of course, adjust the other way if I overshoot.”
“Yeah, you don’t get to call me creepy anymore. I mean, sure I had a bed made of bones and human skin, but at least I was screwing normal people in it.”
“First of all, I reject the notion that anyone playing hide the cucumber with you in a hut made of human ribs and a bed made of recycled human parts is in any way “normal.” Second, I am very, very special, and it is a man’s good fortune to be molded to my exacting standards! And I deserve it. For reasons. My marriage was unhappy.”
“You were married?”
“Eight whirlwind hours, and then the wretch left me! Cut me away. Probably for some floozy named… Terry. He seemed like the kind who would go for a Terry.”
“Oh, I know that type. Yeah, there’s always a Terry. Sorry for your loss. It must be rough, knowing that your husband left you for a Terry.”
“It is terrible. To speed my recovery, I need a lab grown man who meets my exacting specifications, possibly including a partial lobotomy.”
“Now I’m the one worried about sleeping in here.”
The two bantered back and forth a while longer before falling asleep. It had been a long day.
The next day saw the two of them returning to the halls. This time they made a beeline for whatever they could find at the end of all the left turns. After a depressing number of identical gray corridors with identical gray doors and a complete absence of lighting, they reached a staircase headed down. They shrugged, and went.
It was a garden, once. That much was obvious. The rich black dirt sat under an array of light cores that would have fed their growth. Long gone, now. The cores died, and shortly thereafter, so did the plants. Any insects would have eaten the decaying matter, then fungus, microorganisms and so on until the plants dissolved back into the rich black earth from which they arose. And then, as the years passed without light, even the microorganism died. The cycle was broken, and everything fell apart.
Now, the garden beds looked like the coffins of giants, like a slaughter of giants tidied away and readied for burial, lined in neat rows. Next to the long lines of raised beds were pipes with little pockets built into them. There was some sort of rotted black residue on the inside. Hydroponics, Lettie said, and Mazelton believed her. The area was huge, at least a hundred yards long, and ten wide. The ceiling was remarkably high, explaining all the steps they walked down.
“This was the bit I wondered about.” Lettie said quietly.
“The food garden?”
“No, that’s pretty standard. I was thinking more about claustrophobia. Even people who are used to living in cramped quarters want to feel space sometimes.”
Mazelton just nodded. The place seemed to call for quiet. They walked down between the garden beds, seeing the intersections where stone benches clustered together. Plenty of fountains too, for when people got thirsty. But no signs, no plaques, no arrows pointing to the cafeteria. Just emptiness. The second they saw a set of doors on their left, they dove through it.
This looked more promising. According to Lettie, they found some kind of nap space. Lots of little beds, laid out next to the garden. Mazelton theorized that it was for massage. They agreed that there was no real way to know. They pressed on, directly into a locked door.
“Sooner or later we will have to try and open one.”
“Yeah. Screw it. Let me get to work.”
Mazelton stuck his pinky into the socket and started picking the lock. It was very, very boring for everyone concerned. After an hour, or possibly an eternity, the big double doors made a meaty KTCHUNK noise, and hissed open.
“Ok, now I am just-” Mazelton started rubbing his eyes. “Are you seeing this?”
Letttie trained her light around the room, awed by what she was seeing.
“There must be thousands of them. All carefully preserved and waiting.”
The room was made to the same scale as the garden. Instead of flower beds, there were rows upon rows of humans, sealed in transparent pods. Looking as good as new.