SSCS 03: Installment 17 of 35
Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
This is Installment 17 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
And when the sun-dazzle cleared from my eyes I was standing on top of my stool again, in the workroom. My nose was again inches from the clay surface, and the upper-left corner was now partially filled with a pattern of stars that almost hid a handful of gears and cogs lurking on the periphery.
Looking down, I saw the dandelion plate was resting in the center of the work-table, alone and apparently untouched.
…Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
Installment 17: 20.1229
Wearily I climbed down from the stool and inspected my hands for any further damage. There was clay wedged under my finger-nails and some of my cuticles were starting to crack, but that was all this time, though my fingertips throbbed a little, as though bruised. I started to look for a rag, but realized I still hadn’t learned the workshop well enough to know where I could go to wash up. I’d have to find someone to tell me. Not really letting myself think about why, I slipped the dandelion texture plate into the big front pocket of my tunic before turning away from my workspace.
That was when I looked out through the crumbled door onto the rail deck and saw that the sky had turned smoggy red with sunset. And the air in the workshop was cool and dry. And there were no other sounds. The workshop was dark, and only the light from outside had let me still see what I was doing.
Distantly, though, I heard the coughing rattle of a bus engine and realized I needed to hurry. Whatever had just – again – happened, I knew I didn’t want to still be trapped here in the factory or lingering in the alleys outside after dark. Fortunately, the path between my tablet workspace and the way out was the one path I had learned. I stubbed my toes and bumped my elbows several times on rattlely screens and random benches, but I managed to twist my way out of there. Then I clung to the crumbly brick wall, hurrying as much as I dared with the stairs now cast completely in shadow, the red sky over the courtyard noticeably darkening.
Still, I stopped when I reached the bottom, confronted by the line of rusty, green doors set into the back wall of the courtyard. Jack said they led down to the machine, a place where he said he had also blacked-out once or twice. And the shape of his ankle… I swallowed, remembering what I had seen as we’d climbed the stairs I’d just come down. There had been a raised shape beneath the skin, slightly blocky and round, like a small gear or a cog. I hadn’t seen it clearly at the time, because there was a white scar running over the top of it that drew the eye more easily. But after seeing the gears-and-cogs pattern on the texture plate, the shape of it now stood out clearly in my mind. But what did it mean? I hadn’t seen anyone in this factory wearing the red of engineers, and even if I had… All I knew about the factory was that it had artisans and academics, some sort of greenhouse and some sort of machine. None of those pieces made sense together. Should I try to sneak down to the machine and see if I could learn something?
But even as I thought it, I realized the light had fallen so low I could now barely even make out the shape of the door nearest me. I needed to go.
The steel grey door that let out of the factory opened easily, though I had no idea if it would lock behind me. The alleyway beyond it was very black. But my memory said that it wasn’t very long and was relatively uncluttered. And there was wan light from a streetlamp shining from just around the corner at the far end. Feeling skittery and cold, I hurried toward it, ears straining for any sound other than my own footsteps.
Did I detect a faint shushing sound? Or was I just making that up out of the far-distant background noise of the city? At the alley’s other end, I resisted the urge to press my back against the warm, lit bricks of the building on the corner, and instead took up a meek position two steps behind a couple already waiting at the bus stop. If they were wearing factory tunics, they had coats on over so I couldn’t see the color, and they didn’t turn to look at me.
It should have been the distant sounds of the city, but I still thought I heard a faint shushing noise, slightly rhythmic. And then, still so quiet, a pinging tap that made my arms break out in goosebumps. But then there was a rattle and a cough, and another bus came around the corner onto our street.
Just as I was climbing the bus steps up, I caught a figure out of the corner of my eye leaving the alley that I’d so recently exited. But they didn’t come closer, and I moved swiftly onto the bus to find a seat. The rushing sound filling my ears sounded like someone saying my name. “Jhanni.” But the bus gave a lurch and started driving, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
In here it was quiet, as far as busses went, and dark with only the faint red of sunset flickering around the edges of the buildings outside. I leaned my head against the window, then winced and shifted when the texture plate in my pocket dug into my ribs. Pulling it out, I traced the shapes of the dandelions it offered, a sinking feeling filling me as I realized that I didn’t know what day it was. Elka had said the minister would be coming to check progress in two days. Was that really in two days? Or had I lost a day? Fingering the edges of the texture plate, I resisted the urge to just fold in on myself and not be for a while.
While I was lost in those (not) thoughts, the bus stopped, and someone else got on. Someone tall and thin, carrying some sort of stick or cane. They had a thick mane of hair, the color indistinct in the darkness. It spilled out around their head and trailed down past their shoulders.