Chapter 11 | Inside the B Street Compound
The sound of steam rising, bellows and gears, rust, and shredding paper. Dan lets himself into the compound, where the last of the Etch machines stands. There's a red phone ringing in the distance, the one you have to pick up, no matter what. He lets it ring, knowing he's not supposed to be here, anyway. Somewhere, somebody's escaping, but that's nothing new. The phone rings about twenty more times before it stops, pauses, then starts again, this time only three rings.
Dan calls out “hello” to see if anyone's in the building. A faint echo calls back. He's making his way through the halls, checking on doors. The red phone rings periodically. The other phones are silent. At the end of a catwalk, stairs lead down to a huge central warehouse, in the middle of which stands the last Etch machine. The Etch machine is in idle mode, humming in cadence with its perpetually running diesel. Gears whir as bellows inhale and exhale, powering multicolored lights, gauges, and counters.
He turns into the last office at the end of the catwalk, his office, with windows on all sides so he can watch. Although no one is here, still, he draws the shades and begins to empty the cabinets of records going back at least twenty-five years. Personnel reports, financials, geological studies, environmental impact, phone bills, photos, blueprints, five year plans. Into the pneumatic tube they go, to be fed into the Etch machine. This final generation of Etch machine can digest knowledge in all its many forms and translate it into wondrously dangerous creations of nearly infinite power. With these records, the Etch machine will now possess a level of self-awareness beyond the dreams of its Creator.
The tube is full. Dan presses the gray button to feed the first batch of documents into the Etch machine. He repeats the process with another set of papers, adding everyday objects like pens and paper clips for variety. Then presses the gray button again. He’s reading an instruction manual on how to adjust atmospheric frequency to reveal hidden worlds and beings. Right here since the beginning of time! So simple, yet undiscovered till recently. Ripping the pages from the manual, Dan feeds them into the pneumatic tube and off they go into the Etch machine.
“Care to tell me what the hell you’re doing?” a voice calls through a gap in the atmosphere.
Dan laughs. It’s his own voice calling out, from a world slightly offset from this one. He can feel the presence of his ancestors in the periphery of his vision as he continues with his work of dispatching the contents of his office. Gazing out the window towards the Etch machine, he imagines a sense of contentment emanating from the whirring, blinking contraption. His ancestors approve of this latest scheme. At last we will all be together! Hours pass, yet time stands still. The work is mesmerizing, and with each batch of documents fed into the Etch machine, old memories come rushing back, relived.
He stops for a moment to review. Emptied cabinets have somehow been replaced with new, full drawers of strange, untranslated communications. Dan grabs a folder and scans its contents. Though the characters are unintelligible, his training indicates these documents are contemporary or only slightly time-shifted, and that they come from this same location on a different frequency. In the corner of his eye, he observes a shimmering character reaching through the frequency gap. But the gap is too wide and unstable to support a transfer.
The Etch machine is in full throttle mode, processing new knowledge, gaining exponential wisdom. The lights are blinking faster now, the bellows inhaling and exhaling rapidly. The red phone is ringing ceaselessly. Dan locks up his office and heads down the stairs to the Etch machine.
