The Lonely Whelk (13 page)

“
It’s about time John let
you go.” Rock’s voice startled him. It came from a speaker in the
wall. “Come in here. On your right.”

None of the doors in the hallway had
windows. It was room 2321. He opened the door. Rock sat in a large
chair surrounded by the biggest computer system he’d ever seen.

“
This is control central,”
Rock said. “You won’t be in here much.”

“
What about the screens
downstairs?” Clyde asked.

“
Those are for show,
mostly,” Rock replied. “Although occasionally they can be useful. I
know Bob finds them helpful on occasion. This is where I live most
of the time, except when I have to go out to deal with problems,
which is a problem because then there is no one in this room. We
have a few other security guards, as you’ve seen, but none of them
are qualified for this. They are all leftovers from the previous
security system, which was… well… weak, to say the least.” He
flipped a few buttons and a block of screens flipped over to show
running strips of code. “This is an algorithm I wrote to help me
out. The computer can detect if anything unusual is happening on
the property or in the building. For example, this morning it
picked up a man wandering around the gardens in a strange, circular
pattern. Turns out the man wasn’t supposed to be there at all. And
then I have this—” he held up a small, rectangular device, “so I
can monitor things on a basic level from wherever I am.”

“
Wow,” Clyde’s eyes flicked
from one screen to the next to the next, and then he turned his
eyes to the various control panels. “That’s a sound board,” he
said, pointing to one. “And that one is for… lights?”

“
Yes,” Rock replied. “We
had the building wired so that I have all failsafe switches here in
this room with me. Not only can I control the lights in every
single room from here, but I can shut everything down and make the
whole building dead. The big switches are in that closet over
there.”

Clyde looked towards where he was pointing.
It was a large door with what looked like a hundred locks and one
padlock. “How many locks does that have?” he asked.

“
Well, technically, I think
it has eighty-three, but they’re all attached so you only have to
unlock one. It’s to confuse terrorists.”

“
If I were I a terrorist
I’d just stick my bomb outside the door.”

Rock nodded. “I know. So it’s our job to
keep them out of this room entirely.”

“
What are all these other
controls?” Clyde asked, pointing to a row of levers and a
keyboard.

“
Well the keyboard is… a
keyboard,” Rock replied. “I do almost everything on the computer.
The levers are for switching some of our systems over to manual
control. For example, the elevator has a failsafe in case of power
loss, but we can switch it over to manual to help get people out if
necessary. And the other ones go to some equipment in the labs, but
Quin and John haven’t had time to explain what all of the machines
do yet.”

Clyde had returned his eyes to the screens,
specifically one showing the Door Room; then he noticed that there
were
several
screens showing the Door Room.

“
Yes,” Rock said, noting
where Clyde was looking. “That is Vrata Soba, where you just were.
That is both the most valuable room in the building – or the
universe – and the most dangerous. We have about a hundred cameras
in there, but you can’t watch them all at once, so they scroll
through. When we get this building’s security protocols up to par,
we will have someone watching just that room at all
times.”

“
Why is the security here
so behind the times?”

“
It’s just government,”
Rock answered. “The higher-ups thought that locks would be
sufficient, but Quin convinced them to install a security system,
too – a quite complex one. Then, they decided that the system cost
so much to install that they couldn’t afford to hire anyone to run
it. They started having problems a few years back, and finally got
around to hiring me and then you. It’s all chartreuse
tape.”

Clyde nodded and contemplated the scene in
front of him; while it seemed to be a great asset, it could also be
a huge liability if anyone were to access the room and its
equipment.
Weigh the good and weigh the bad, but always look for
a compromise.
He wondered if there might be some compromise to
this – maybe two control rooms and more staff? That way someone
could always be watching, and they could have a backup room if
someone bad took over this one.

Someone knocked on the door to the control
room three times.

“
Come in!” Rock
called.

Quin stepped through the door. “I just got a
text from John. He’s says you’re going to have to run shutdown
procedures in a moment.”

“
Did he say why?” Rock
asked.

At that moment, red lights began to flash in
the Door Room on the computer screens. The people began to run
around frantically and one of the Doors began to glow a bright
red.

A grin spread across Quin’s face. “These are
fun,” he said, and sprinted out the of the control room. The door
slammed behind him.

Rock shook his head. “They warned me about
this.”

“
About what?” Clyde
asked.

“
Just watch,” Rock
replied.

He began to type rapidly on the computer.
Code began to stream down one block of screens. Reaching out, Rock
hit six buttons in a row labeled “E DR 1–6.” Security doors locked
everyone in the Door Room inside. Then the emergency lights went
off in every other part of the building. Clyde watched as people in
labs and in offices climbed under desks and tables and put their
arms over their heads. All ground-level entrances slammed shut and
locked.

“
The whole hiding under the
desk thing doesn’t really do anything,” Rock said. “I guess Quin
just created some mostly useless emergency protocols to make people
feel better. If the white lights go off, it means a Door has gone
critical, and if a Door goes critically critical, then we’ll all
die. But the people don’t know that. Meanwhile, Quin and John take
care of whatever the real problem is.”

“
Who else in the building –
I mean besides you, John, and Quin – are responsible for emergency
response situations?” Clyde asked. It seemed logical that, in a
facility this large, they would have a whole team of people
prepared, in case one of those specific individuals wasn’t
available.

“
You,” Rock replied
jokingly. “In all seriousness though, there are a large number of
people who are trained to respond to emergency situations. We have
a different team for each department, and for each shift. It’s a
pretty complex system, but John and Quin are primarily responsible
for the Door Room whenever they are in the building. Soon, I will
be taking over Quin’s responsibilities so he can go to complete
some high-security-clearance training out on the Rim.”

Clyde nodded. That made sense.

Then the security team turned their
attention back to the screens in time to see Quin, wearing a
strange suit, dive through the red Door.

John was talking to some sort of scientist,
and Kaia hadn’t heard a single word he’d said. She was too busy
focusing on her rumbling stomach, and in order to distract herself
from hunger, she felt her brain sliding towards cognitive
mathematics and this idea of a Bridge Door. When she had been
hungry as a child she had used the same strategy: think about math.
The only difference was that then it was multiplication tables or
trigonometry. Now it was cognitive mathematics. Either way, it
never helped her focus on the situation at hand.

The last two hours had been chaotic –
running from one person to the next, learning as fast as she could
about where each Door went, who worked with which ones and what
they did, and about John’s endless tendency to slide
not-quite-funny jokes into the most random of conversations. She
had a feeling it was way past lunch time, and sneaked a glance at
John’s watch; it was about quarter past 2:00.

She took a deep breath and tried to ignore
her stomach, focusing instead on the room around her. In one
corner, a funny looking gentleman in a little hat and a very long,
colourful scarf, was popping in and out of a Door. Each time he
came through, he would hold up one finger, say something probably
profound, and his assistant would write it down on an index card
and place it in a very tall, teetering pile of all the previous
index cards. Then the little man would disappear.

Almost in the exact center of the room were
two Doors parallel to one another, and only about eight feet apart.
Without any warning, a line of people began to march casually out
of one Door and into the next. It was amazing. They all wore
matching blue uniforms of some type and they didn’t even look
around them as they walked through.

Then a commotion rose on the opposite end of
the room. From what Kaia could tell, a woman had come through with
a small wagon piled high with bird cages. The birds did apparently
not like their trip through the Door and were throwing themselves
against the bars of their cages. In response, the woman had begun
to sing loudly, either as an attempt to soothe them or as an
attempt to drown out their racket. Kaia couldn’t decide which. At
any rate, her song wasn’t soothing anyone else in the room.

“
Ooh, this’ll be
interesting,” John said, almost gleefully. “That lady – her name is
something reminiscent of Helga, but with a number of guttural
sounds attached to it. She isn’t licensed to come through the
Doors, but tries about once a month or so. It’s always hilarious,
and never boring, and you know how I hate boring and love not
boring.”

Kaia laughed. “Can I meet her?” she
asked.

“
No.” John shook his head.
“You can meet her next month. No, I have something far more
interesting to show you.”

Something crashed on the other side of the
room. Bright lights began to flash and an alarm sounded – EHNT!
EHNT! EHNT! EHNT! Kaia clapped her hands over her ears.

“
Dammit!” John muttered.
“This is not what I was going to show you!”

“
RED DOOR! RED DOOR!”
someone began yelling. “RED DOOR ALERT!”

The people in the room began to back towards
the edges, nearly in a stampede to avoid whatever this RED DOOR
was. John ran forward, opposite the crowd, and Kaia struggled
desperately to keep up with him while simultaneously avoid being
trodden upon.

She reached the small group of scientists
only seconds after John arrived. It was Kenton, Naytiri, Boris, and
Olivia. John was already yelling at them.

“
Get the whatsits and
attach them to the frame on the red lines. Don’t touch it, you
idiot!” John reached out and pulled Boris’ hand away from the Door.
Instead of looking like a blue haze, the Door glistened red, as if
someone had poured red sparkles into a giant slab of clear glue,
and it almost glowed. The frame started to steam a little, and then
smoke.

“
Hurry!” John yelled. “Get
the diodes attached so we can start the... where’s Quin?” He spun
around. “Somebody get Quin!”

Kaia looked around. She saw Quin over by the
main entrance. He was trying to get through the crowd. She cupped
her hands around her mouth.

“
GET OUT OF THE WAY,” her
voice boomed over the chaos. The crowd quieted, and turned to look
at her, stunned. “GET OUT OF THE WAY,” she roared again, and a path
opened up for Quin. He sprinted through the room, and grabbed a
Door-Hazard suit on his way by the primary emergency
station.

He slid up to the angry Door, while slipping
the helmet over his head. “Give them here,” he mumbled through the
glass. John tipped a handful of diodes into his glove. Crouching
like a cat, Quin leaped into the volcanic, fiery entrance to
hell.

“
What’s he doing?” Boris
exclaimed. “Is he suicidal?”

“
Shut up,” John muttered as
he secured the final diode. “You know these don’t work unless
they’re on both sides of the Door.”

“
What if the Door
implodes?” Olivia gasped.

“
Well, at best, he’ll be
stuck there,” John said. “And he wouldn’t be the first. At worst,
he’ll die, but so will the rest of us and it won’t be our problem
anymore. Kenton, hand me the microwave emitter.”

Kenton stuck a strange looking metal rod
into John’s hand.

“
Fire up the generator,”
John commanded.

Boris reached down and pulled the string. A
loud roar filled the air.

“
We’ll give him ten more
seconds. Kaia, count, and make it absolutely exact.”

Kaia imagined a second in her mind, and held
it there once, twice, three times, four…

“
Ten!” she
shouted.

“
Don’t try this at home,”
John said, and shoved the microwave emitter into the seething
Door.

Someone in the crowd screamed. Everyone else
took a collective breath – the gasp nearly echoed.

Kaia froze, her eyes locked on the strange
little instrument clasped tightly in John’s gloved hands. His other
arm covered his eyes and face as he turned away from the Door. Kaia
turned to look at Naytiri. She, along with Kenton, Boris, and
Olivia, was staring at the Door with a horrified expression on her
face.

There was a blinding flash of light.

When Kaia opened her eyes, the Door seemed
fine. It was blue again. Quin stepped through from the other
side.