Future Findings
5

It was much smaller of a place than I had originally thought. The long hallway that Eddie had led me down was really the only sizable place-- other than the Living Quarters. They were just a few feet past the Office room, and that was where I met Angus and Beck.

It was bright in the living quarters. Rows of bunk beds, room for at least 40 people to sleep on, were placed neatly in the room. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, and a few sat next to beds that were clearly inhabited. Multiple beds had sheets and bags sprawled over them, but the majority seemed empty.

A bull of a man sat on the lower bed of the bunk closest to the door. He gave me a cursory look when I entered the doorless room. Tank, I couldn’t help but think. Though there were multiple people in the room, the only other one not under the covers was a very small lady, who sat atop her bunk a few rows down. She seemed to be reading a massive book, but set it down and dropped to the floor when she noticed me.

“You the new guy?” she called to me in a very high-pitched voice. I nodded my head, and took a few steps in her direction. The large man abruptly stood up, and stopped me in my tracks. At his full height, he stood well above six feet. He had to weigh at least 300 pounds.

“Oh, back off you hulking beast,” the woman called from behind the giant. The man backed off, and allowed me to see her. She walked up to me, and grasped my hand in hers. “Sorry about that,” she told me. “Angus is just a little protective about his home.” Angus. Fits pretty well.

“That’s alright,” I said, and shook her hand. Angus stood next to his bed, silently watching us.

“I’m Beck, by the way. I’m the one who found you on the scanners. My workshop is one of the only places here that’s allowed some tech,” the woman told me. “Angus and I will be going with you tomorrow, so I’m glad that I got to meet you beforehand.”

Angus ran one of his giant hands through his black hair, and eyed me with his large dirt colored eyes. Finally, he stuck his fist out. I bumped it with my own.

“Nice to meet ya,” he said in a terribly deep voice. I could see the muscles under his dark arms pop out whenever he moved.

Beck took my arm, and dragged me over to her bunk.

“I’ve got some things for you-- just some spare clothes and a sleeping bag. I hope you wear a medium.” Luckily for her, I did. She hopped on top of her bed and began rummaging around in her sheets. Beck dropped a shirt, underwear, and some pieces of clothing I couldn’t quite see down to me, then she threw a bag at my face-- which I didn’t have the luck of catching. “So far, there’s only fifteen or so of us,” she said. “There’s the elders, who never really take off their robes, then Eddie and Angus and I. Oh, and there’s Matt-- he’s the cook. And there’s a few other guys you’ll meet tomorrow. They’re out on a mission right now, I think.”

She got out of her bed, and led me through the Living Quarters. A few beds down from Angus, she gestured for me to set my stuff down. “Top bunk or bottom, your choice,” she said. “But I’ve always preferred the top-- it’s more fun.” I threw my clothes and bag onto the bottom and turned towards her.

“So… what do you guys do here? I mean, like, in between missions and sitting around in the dark,” I asked. Beck smirked, and walked over to Angus. I reluctantly followed her.

“Well, I spend time with my boyfriend,” she said as she reached out for Angus’s hand. Her gray eyes shone brightly at him.

“Ah, I see. Cute. How’d you guys meet?” I asked, only a little sarcastically.

Beck was more than happy to answer that. “We met in college! I was studying to be a biologist, and Angus worked in the cafeteria. He was the one to introduce me to a technology free world, and to enjoy nature. After meeting him, I transferred over to ecology. A few months later, Eddie met us, and invited us here. And we never left!”

“I’m a treehugger,” Angus admitted with a shrug. I couldn’t help but smile. Their little Lion and the Mouse relationship was super sweet.

“How long until we head out?” I asked.

“Oh… about 8 hours,” Angus told me, after checking his watch. But isn’t that watch electronic? Angus seemed to read the confusion in my face, and spoke up. “It’s an analog watch.” Makes sense, I thought. Angus laid down in his bed, and allowed his eyes to close.

“It’s past 10 o’clock,” Beck told me. “Angus and I are gonna get some rest, we’ve got a busy day tomorrow.” Beck leaned over Angus, and gave him a loud kiss, right on the lips. Then, she walked over to her bunk.

“You should go check out the rest of the building,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll find something cool.” With that, I left the Living Quarters. I headed down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the Office, but it quickly turned into a dead end. Odd. Why would they just end the hallway right here. But then, a robed figure appeared from a previously unseen doorway. An incredibly bright blue light-- like that that emits from a computer screen, shown in the room. It wasn’t my job to investigate. Realizing that there was nothing to do over here, I turned around and headed the other direction. I passed the room where Eddie and the elders were, but the door was still closed. So, I kept walking. In the direction of the jail cell I had woken up in. Why did they have that room in the first place? Why had they put me in there, instead of just setting me up in the Living Quarters? Because they thought I might be dangerous. That room was for dangerous people, and they had deemed me dangerous, at least until Eddie convinced them that I would be beneficial to the AMO.

There was a door to my left, lit by a pair of torches sitting on either side of it. When I went to open it, I discovered that it was locked. I checked through the keyhole, and saw the bottom set of stairs that rapidly ascended. So that’s the way up, I thought. But up to what? I still had no idea where I was, other than being somewhere south of where I had been awakened in my coffin. There was no way I could get the door open without alerting someone, so I started walking again.

Before I got to the jail cell, a hallway branched off to the right. Figuring that there had to be something interesting down that way, I took the path. It was even dimmer down that way, and there seemed to be multiple puddles in the narrow space. It smelled like stagnant water, and I had the urge to head back the other way. But I fought it off.

It was so dark, I had to keep one hand on the wall to make sure I didn’t pass by a room. My left hand slid over the dusty and cobwebbed cement brick. I continued on slowly for a couple hundred feet, leaning on the wall for stability. But suddenly, my hand lost the wall. I stumbled to my side, and found myself pushing open a door. Once the door was out of the way, I could see a relatively nice room. The walls were still cement, but the floor was carpeted and tables sat at regular intervals throughout. Two people sat at one table in the corner of the room. One wore a cook’s outfit-- the other, a robe and mask.

The robed person spoke in a hushed voice, and the cook listened intently. The cook raised his hand to me, and yelled across the room.

“--fix you anything?” he asked, and glanced pointedly to the woodburning stove and icebox through the door at the back of the room.

“No, I’m okay. Thank you, though,” I said.

“Well, just let ol’ Matt know if you get hungry,” he talked about himself in third person. Interesting. Matt flicked his face back to the masked person, and his curly hair jiggled as he did so. His features were obviously Latino, and he had the ghost of a mustache growing.

I took a slow, rolling look around the room and backed out of it. I started walking deeper down the dim path, and returned my hand to the wall. It was picking up dirt, and I hoped that I could find a restroom to clean myself up soon. It was slow progress, but it was still progress. Eventually, I could see a light to the right of me. I gazed at it as I walked, waiting for it to get parallel to me. And just as it did, I walked into a wall. It hurt, but it wasn’t that bad. I was happy I had my head turned, or else I would have broken my nose. I shook it off, and made my way to the light. The door was open, and inside it was light enough that I could make out something on the door.

It read: Beck’s Work Room!!!

Inside, the middle of the room was completely empty. But all along the rim, there were screwdrivers and metal pieces and plants growing. There even seemed to be an old radio, with stacks of newspaper surrounding it. This seemed to be the place were all of AMO’s gear was stored, along with some random greenery. I had the urge to investigate further, but figured I should wait until Beck is here-- just so I don’t mess with anything I shouldn’t be touching. On the other side of the room, there stood another door. I briskly walked over, and pushed the swing door open. Inside, stood two sinks, a few open stalls, and what seemed to be a pair of showers behind plastic curtains. I dashed over to the sink, and proceeded with washing my hands, face, and anything I could think of that smelled bad.

Once that was done, I headed back the way I came. I figured that I had seen the whole complex, and I might as well get a few hours rest-- or at least see if Beck has anything that I can read. She seemed like the type to always have some spare books with her. I walked down the dim hallway, and came to an intersection. To the left; the Office, and Living Quarters. To the right; the odd jail cell room. Eh, why the hell not. I was half asleep the last time I was there. So I made my way to the place I had woken up in. It was unlocked, and I cautiously entered. The mattress was still in there, but that was it. There wasn’t even a light. Slightly bummed, I made my way to the room with all the beds. But, a slit of light on the floor stopped me in my tracks. To the right, there was a stone wall. And yet, a tiny amount of light was visible underneath it.

“What?” I said aloud. I pushed on the wall, and it gave-- but only a little. I pushed harder, with enough force to make the door creak. Once I had it open enough to squeeze through, I slipped in. The room was very full. It held all kinds of things on the floor, on desks, and any surface available.

There sat bandaids and all kinds of pill bottles and antibiotics in one corner. There were extra sheets and sleeping bags precariously placed on a desk on the far side of the room. So this is a glorified closet, I thought.

“Cool.” I walked out of the room, and wondered how I was supposed to get the door shut behind me. There was no handle to grasp. But upon further inspection, I discovered the door closed very slowly, all on it’s own. Which means that if I had stayed in there too long, I would’ve been trapped. Yikes.

Beck was still awake, and she gave me a book to read. Geothermal Energy Physics for the Elevated Mind.

I sat in my bed and read by lantern for a while, but passed out about 10 pages in.

Eddie woke me up in the middle of the night. Well, it felt like the middle of the night. It was always dark down here.

“What?” I groggily asked.

“Training.” Without another word, I got up and followed him down the halls. We ended up in the office. There were books piled up onto the table, and at least half a dozen pencils. I thought training would be a little more interesting than reading.

“This is training? No guns? No weapons? No cool stuff?”

“Nope,” Eddie responded with a smirk. He sat me down, and our days of training commenced. I felt like I was back in school, wasting my life away at the mercy of a couple hundred pages of information. He taught me about the slow but inevitable end of the Amazon rainforest; pollution had drifted through the air and choked out the animals, pulled carbon dioxide out of the trees, and murdered the few people still living in it. The final tree fell silently in the night, destroyed be a reckless kid fitted with an automatic axe he’d grabbed from his dad’s room. It was just a game to him.

I learned about the brief nanobug rebellion of 2080. The pioneers in helper robots had messed up the coding of their bots and, instead of helping the hundreds of people that owned them by shooting lasers at bugs that infiltrated the houses, shooting human’s eyes and permanently blinding them. In some cases, killing them.

Eddie taught me about the first group of technology rebels- AntiTech Union. They had been slaughtered by the hands of the police at a marked peace riot. Someone in the crowd had set of a gun, wounding an officer in the arm. 45 innocent men and women were slaughtered. Hundreds were injured.

I didn’t only learn about what happened while I was asleep. I learned about Eddie, too. On the fourth day of training, the day before we were tasked to head to the Baker facility,

“Can we take a break?” I asked after at least an hour of silent reading.

Eddie looked at me with his pure blue eyes, and gave me a quick nod. I slammed the book shut with visible satisfaction, and leaned back in my chair.

“So, tell me about yourself,” I said. This time, he shook his head: no.

“Why not?” I questioned.

“You first. What’s your story?” I shrugged, and began. I told him about my childhood friends. About how my parents, with their endless flow of love, eventually ran out of love to give. I told him about my work as a janitor in the Baker facility. I even told him about me talking with Laura, and me waking up in this foreign world. Now, it was his turn. He didn’t talk much, but each word was poised with meaning.

“My parents dropped me off at an orphanage when I was three weeks old. Orphans have made a comeback in the last hundred years, interesting right? Anyway, I didn’t make many friends there. I had one that I actually counted as a friend, and the others were simply living in the same place that I was. That friend ended up getting adopted, but I never was. I was alone until my 18th birthday. On that day, I was thrown out. They no longer had to keep me there, and they didn’t want to waste any money on something that was no longer theirs to take care off. On the street outside of the orphanage, I found The Elders. Well, I found an Elder. He wore robes and covered his face, but he blended in with everyone on the street perfectly. The Elder asked me if I wanted a family. I accepted. And I’ve been here ever since,” he finished, and took the book that I had closed. He opened it up about a hundred pages in, and handed it back to me. At the top read:

The Reintroduction of Orphanages Due to Technology Linked Deaths

“Odds are my parents died at the hands of faulty wiring, or a bribe.” And with that, I was back to reading. We didn’t speak much after that. Later, Eddie and I left the office silently. It was a comfortable and companionable silence, though. We got to the Living Quarters and I fell asleep almost instantly.

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