The Rift
The Story (#1)
The sun was setting when we walked over from Hut B1 to B2. Let me tell ya, it was a nice change. The air (foul as it was) had taken on a slight chill that was actually pleasant. Golden light danced across the clouds from the west and fizzed out like flames in the ocean as it approached the east. I don't know why the sky was so bright on that night, but it was the last time on The Floor that I ever saw it so. Me and Carson were walking together again. He was sporting a one-piece just as worn as mine.
"How d'ya think this thing's gonna go?" I asked him. I didn't really have to whisper, either -- almost everyone was talking.
"It'll be short and sweet, Danny" he said. His hand came up and briefly scratched his short gray hair. "Basically this guy they're calling The Boss is going to get up on some kind of stage, and lash his silver tongue over a microphone for about fifteen minutes. He's going to want to make sure we feel like we have a moral obligation to serve the Quelnine guys, but he's also probably going to be dropping some subtle messages in there."
"Messages that say what?" I asked.
"Messages that say 'If you don't do every fucking thing we tell you too, you die.'"
Carson smiled a bitter smile.
"And I think it's those messages that are going to hold the most truth."
The inside of B2 was as spacious as I had expected the first hut to be. It's contrast to B1 was especially odd, since all the huts were identical on the exterior. There were three overhead lamps that lit up the room and their light came down on these long rows of wooden tables -- they were almost like picnic tables, but they were more sturdy, and a whole hell of a lot longer. The floor was good old-fashioned concrete.
It was actually quite nice.
We were probably a little bit early because Johnny didn't have his prisoners there yet and so Wally got us all seated on the row of tables to the right, and he picked out a couple soldiers to stand next to each one with their rifles or handguns ready. Me and Carson got seats close to the middle of the hut and everyone else was still talking, but we didn't really have much else to say. We were both quiet guys by nature.
Up at the back of the room they had a square section of wall with a swinging white door going through it. I figured it led to the kitchens, although I couldn't smell anything cooking nearby. A couple feet in front of the door was a plywood stage with a microphone centered on it.
We only had to wait at the table about another five minutes before the front doors opened and in came big Devil-faced Johnny leading the other prisoners and a handful of his dirt-soldiers. When he got them all seated and assigned the soldiers at their tables, I saw him walk over and start talking casually with Wally on the wall behind us. Now that work was over, they were just two ordinary guys again, shooting the shit.
It was only a little while later when the lights above us suddenly went out and the only ones still shining were the ones placed near the stage. The room got real quiet and then we heard the clanking of a door from outside near the end of the room. I hadn't even noticed it earlier, but there it was: a little side door right next to the stage.
The door swung forward and a beefy man with no hair on his scalp and a lot of long, black hair on his face strode in carrying a briefcase. He was dressed up in a formal suit; the sort of thing I would expect a mathematics professor to wear. He didn't even look around as he walked briskly up the steps to the podium and then sat down his luggage on the plywood.
The Boss, standing at full height behind the podium, was not what I had expected. He was definitely intimidating -- he was at least a good six feet, and his bloodshot blue eyes had a wild, unpredictable look in them (I doubted if this guy missed a trick) -- but he also had a aura of great unhealth about him. His beard was tangled and uncouth, he was out of shape, his skin was pale, and his eyes had bags beneath them so black that it was hard to imagine that he got any sleep whatsoever. I had expected someone who looked a little bit more like Johnny.
We wheezed in a few good breaths, amplified by the microphone, coughed, and began to speak.
"Friends and neighbors," he said in a voice of deep baritone. "I can't tell you how much it pleases me to have you all here."
He paused here, as if waiting for something, but the hall stayed silent.
"My name is Douglas DuBois, but you can call me Doug. I know that many of you are probably feeling a little bit confused about why you've been asked to come here..." (It pissed me off when he said this. Asked to come here?) "...and so I'm going to try to explain everything tonight."
At these words a black man from one of the front tables stood up and pointed a finger at The Boss. "I don't want no fucki'n thing explained, man!" he said. "I know what'cho gonna do! You gonna fucking put us to work! You gonna --"
The air was sucked out of his voice as a dirt-solider at the front table jabbed the butt of his rifle into the black man's gut. He clutched at his stomach with wide, disbelieving eyes and fell to his knees.
"Thank you, Jonas." said The Boss from the stage. He might have been watching a boring movie. "Please escort him back to the dorms and assign him a room; I'll be in to talk with him later..."
The soldier cuffed his wrists with some iron loops from his pocket and drug him out the front doors while The Boss continued his speech.
"I hope our little interruption hasn't unsettled any of you, but you've got to understand..." he smiled and waved a palm at the crowd. "...our time is short. We can't have anything or anyone slowing us down."
I thought this guy was pretty wily. He wasn't the best public speaker I'd ever heard, but it was a close thing. He was "eloquent". What he was doing was saying "Okay, yeah, us capturing you was pretty harsh, but these are times that warrant harsh measures. There's a greater evil out there we've got worry about!" and about half of the people were going to end up buying it. Nobody was convinced yet, but I could see a blank fear in some of their faces. They were going to end up buying it because they didn't want to believe they were now slaves, they didn't want to believe their lives were over, and (most of all) they didn't want to believe they were going to be working for the bad guys.
"We've taken you in, my good fellows, because we need your help. Quelnine needs your help and The World needs your help.
"It's no secret that these past five years haven't been pleasant. We've been left in the ashes of the greatest war our planet has ever known -- hell, it's probably the greatest war the entire universe has ever known -- and each day we've been forced to try to pick up the pieces of our old lives. It hasn't been fair; not to me, nor any of you.
"As tempting as it would be for all of us to go back home and rest and reminiscence about old times, I'm afraid that option has been rendered obsolete... for all of us. Quelnine, the World Government who once protected all the markets and the nations which bore them, has been rebuilding itself and -- men let me tell you -- it will be stronger than ever before.
Nobody in the room cheered, nobody yelled, and nobody stood up; that doesn't mean everyone was still completely against the guy up there speaking, though. He acted like a leader with genuine good motives. He might've looked like bum who won the lottery, but (Carson had said it best) his tongue was silver.
"So where do you fit into all of this?" he asked the crowd. "My good fellows, as hard as it may be to believe, war is already back upon us.
There was some dark murmuring at the other tables when The Boss said this. Even I felt the hair on the back of my neck prick up. How could there already be another war on the way? And who in their right minds would challenge the Quelnine?
"Yes," he said, quieting down the hall again. "The Quelnine have already had nine infiltrations on various different mega stores, weapons storage buildings, and factories. It seems that several private militias have banded together in order to try to bring us to our knees."
I was stunned at this... surely he was lying. Nine successful raids on the Quelnine?! Even one was unheard of.
"So what we need to do," he continued. "is stand together and make sure that doesn't happen! We're asking you to aid us, simply by looking for certain things... There are weapons out here on The Floor, my friends, relics of the Great War. We need you to help us retrieve them before they fall into the wrong hands. We need to make sure that Quelnine can begin to fix our planet, the great Shayla Metrava, as soon as possible."
The Boss sucked in another airy breath, and that's when we heard the solid crack of a gunshot. It resonated throughout the hut so loud that my ears rang until the next day. I can still remember it's sound perfectly. Years later, when I learned to play the guitar, I ended up identifying its pitch. It was the one some people called "The Devil's Note", and it's a fitting name.
We all turned to look, and I saw one of the prisoners near the front doors with a pistol in his hand. He was one of the guys me and Carson had rode over with. On the ground next to him was a dirt-solder, only now he was a dead-soldier instead. Blood was spilling down his ribs where his own weapon (a hard caliber if I ever saw one) had dug a crater.
A couple of the other soldiers drew their weapons and fired, but they all missed. This guy had surprised them. He shot out a padlock holding the doors with another quick jerk of his hand, and then he disappeared into the night, his white shirt becoming eclipsed more rapidly as he went.
Some of the soldiers ran out after him, and some stayed behind, but a few seconds later all of them were going after him because The Boss, who had seemed so calm and collected just a bit ago, was screaming at them like a banshee with a yeast infection.
I never saw him again.
...
And that was my first day of work.
The sun was setting when we walked over from Hut B1 to B2. Let me tell ya, it was a nice change. The air (foul as it was) had taken on a slight chill that was actually pleasant. Golden light danced across the clouds from the west and fizzed out like flames in the ocean as it approached the east. I don't know why the sky was so bright on that night, but it was the last time on The Floor that I ever saw it so. Me and Carson were walking together again. He was sporting a one-piece just as worn as mine.
"How d'ya think this thing's gonna go?" I asked him. I didn't really have to whisper, either -- almost everyone was talking.
"It'll be short and sweet, Danny" he said. His hand came up and briefly scratched his short gray hair. "Basically this guy they're calling The Boss is going to get up on some kind of stage, and lash his silver tongue over a microphone for about fifteen minutes. He's going to want to make sure we feel like we have a moral obligation to serve the Quelnine guys, but he's also probably going to be dropping some subtle messages in there."
"Messages that say what?" I asked.
"Messages that say 'If you don't do every fucking thing we tell you too, you die.'"
Carson smiled a bitter smile.
"And I think it's those messages that are going to hold the most truth."
The inside of B2 was as spacious as I had expected the first hut to be. It's contrast to B1 was especially odd, since all the huts were identical on the exterior. There were three overhead lamps that lit up the room and their light came down on these long rows of wooden tables -- they were almost like picnic tables, but they were more sturdy, and a whole hell of a lot longer. The floor was good old-fashioned concrete.
It was actually quite nice.
We were probably a little bit early because Johnny didn't have his prisoners there yet and so Wally got us all seated on the row of tables to the right, and he picked out a couple soldiers to stand next to each one with their rifles or handguns ready. Me and Carson got seats close to the middle of the hut and everyone else was still talking, but we didn't really have much else to say. We were both quiet guys by nature.
Up at the back of the room they had a square section of wall with a swinging white door going through it. I figured it led to the kitchens, although I couldn't smell anything cooking nearby. A couple feet in front of the door was a plywood stage with a microphone centered on it.
We only had to wait at the table about another five minutes before the front doors opened and in came big Devil-faced Johnny leading the other prisoners and a handful of his dirt-soldiers. When he got them all seated and assigned the soldiers at their tables, I saw him walk over and start talking casually with Wally on the wall behind us. Now that work was over, they were just two ordinary guys again, shooting the shit.
It was only a little while later when the lights above us suddenly went out and the only ones still shining were the ones placed near the stage. The room got real quiet and then we heard the clanking of a door from outside near the end of the room. I hadn't even noticed it earlier, but there it was: a little side door right next to the stage.
The door swung forward and a beefy man with no hair on his scalp and a lot of long, black hair on his face strode in carrying a briefcase. He was dressed up in a formal suit; the sort of thing I would expect a mathematics professor to wear. He didn't even look around as he walked briskly up the steps to the podium and then sat down his luggage on the plywood.
The Boss, standing at full height behind the podium, was not what I had expected. He was definitely intimidating -- he was at least a good six feet, and his bloodshot blue eyes had a wild, unpredictable look in them (I doubted if this guy missed a trick) -- but he also had a aura of great unhealth about him. His beard was tangled and uncouth, he was out of shape, his skin was pale, and his eyes had bags beneath them so black that it was hard to imagine that he got any sleep whatsoever. I had expected someone who looked a little bit more like Johnny.
We wheezed in a few good breaths, amplified by the microphone, coughed, and began to speak.
"Friends and neighbors," he said in a voice of deep baritone. "I can't tell you how much it pleases me to have you all here."
He paused here, as if waiting for something, but the hall stayed silent.
"My name is Douglas DuBois, but you can call me Doug. I know that many of you are probably feeling a little bit confused about why you've been asked to come here..." (It pissed me off when he said this. Asked to come here?) "...and so I'm going to try to explain everything tonight."
At these words a black man from one of the front tables stood up and pointed a finger at The Boss. "I don't want no fucki'n thing explained, man!" he said. "I know what'cho gonna do! You gonna fucking put us to work! You gonna --"
The air was sucked out of his voice as a dirt-solider at the front table jabbed the butt of his rifle into the black man's gut. He clutched at his stomach with wide, disbelieving eyes and fell to his knees.
"Thank you, Jonas." said The Boss from the stage. He might have been watching a boring movie. "Please escort him back to the dorms and assign him a room; I'll be in to talk with him later..."
The soldier cuffed his wrists with some iron loops from his pocket and drug him out the front doors while The Boss continued his speech.
"I hope our little interruption hasn't unsettled any of you, but you've got to understand..." he smiled and waved a palm at the crowd. "...our time is short. We can't have anything or anyone slowing us down."
I thought this guy was pretty wily. He wasn't the best public speaker I'd ever heard, but it was a close thing. He was "eloquent". What he was doing was saying "Okay, yeah, us capturing you was pretty harsh, but these are times that warrant harsh measures. There's a greater evil out there we've got worry about!" and about half of the people were going to end up buying it. Nobody was convinced yet, but I could see a blank fear in some of their faces. They were going to end up buying it because they didn't want to believe they were now slaves, they didn't want to believe their lives were over, and (most of all) they didn't want to believe they were going to be working for the bad guys.
"We've taken you in, my good fellows, because we need your help. Quelnine needs your help and The World needs your help.
"It's no secret that these past five years haven't been pleasant. We've been left in the ashes of the greatest war our planet has ever known -- hell, it's probably the greatest war the entire universe has ever known -- and each day we've been forced to try to pick up the pieces of our old lives. It hasn't been fair; not to me, nor any of you.
"As tempting as it would be for all of us to go back home and rest and reminiscence about old times, I'm afraid that option has been rendered obsolete... for all of us. Quelnine, the World Government who once protected all the markets and the nations which bore them, has been rebuilding itself and -- men let me tell you -- it will be stronger than ever before.
Nobody in the room cheered, nobody yelled, and nobody stood up; that doesn't mean everyone was still completely against the guy up there speaking, though. He acted like a leader with genuine good motives. He might've looked like bum who won the lottery, but (Carson had said it best) his tongue was silver.
"So where do you fit into all of this?" he asked the crowd. "My good fellows, as hard as it may be to believe, war is already back upon us.
There was some dark murmuring at the other tables when The Boss said this. Even I felt the hair on the back of my neck prick up. How could there already be another war on the way? And who in their right minds would challenge the Quelnine?
"Yes," he said, quieting down the hall again. "The Quelnine have already had nine infiltrations on various different mega stores, weapons storage buildings, and factories. It seems that several private militias have banded together in order to try to bring us to our knees."
I was stunned at this... surely he was lying. Nine successful raids on the Quelnine?! Even one was unheard of.
"So what we need to do," he continued. "is stand together and make sure that doesn't happen! We're asking you to aid us, simply by looking for certain things... There are weapons out here on The Floor, my friends, relics of the Great War. We need you to help us retrieve them before they fall into the wrong hands. We need to make sure that Quelnine can begin to fix our planet, the great Shayla Metrava, as soon as possible."
The Boss sucked in another airy breath, and that's when we heard the solid crack of a gunshot. It resonated throughout the hut so loud that my ears rang until the next day. I can still remember it's sound perfectly. Years later, when I learned to play the guitar, I ended up identifying its pitch. It was the one some people called "The Devil's Note", and it's a fitting name.
We all turned to look, and I saw one of the prisoners near the front doors with a pistol in his hand. He was one of the guys me and Carson had rode over with. On the ground next to him was a dirt-solder, only now he was a dead-soldier instead. Blood was spilling down his ribs where his own weapon (a hard caliber if I ever saw one) had dug a crater.
A couple of the other soldiers drew their weapons and fired, but they all missed. This guy had surprised them. He shot out a padlock holding the doors with another quick jerk of his hand, and then he disappeared into the night, his white shirt becoming eclipsed more rapidly as he went.
Some of the soldiers ran out after him, and some stayed behind, but a few seconds later all of them were going after him because The Boss, who had seemed so calm and collected just a bit ago, was screaming at them like a banshee with a yeast infection.
I never saw him again.
...
And that was my first day of work.