Nilologue - Part 6

Ingrid had spent days fussing over her latest project.

First, she gave up showering. Then, she dragged pillows and blankets into the cryopod room. I couldn't imagine a worse place to sleep, but as far as I could tell, she didn't. Then, after a day spent cursing and the sound of wires being torn out, she stopped eating. Simon tried bring her food, but it went untouched. She had to be dragged, and threatened with further interruptions to her work, before she would balefully choke down the bare minimum of food.

"Wouldn't you rather be functioning at your best?" cajoled Simon. "If you don't eat, you'll get light-headed, and you might make mistakes. Now, I know I would forgive you for that, of course. But..." he shrugged, helpless. "I know you hold yourself to an unreasonably high standard. So, it just doesn't seem fair."

I was sitting in the mess hall, just after lunch, when Ingrid announced her breakthrough. Gen and Simon were at the table on the far other side of the room. Gen had her back to me, with both elbows on the table, leaning as far forwards towards Simon as she possibly could. Ingrid came sprinting in, half-tripped on an errant chair, and wrapped herself around Simon's shoulders. "I did it, I did it! Come and look, it worked perfectly, I did it!"

The cryopod station looked like a meticulous bomb had hit it. Jack and Simon had dragged in a table from the mess hall for her to use as a workbench, but Ingrid's project had overflowed and spilled all across the floor. The last time I had seen the camera drone, the one Simon and I had collected from the dark hallways, Ingrid had been painstakingly putting every fragment and wire exactly back into place. Now, it was ripped in half, all the camera-eyes gone, with three slabs of machinery the size of thick books arranged around it. I recognised a control panel and display monitor from the cryopod control station. Every part was framed by an eruption of wires.

Ingrid tapped a few keys on the control panel, and frowned when nothing happened. "Hang on, let me just.. a few quick adjustments... I was in the middle of testing the..."

Half an hour later, she came scurrying back out to round us up again. "Where'd you all run off to? Come on."

"So, what does it do?" said Simon.

"Well, this part here connects through the drone, but since there are issues with the security keys, I had to-"

"Yes. Yes, ok. But what does it do?"

Ingrid sighed. "I was just getting there. I was having all these problems getting it booted correctly, and that was because it can't. Not without connecting to the mother drone first. Which it is currently, constantly, attempting to do. And because of- well, I won't bore you with any more details. But because of several very clever things that I have done, as soon as the mother drone comes in range, it'll reconnect and cancel the boot part-way, and then," she waved her hands, "We will be able to talk to it! Just imagine!"

Simon beamed. "Or, as soon as it reconnects, we can run the other way. That's amazing Ingrid, well done!"

Her face froze. "But... I guess..."

Simon picked up the remains of the drone from its nest of cables. "It's not so heavy. I could probably carry this with me each time I head out."

"Ah." said Ingrid. "You'll also need, um, this part, and this bit, and all of those cables are a bit janky, and without the display screen plugged in it doesn't turn on for some reason, and... oh, and the power supply. You'll need that as well."

In the end, the whole device ended up filling a large backpack, one that pulled heavily on the spine. The display screen peeked out the top, and the control panel was strapped precariously to the very back. Whoever was carrying it certainly couldn't operate the device at the same time, and would be hard pressed to reach a thumping jog. Simon ended up being the one to haul it along, with Ingrid accompanying him to handle the endless troubleshooting. Jack got a stern look from Simon, and decided to come as well of his own accord. He was the one to carry the spare water that Simon insisted upon. And me? This whole thing smelled like a real adventure. With Simon so laden with equipment, he couldn't have gotten me to stay if he tried.

Gen looked moderately nervous as we shoved open the half-shattered door. The food dispenser had produced some reasonably palatable bricks of red paste, so we pulled out a bunch and hoped they would stay edible. With so much food, water, devices and people coming along, it would be hard to say how long we could stay out there, in the dark.

"So... how long are you going out there for?" asked Gen, pulling at a ring of hair.

"Hard to say." mused Simon. "If we run into the big drone, we'll come back right away." Ingrid's face was stony. Gen was clearly worried, and hovered around us to try pry more details of Simon's lack of a plan. Jack was mincing from foot to foot.

"Well, off we go." said Simon, clomping towards the great beyond.

A plan eventually grew out of a few necessary steps. We would first head towards the gargantuan chamber where Simon and I originally ran into the mother drone. If it wasn't there (oh, please) we would trace a wide arc away from it and see what we ran into. If the device performed as Ingrid promised ("of course it will!") then we just needed to cover as much ground as possible until it found something to connect to.

"And it will definitely show us if we come anywhere near that thing? I'll have - we'll have enough time to get away?" I asked Ingrid.

"Nothing to worry about Bec." she said briskly. "If this device can't connect to it, we are more than a mile away." She gently patted the backpack, and a slew of diagnostic warnings flashed across the screen for a second. "Um. Ignore that, it's fine."

We kept going. The dry air stung my nostrils less this time around, and I felt like I could keep pace with the boys for a change. While Ingrid kept loitering behind Simon, I skipped ahead to where Jack was staring through an open door.

"Found something?" I asked, peering over his shoulder. Jack wordlessly swung his flashlight back and forth, slowly panning across the room without stepping a foot past the threshold.

The room was clearly empty, quite long, with half-a-dozen thin internal walls bolted in place on the left side. The right side of the room had a long bench stretching the entire length.

"Does this..." Jack took one step inside, raising the light up higher. The bench had a deep trough down the middle of it, sloping gently from the back of the room to the front. "Does this look like the bathrooms to you?" I blinked, and the missing fittings and fixings snapped into place. The smaller embedded walls were the toilet and shower cubicles. It needed a mirror, but the bench with the trough down the middle was exactly where I had washed my hands a hundred times before. "No pipes." I mused. "So no water."

Jack nodded. "It's not finished yet. Could be though. Maybe there are other copies of the rooms out there."

I nodded back. "I'll keep an eye out. I reckon the bunks are made out of the same material as the shower walls."

"Certainly feels that way." said Jack. "If you spot any bunks, make sure you aren't already sleeping in them. Ha."

"Ha." I said back. "Come on, let's see what is up ahead."

The hallways twisted and turned, the metal going on in seamless flat waves forever. Simon mumbled something about passing some point, but I was just happy to be out here again, almost leading the way this time. Simon was treading along behind us, doing his best to keep up the pace with the anchor dragging him back. We were heading down a dead-straight tunnel for several

minutes, when he stopped walking completely. Took a moment to look down. Shrugged, and kept going. Stopped again a few paces later, Ingrid hissed at his back. He shrugged the great backpack to one side, the straps digging into one shoulder, lifted up his boot to check the- his foot! His foot, not a shoe (stupid, Bec, how could you be so stupid). He checked the, the metallic-plastic sole of his foot, for something. Placed it down again, wriggled it a little. I skipped back a little, leaving Jack to lead the way.

"Do you need a hand Simon? I could carry it for a while."

He smiled. The tiniest crystals of salt had encrusted on forehead. For an idiot moment, I wondered what his skin would taste like.

"It's fine, Bec. Thank you. If I put this on you, I'd have to carry you back home instead."

I frowned, and then frowned some more, pushing out my bottom lip. Simon frowned back.

"You're been hanging out with Gen, I see."

"What?" I said, but Simon had his foot down and was tramping on some more. "What'd I say?" but he wasn't listening to me. He was staring at the floor, then tried to call out.

"Jack, I-" he started coughing, the bag seemed to pull him backwards a bit. "Jack, I need to put this down. Can you come back here and help?"

"Sure thing Boots, whatever you say."

Something in me died, then tried to crawl up and kill my brain as well. Was it hot in here, or was it just me?

Jack lifted the strap of the backpack up, the plastic digging into his fingers and leaving red marks. Simon seemed to be shorter than before, even with the weight off. Jack put down the backpack with a careful thonk that still made Ingrid wince like someone had just slammed their finger in a door.

With a quiet dignity, Simon slowly lowered himself onto the ground. First he knelt, with the palm of one hand flat against the floor, chin to chest. Then he turned, and got himself all the way flat, cheek smooshed against the metal.

He frowned. "I'm going to need you to all shut up and stop moving for a bit."

"But we weren't-" said Ingrid.

"But I wasn't-" I said at the same time.

"Yeah," said Simon from the floor. "Actually, can you all go down the hallway a bit. Leave the bag, it's fine. Actually no, can you turn the thingy off Ingrid? Just in case it's that."

Ingrid grumbled, and bent over to mess around with the internals. "What's going on?" I asked, while Jack held the backpack open.

"Probably nothing." said Simon. "Definitely nothing. Now," he held up one finger, before I could speak, "Just so I can be absolutely, definitely sure that it is nothing, I need you to go with Ingrid and Jack, and sit down over there. And don't talk. Don't tap the floor. In fact, call over to me when you're sat down. I'm going to be holding my breath once you stop moving, so let's make sure I only have to do this once."

"Ready." called Jack softly, once were all motionless. Simon didn't respond from where he was lying down. I saw his chest rise, then fall, then rise.

A long time passed. It must've been thirty seconds. The lights of our torches shone on the same nothing. An itch grew in my scalp, and another inside my left foot.

Simon let out a woof of air. "Alright, which one of you moved?"

Jack looked at Ingrid, then at me. I gave in, and dug a stubby thumbnail through my scrubby hair.

"Nobody, Simon." said Jack.

Simon sat up. His left cheek was white where it had pressed against the cold metal. His right was flushed in the torchlight. He looked up the hallway, looked down the hallway. Pressed his hand against the floor again, but this time, we all felt it.

The sound. The thrum moving through the metal floors. A pulse in the steel.

Simon dragged himself up off the floor, grabbed the backpack with both hands, and heaved, nearly falling under the weight. "Ingrid, we need it back on, right now!" he swung it over his shoulders, taking a big step that almost put his other knee down to the floor. "Right the fuck now! Bec, go with Jack, he'll protect you, run! Run, fucking hell, it's behind us!"

Simon took a couple big steps, his b- his feet making huge clanging noises. Huge clanging noises that came from all up and down the hallway, out of time with his footsteps. Jack pulled me to my feet, then pushed me towards Simon. I turned around. I didn't run. I had to see.

Down the hallway, a red light flickered. Two pulses, then darkness. Three pulses, then darkness. Then two. Then three. Each sequence brighter than before, each sequence a little out of time with the others. The thrum grew beneath the thin soles of my shoes. Jack grabbed my shoulder, heaved my around, roared something in my ear. I stumbled forwards, then got my arms moving in the right order. It felt like I'd spent my entire life running down these hallways, torchlight bouncing madly, lungs never quite full or empty.

I caught up with Simon, who was running along full-tilt with his jaw clenched all the way to his eyes. Every crashing footfall made his legs wobble a little, his knees were thinking about going sideways instead of forwards and back. Jack was pulling Ingrid by the hand, and leant into the backpack to push Simon along as well. I slowed, then turned to look. The light was growing brighter, and now that I'd stopped running, I could feel the texture of the sound beneath my feet. There was another spike moving atop the deeper thrum. Every time the light blinked off, there was a muffled "tap". Blink blink blink, went the light. Tap tap tap, went the floor, in each patch of darkness. What was that thing?

"Bec, quit standing there!" called Jack. He was standing at the doorway to the empty bathroom we had found. No, it couldn't be, that was behind us. But here it was again. Another empty copy. I took one last look at the light (blink blink) and ran to the door.

"Get in there, you moron." he snatched my hand and dragged me around the corner, before slamming the door shut, and learning against it.

Simon was sitting upright in the centre of the room, held up by the weight of the backpack and the straps digging into his chest. Ingrid was fussing around behind him, muttering curses. "I don't think-" I said, then lunged down to Simon. I popped buckles open, and Simon fell sideways, taking in deep shaky breaths.

"Simon, you alright?" I asked. He nodded, mouthed something. I nodded back and got the water out of my pack. He started choking on it until Jack came over and pounded on his back.

"Fucking hell man." Jack grumbled. "'F'you kill yourself out here I'm not dragging you back."

I went towards the door back out into the hallway. Since I wasn't holding my torch, I imagined I could see the faintest red light shining through the gap beneath it. Blink blink blink. Thump thump thump. I swung the door wide, and stuck my head out, and saw hell crawling up the hallway towards us.

The blinking light was the width of the hallway, a portion of the glare that lay beyond. Without the torchlight, the darkness closed in on either side until all I could see was the bubbling mess of molten metal that flowed and splashed like mud. Great clamps came down, illuminated by the red-hot metal, but the moment of impact when the jaws snapped shut was hidden by the darkness. Instead, I felt it in my shins, felt the crunch, heard the clack of colliding metal.

The jaws swung open, more chunks of wall were dragged in, and then down they crunched again.

The three pulses of red light were dimmer, more diffuse, they weren't the jaws open but something else happening behind the mouth. Then the jaws winched open again. Closer. A hot wind blew down the hall towards us, an unwelcome intruder into these dark and still places.

"Yes!" exclaimed Ingrid from inside. "Wait, no. Fuck. Not again." she said, putting a kibosh on any other questions.

"It's getting closer Ingrid." I called from the door.

"What?" she said. Half her body turned towards me, but none of her attention moved. One hand was tapping the screen, while the other rummaged in the backpack.

"The, the robot. It's coming." I said again. Simon got to his feet, but only on the second attempt. There was a glazed look in his eyes, that all his blinking and squinting couldn't shift. He leaned out through the doorway, then back in after a moment.

"Bec's right, we need to- Bec's right, we should move. Should go." he said, shaking his head as if a fly was buzzing in his face.

"Well, I'm not carrying that thing." said Jack, pointing to the device. I waited for Ingrid to let out a roar of outrage, but I realised she hadn't heard a word any of us had said.

"That's fine Jack, I'll just-" said Simon, bending down to pick up the straps. Ingrid let out a little hmm of irritation, and made to stand up as well. But Simon didn't move. He just stood there, bent double, waiting for the perfect moment to pick up the backpack again. Any second now.

Jack tilted his head all the way back, breathed out at the empty ceiling, then faced the pair of them. "I can't believe this is how I die."

"What. No, what!" said Ingrid, looking around as if coming out of a deep and unexpected sleep. "No! I'll get this working I swear, just give me a minute."

On cue, the floor bounced, and a bright red light came from the open doorway. The wind howled softly around the gaps in the door-frame, and then BANG, BANG went the jaws.

"Ingrid. We need to go." said Jack, bouncing up and down.

"No! I can do this! I can do this." she turned back to the bag, her device, her pride. I pulled Simon away and made him stand up. He looked like he wanted to sit down, but didn't know how. I had a feeling that if he sat down right now, he wouldn't get up again in time.

"S'alright Bec." he mumbled. "I'm fine. You shjust, watch out fer yerself."

"What do you mean, file not found." said Ingrid to herself. "You've not got any- that's not even a file! Aurgh!"

The floor thumped again, and the bag started to tilt sideways. I knelt down next to Ingrid to steady it. She pushed my elbow a fraction away, letting out a non-committal grunt. The screen was awash with open diagnostic tools, with a fat stream of error messages running through the middle of them. Ingrid was pushing her finger into the centre of them over and over again, but they kept popping up in the same set:

[ERR(FNF)] / [ERR(0)] > INNER MESSAGE:

"That's not even a file..." she said again. Her finger was hitting the screen again, and again.

"What's err zero?" I asked.

"What? Nothing. Unconfigured error. Generic warning, something something." Ingrid said, looking at me out the corner of one eye.

"File not found... generic error."

"I'll have fucked something up in the logging." she sighed. "Trying to write a file into the error, not an error into the file. Stupid. I didn't even do any logging."

The floor thumped twice. She blinked, red error messages reflecting off her slightly wet eyes. "We should - we should go." her voice went a little funny in the middle, staring at the screen.

"Yes!" said Jack. "Come on!"

I sat, staring at the screen. The error messages were coming up even faster now, in pairs of pairs. File not found, generic error. File not found, generic error. "Could not find... error..." I said to myself. "Ingrid. Ingrid come back!" I said, waving one hand behind me. Jack let out a groan. "Look! That ID number there, that's us right? You're the one raising these errors!"

Ingrid crouched down. "Yeah. So what? I fucked it."

"No, no I mean..." I tapped a few buttons in the screen, then hit enter, then watched the identical message bubble up again. "See? It's you typing these errors in. Typing them in right now."

"But that's not-" she started. She pushed me out of the way and grabbed hold of the screen. "That means something else..."

"Ingrid." I said from the floor. "File not found, general error. Could not find any error. Ingrid, that means it works, just stop fixing it."

"That makes no fucking sense Bec, now come on!" said Jack.

But on the screen, two new error messages had appeared:

[ERR(FNF)] > [ERR(DEC)]

"File not found, decoding error..." breathed Ingrid, before unzipping the bag all the way and yanking on wires. "Bec, grab the other strap!"

Between the two of us, we hauled gamely on the bag of batteries and processor blocks. The red light from hallway didn't outshine the torches. Not yet. Ingrid's looked sideways down towards the red light, just as the BANG, BANG fired. She took in a deep breath, knuckles clutching bone-white, eyes bulging with a scream that had nowhere to go.

BANG, BANG went the jaws. We staggered aways down the hallway, eventually dropping to the floor. I could see the machine clearly now, while Ingrid sat and flicked switches. See the mouth, wider than the hallway we were stupidly sitting in. Feel the drills and saws grinding away at the metal floors of the world. See the dozen pincers that plucked and swept chunks of wall into the bubbling red cauldron inside that mouth. Ingrid pulled out a roll of black wire. Half-covering her eyes with one hand, she tossed the roll down the hallway. It bounced, unwinding as it went, towards the monster that was currently eating the ceiling. Before the wire stopped moving, she slapped the big black ⏸ in the middle of the display screen.

It took a long time before we could tell that the machine had stopped rolling forwards. The saws and drills kept spinning away, but they no longer dug into the structures around us. The jaw opened and closed, but with a tap, rather than the crunch. The red hot interior of that mouth hissed and bubbled, a kettle of steel.

But it moved no closer. Ingrid had spoken, and it obeyed.