DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
11:02 AM TUESDAY
***ALERT MODE***
Malachi heard the sound of the falling elevator cut through the air and caught a glimpse of one of the Controllers - he thought he recognized Del laying in the cage, but couldn’t be sure - as it hurtled by.
He smiled. One less Controller was good news.
He also smiled at the cries of pain that disappeared almost as soon as they began as the four Controllers on the cable below the lift fell to the bottom of the shaft. He knew they were gone for good: even if they survived the fall, they would quickly go insane as they realized their inhumanity. It always happened that way. Fed by a lifetime of programming, their biomechanical minds hadn’t the defense mechanisms necessary to cope with the sudden discovery of their own lifelessness.
Cogito, ergo sum, he thought. I think, therefore I am. It was a saying from Before, from the old days before all this had become necessary. It was what the philosophers had reasoned out to explain their own existence. And there seemed to be some truth in it, for unlike a real man or woman, the machines masquerading as people always went insane when confronted with the fact of their true nature.
Enlightenment bred understanding, understanding bred insanity, and insanity brought death.
He stood and walked carefully down the tunnel, searching in the dimness for a way to get out of the mine. After a short time he found a ladder. It went up. And up was where Malachi wanted to go.
***
John climbed, leading Fran up the small ladder that extended up a long shaft. He had never taken this ladder before, but knew it was one of the ways into and out of the mine, though it was long-abandoned in favor of other, easier methods of egress like the lift. They had been crawling for hours, it seemed, and his arms were tired. He knew that Fran’s arms must be on fire, feeling like her shoulders were pulling out of their sockets, but she made no sound, whispered no complaints.
The ladder had no such toughness and felt no similar need to keep from grumbling. It crackled and splintered during their entire ascent, noises that disquieted John. He tried to remember how long ago the ladder had been built. It had been decades at least, he knew. That was part of why the lift was put in: the ladder was not only inefficient, it was dangerous. Several times during the climb he stopped and signaled Fran to do the same, worried that their combined weight in a trouble spot would pull the ladder away from the wall or just splinter it under their hands, casting them back into the depths of the earth. He would navigate the dangerous area himself, carefully testing each rung for strength, before allowing Fran to follow behind him.
In spite of his misgivings, however, the ladder held, and when John looked up for what felt like the millionth time, he saw a glorious sight: the top of the slim shaft. He couldn’t remember for sure, but it seemed to him that the top was within feet of the tunnel entrance. He redoubled his efforts, climbing faster.
"Why the rush?" panted Fran from below him.
"We’re almost out," he said.
He heard her move faster behind him as well, gaining strength with the news of their impending exit from the depths of the mountain. Splinters from the old wooden ladder bit into his hands, but he didn’t care. He wanted to leave.
He pulled himself up over the lip of the shaft, then reached down to help Fran up the last few feet.
She reached out a hand.
And the ladder, old and weary from years of neglect, at last did exactly what John had most feared. It fell away. It crackled and snapped like a log in the fire, then shattered into several large pieces. Short segments of the ladder remained anchored to the wall of the shaft, tethered by tenacious bolts that had rusted solid and so dirty they were nearly invisible against the wall of the slim shaft. The rest of the ladder plummeted into the darkness, its skeletal outlines disappearing into the black below long before sounds of the splintering and cracking that marked its final dissolution had ceased.
Fran screamed, and John heard an echoing noise escape his own lips as Fran desperately lurched upward, catching onto his hand. The ladder section she had been resting on fell from beneath her, leaving her suspended over a dark and bottomless well.
"Oh, God, John, help me!" she cried.
"I’ve got you, Fran!"
"Help me, John!"
"I’ve got you! I won’t let go!"
He felt himself slipping toward the rim, her body weight pulling against him and the bad angle of his body on the tunnel floor giving him no leverage. He reached out his free hand, trying to gain purchase on something. He found only loose sand and dirt, and tried to stop himself by jabbing his palm hard onto the dirt floor, as though he could pummel the mountain into submission and force it to provide him with a handhold.
It didn’t work. He was still slipping, scrabbling desperately for a grip on the hardpack dirt floor of the mine. Pebbles and gravel came away in silty handfuls, and he knew he was going to lose Fran.
"Help!" he cried out, though no one was there to save them. Only Malachi and his goons might be around, and they had hardly shown themselves to be the saving type.
Fran was going to fall, he realized. He also knew that he wouldn’t let go of her, so her fall would be quickly proceeded by his own.
Then something stopped him. Pain lanced through his hand and his forward movement stopped. He looked over and saw a cleated bootsole, grinding onto the back of his hand, trapping it against the floor of the tunnel.
"Jenna," said the woman who wore the boot, one of the women who with Malachi had been trying to kill him and Fran. Her mouth was caked with blood from where he had hit her while they struggled at Gabe’s house twelve hours and a lifetime before. He could make out the damp shards of broken teeth jutting out through her mangled lips. "My name is Jenna," she hissed. Blood drooled from her mouth in ropey strands, but she smiled like a little girl who she had just been given a pony for her birthday.
Her gun pressed against John’s cheek. He didn’t move as she looked over the edge of the shaft, looking at Fran who still hung helplessly from John’s rapidly tiring grip. Jenna’s macabre grin grew even wider, the gnarled remnants of her teeth seeming to swell and twist in among themselves in the dim light of the mine entrance.
"I just wanted you to know who sent you to hell," she rasped, and John saw her finger tighten on the trigger.