The Typist - A Swiftly Forged NaNo 2008 Novel

Ah, it's good to be back in the novelling season. I'm heading for 100,000 words this year once again, but I have a feeling my novel idea could span 150,000. Does that mean I won't finish in November? Heck no! I plan to finish - I always finish in November, and the day I don't I'll be damned to Hell. With that happy thought in mind, and with fingers moving swiftly through hopefully semi-elegant prose, I present the very first entry in my fourth novel, The Typist.


Word Count: 3661






It was a bright, beautiful day, with a wispy autumn breeze that gently rocked the flowers in James Graham’s lawn. Graham sat inside his comfortable home, surrounded by friendly furniture – his only current comfort – wrapped in dream on his recliner, surmising that he should continue his work, inside, on such a beautiful autumn day. In this post-mortal state, he dreamt that he was together, with his family, who he had left so many years ago to make ends meet on his own.

The wind rustled leaves on a large maple outside. A branch fell and hit the window, which woke Graham up. Startled, he let the reclining chair fall, and lifted himself off, shuffling towards the desk on the other side of the room. On the way, he shut half the window, which was letting in a cold draft. Across the street, and through misty eyes, he saw a child playing in a pile of leaves.

“It’s fall again,” he said, looking away from the child. “And I’ve got to get to work.” He sat down at the desk and pulled out a crumpled, but incredibly large, sheet of drafting vellum. But as his pencil hit the page, something interrupted him – the doorbell rang. Sighing, he lifted himself. Someone’s trying to get me to go outside, he thought. About time.

Graham opened the door to find a man in his late forties staring back at him, bags in his eyes. It was Graham’s neighbor, Adam Curie, and it was Curie’s child playing in the leaves across the street. Curie looked incredibly disoriented, and Graham wasn’t sure what in the world he could want. Happily married for several years to the beautiful Vanessa Curie, he lived in a lavish three-story home with enough beds and baths to run a small hotel. The two men had initially, on occasion, conversed over trivial topics when both were out on their lawns running errands and chores, and eventually grew into good friends. Still, it didn’t surprise Graham to see the fellow at the door, especially in such a tired state of mind. Curie was a struggling author constantly missing deadlines – how he maintained his job was beyond Graham, who had never missed a deadline in his life.

“Adam? Well, hello there. What brings you?”

“I need a favor,” he said quickly. “I see you’re already hard at work at something, but I’m wondering if I can pursued you to stop what you’re doing and focus on something new.” His arms flailed as he spoke, and his words had a stark sense of urgency.

“What? Slow down. Here, come inside and have a seat.” Curie forced his way past Graham, and fell down onto a couch. “The kid’s got you working overtime, doesn’t he? Why isn’t Vanessa helping out?”

“She’s been sick. But that’s not why I’m here.” Graham sat down as Curie spoke. “I’m wondering if you could design something for me. I could have asked someone else but, well, you’re the best drafter around here that I know, and I need something built quick. I’m wondering if you could put that brain of yours to work and crank out a little shed in my backyard; nothing big, just a small, external room. I’m wondering if you can do it and get it built in less than a month.” Curie bit his lip.

“I’m an engineer, not an architect. Why is this so important?”

“I’m on contract to write two more novels by the middle of next year, and I can’t concentrate. I need solitary confinement. Just a small room with a desk is all I want, a desk and a lamp.”

“Well, you’re better off just going to prison if you want an empty room,” Graham said with a smile.

“Funny, but I think it will really increase my productivity.”

“Money can’t solve writers’ block, Adam. Honestly, I don’t even know where you get the money anymore. Could you really pay me for this? Let’s say, just for this moment, that I was an architect and could effectively design you this room. What would it do for you that you couldn’t do for yourself by going to the library and tapping away on your laptop? Honestly, I think you’re a great friend, but you need to get your priorities in order.”

Curie slumped down into the recliner. “No,” he whispered. Graham, luckily, didn’t hear. Speaking louder, Curie said, “I understand your concern for me, but really, don’t worry about my priorities.”

“If I didn’t have to worry about people’s priorities, I’d be a rich and busy man right now. I’ve got three other projects I’m working on for three different clients who know where they’re going.” Graham stood up. “And you want a friendly favor?”

“Yes.” Curie began fidgeting, which Graham instinctively noticed. Curie knew Graham would, because the man had always had an incredible sense of detail, but couldn’t stop his mind from forcing his fingers to fiddle around and move in between one another.

Graham smiled again – Curie wasn’t telling him something. He always fidgeted when he was lying. “Alright,” he said, “out with it. What do you really want me to design?”

“A room!” Curie pleaded. Seeing Graham’s solid stance, he gave in. “A room,” he began, “with an underground bunker. There are some things I’d like to store there. But I need you to engineer a special lock that I can put on the door to the bunker that will keep it secure. I’m sorry – I can’t tell you what will go there, but I’m hoping you don’t need to know anything more.”

“You know, I would have found that out anyway if I’d accepted your proposition.”

“I know. But if you weren’t okay with building just the room, why would you be okay with making the bunker?”

“The room isn’t important, is it? The lock is what’s important. And that’s much more interesting. Listen, I know a guy who can design the bunker and shed for you. Knowing you, you’ve got Vanessa’s consent to build at least the room, so if you pay me one-third of the price up-front, I’ll get to work on the lock and door. How’s that sound?”

“Good to me. Listen, don’t tell Vanessa about the bunker, okay?”

“Of course. Customer confidentiality. You act like I’ve never worked on a secret project before! Not that you’d know,” he chuckled. “You should get back to her. If she’s sick, you shouldn’t leave her alone.”

“I’m more worried about my son – I don’t want him getting bitten up in those leaves!” Curie picked himself up off the chair and went over to shake Graham’s hand. “Well, thank you. I’ll be back tonight with a check, you can count on that.”

“Bring a piece of your current novel, too; you’ve got me interested in what you’re cooking up.”

“Sure,” Curie said, smiling, letting go of Graham’s hand and stepping near the door. The two men said goodbye, and Graham watched Curie walk back across the street to greet his son playing in the leaves. Curie hoisted the young boy into the air and swung him around in circles. Graham, trying not to look at this picture with envy, slowly shut the door and let the outside world disappear. Turning around, he noticed that Curie had left mud tracks on his carpet, leading up to his desk.

The desk was covered with drafting vellum and pencils. Graham was one of the few men he knew that did all of his drafting by hand, though he was slowly migrating to the computer. It wasn’t that he was old – not by far; he was quite young at thirty-two – but rather that he had a certain appreciation for traditional methods of engineering. He spread the papers across the desk, looking at prototype car designs for Toyota, toy designs, and now a blank sheet of paper that would soon be riddled with lock design sketches. His other clients had been very straightforward about what they wanted, and this enabled him to avoid most computer work, even on the car design. He could visualize it all in his head, and represent it on paper with stunning beauty; often he wondered if he should have become an artist rather than an engineer.

Mulling over the lock issue, he knew that someone like Curie, an author, wouldn’t want any normal tumbler lock, and knew that the lock would have to built-in to the door. Curie’s lock would have to be combination-based, but it would also have to be incredibly elaborate. More over, Graham wanted to design something that would inspire Curie’s novels, not just another lock. There was no doubt that Curie wanted the bunker not only to store his things, but also as a muse, as a mysterious pathway into his subconscious where he would find inspiration for his future and current stories. It was imperative that the lock on the door reflected this.

Graham ignored the thoughts; I can’t start working on it until I get paid, he told himself. Flickering lights interrupted his thoughts – the flicker lasted only just a moment, long enough to make his eyes blink. Losing his train of thought, he looked at the mud tracks across the white carpet floor, and cursed Curie. Then he sat down, and waited for night to fall – waited for the bright, beautiful day to wash away and leave a bleak, dark sky. It was these skies that he enjoyed most of all; the skies where he could see the stars. Often he would trace the stars and form his own constellations when he wasn’t busy working – or when he was putting off work. The stars, like particles in the sky, always reminded him that his engineering efforts would pay off one day – that, one day, he would be able to leave this place and work at CERN amongst the most brilliant minds in the world.

Slowly, night came upon the neighborhood. Lights went out, and the doorbell rang. As expected, Adam Curie was standing at the door, awkward as ever – though the bags under his eyes had disappeared. Graham pondered this change, which was odd considering that it was well into the night, and with his wife sick Curie would have had to tend to his screaming son until he keeled over from exhaustion. Why, then, was he looking so sprightly?

“Here’s your check,” he said, handing the slip of paper to Graham. “Thought of anything good? Ah, why bother asking – of course you have.”

“I’ve thought of a few things, but my mind’s been wandering. You’re looking good tonight; you must’ve gotten some sleep. Good for you.”

“Yeah. The kid’s off to sleep already, and so is Vanessa, so I’ve been relaxing and typing a bit. I took your advice and went to the library. You were right; I don’t know why I always thought libraries were loud. With some headphones, it’s quiet as hell, so I owe you an apology for being argumentative about it earlier.” He moved from side to side, as though he were nervous. “Anyways, you can get started now, right? I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait,” Graham said, running back to his desk and grabbing a business card. “This is the man you should contact about making the shed and bunker. Tell him I sent you, and you’ll probably get some sort of special treatment. And for something this simple, you can probably get him to skip the planning and go straight to the building.”

“Good, that gets rid of a big headache. I’m not very much concerned with the design; I know the size and everything, so I suppose I should be good to go as long as I can fit a desk in there.” Curie noticed the scattered papers across Graham’s desk. “Ah, you look busy. I shouldn’t have bothered you so late. I’ll go now.”

“Alright, but I wasn’t busy,” Graham said, nodding to Curie as a signal that it was alright for him to get going. The door shut soon after; Graham was, once again, alone. Alone to contemplate the lock, with pay. He sighed and sat down to a blank sheet of vellum and began to draw sketches of an elaborate color-combination lock. He’d taken a nap earlier and discovered it in a dream – often times he would work from his dreams; they provided guidance and inspiration. If Adam Curie’s own dreams couldn’t provide him inspiration, Graham thought that perhaps his could.

He stayed up late that night working on different designs, shifting between projects as he attempted not to procrastinate too much. Only once did he get up for a midnight sandwich, then sat back down to draft again. His first ideas had evolved; initially, the mechanism was a disc with nine slots, each corresponding to a different color of the rainbow and two for black and white. But eventually he realized that it wasn’t a very secure design – with enough attempts, anyone could crack the color code. So he developed more elaborate designs with ten, twenty, and thirty colors. An algorithm that started with six base colors determined the combination, and more colors were placed around those six base colors in a specific pattern that was easy to remember – if you knew it. Theoretically, one would only have to know the initial six colors and the pattern of color repetitions that surrounded those six colors to unlock the door.

He figured that someone like Curie would easily remember it with practice, and intended to show his designs to Curie the next morning. But when he rang the doorbell, only Vanessa Curie answered the door, looking sprightly – not sick at all. Ignoring this, Graham asked for Adam. Vanessa said she hadn’t seen him since last night, and that he had gone to pick her up some medicine but hadn’t come back.

Where had he gone?

“Thank you anyway, Vanessa. I’ll call him up and see if I can find out where he is.” Graham paced through their front walkway and flipped open his cell phone, selecting “Adam Curie” from his contact list and pressing call. Ever the alert one, Adam Curie immediately picked up his phone.

“What do you want, James?” he said. His voice was tense and frustrated. Clearly this was not the time for a phone call.

“Calm down – it’s nothing serious--”

“Well, I’m in the middle of something serious right now. Make it quick.”

“I’ve got some designs I want to show you. Will you be around later?”

“Yeah. Call me up; I’m in the middle of a meeting with my publisher right now, though, so not too soon. They’re… not happy with me. But I ordered the room and they’re digging already for the bunker. Miraculously, they said they could have everything firmly grounded and usable in two weeks. Ah, he’s motioning for me to get off the phone. Get out of here, James!” He chuckled nervously, and hung up the phone. On the other end of the line, James Graham was indelibly worried.

Across the street, he now saw not one, but two actions taking place: workers blew fallen leaves off of the Curies’ lawn, and more workers moved in and out from behind the house. He wondered if Vanessa was even aware that her husband had ordered a shed in their backyard – he thought, for a moment, that Adam was brewing a sinister plot in which he convinced his wife that she was sick so she would stay in bed while he hired lawn workers to cover up the shed’s construction. Vanessa had looked completely healthy. Then again, Graham remembered, so had his sister.

He shifted his thoughts away from that topic. As he did so, the lights flickered, and went out. He heard thunder outside; it was a blackout. He lifted the blinds on his windows and let the sunshine in – it’d been a while since he’d done that. The light transformed the little oblong room that contained his desk, his couch, his reclining chair, and his front door. How had he come to live such a well-to-do life in suburbia?

He worked on several projects per week, and not always were they in his home, at his desk. Often would he be called to the assembly line – once he created an assembly line, which was since redesigned by another engineer like himself – to look at the prototype models and analyze their structure. More often than not he’d find a fatal structural flaw and spend another week revising it, but he had always surmised that what had made him so successful was his ability to work quickly. People wanted a man who was fast, effective, and efficient – and they were willing to pay top-dollar for it.

The rest of his money was old money, money gifted to him from his parents, who vowed to support him until their end. To them, Graham was still “a young boy,” and that was code for a man who needs funding to sustain himself. He received his house from his parents, and he filled it with furniture he earned from his work. His house was nothing compared to the Curies’, but it was his abode and he loved it all the same. In fact, he was rather protective of it – the reason why he hadn’t left his current employment and applied at CERN, the particle physics research capital of the world, was because he was afraid he would lose his steady income and his endorsement from his parents, not to mention have to move out of his home and into Europe.

That, he thought, could wait for later. It could wait for when he was a more experienced engineer – when he knew enough to truly change the world. And that, he thought, would take decades.

Seeing that power wasn’t going to return anytime soon, he migrated down to his basement and picked up a flashlight, then sat down in the recliner and leaned back – the ottoman popped up automatically. Basking in the warmth of pure sunshine, he fell asleep for a little while, for just long enough...


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


The doorbell woke him up.

Graham was glad that he spent most of his time near his front door. If anywhere else, he would be more reluctant to travel to it. When he opened the door, the healthy-looking Vanessa stood in front of him.

“I sure am getting a lot of visitors lately. What do you need, Vanessa?”

“He’s still not back. When you called him, what did he say? I’m sorry for walking all the way over here, but the power’s still out. I don’t even get why, it’s a nice, bright day out… but what did Adam say to you?”

“He was at a meeting with his publisher, and had to go. I told him to call me later.”

Vanessa’s face contorted. “That’s not right, he always tells me when he goes to those meetings.”

“Listen, you’re sick – shouldn’t you be in bed or something? Or at least watching your kid while Adam can’t.” Graham realized what an insensitive statement he’d just made; nevertheless, he did wonder who was watching the little thing with Adam not around to do so. Suddenly, the sunlight turned to cloud and drizzle, and the drizzle evolved into rain over the course of their conversation about Adam. To escape the rain, the two migrated inside the house.

Graham turned on the flashlight, a Maglite, and unscrewed the top, turning it into an electric candle. It was so bright that he had to place it out of view; neither of the two wanted to be temporarily blinded. Vanessa began to explain that she knew she was sick – but she didn’t know what she had, and didn’t think it had any relevance to Adam’s job. Worried that she might see the project her husband had commissioned him to work on, Graham chose to keep Vanessa as far away from his desk as possible, as he hadn’t been pre-notified of her lock-compromising visit.

It was only natural that she tried to work her way over to the desk. She knew the papers were there, and Graham could tell that she was suspicious that the two men were doing something behind her back. Graham had to urge her to remain seated at once point, and eventually she got up of her own will and refused to sit down.

“I’m just curious what you’ve been working on all this time. I mean, I’ve known you for years, but you’ve never shown me any of your creations. Now I’m interested, and you don’t want me to see your latest stuff? I don’t believe that for a second.” She huffed and walked over to the desk.

“You do realize that those are confidential drawings, and that they’re owned by my commissioners, right?”

“Yeah, yeah – but make life interesting, I always say.”

“You’re sick. You’ll contaminate the vellum.” Graham walked over to her and stepped in front of the desk. “You really can’t look.” But she already had, and it was too late – even with graham in front of the desk, Adam Curie’s name was extended out beyond the side of Graham’s body, easily readable to Vanessa, who cracked a smile.

“I knew it,” she said. “What are you making for him?” She reached around and grabbed the vellum, examining its contents. “What the heck is this thing?” Graham panicked and began contemplating within his mind what else the lock could have been for. Then it came to him: If it wasn’t for a special locked door, it was for a special locked safe.

“Adam said he had some important items he wanted to ensure were safe, and asked me if I would design a locking mechanism to be implemented on a custom fireproof safe. Satisfied? I called him up today to tell him I had some designs ready.” With this, Vanessa backed off, and Graham wiped his forehead. Crisis averted.

I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating it was to write this beginning part. I largely had not planned any of these events, and I’m desperately trying to make sure they aren’t filler. I plan to make these events crucial later in the novel, so what seems like the pretty mundane right now will have a significant impact near the end, or the middle. Anyways, tomorrow the interesting stuff begins - with the Curie family getting out of the way, that means their stuff is Graham’s for the taking. Tomorrow will most likely contain Graham’s entry into Talos.

Word Count: 6915




It was Adam who suddenly appeared wide-eyed and anxious at Graham’s front door a few hours after Vanessa had left begging to see the designs. The bags in his eyes had returned worse than before, and Graham couldn’t help but wonder who of the two was really sick. Adam collapsed onto the couch, and motioned to see the drawings. “This better be good,” he said with a groggy, coarse voice, “I had a bad day.”

“Well, we’ll see when you look at them.” Graham, who had already been standing by the drawings, slid them off the table and into his hand, then slowly brought them over to Adam on the other side of the room. Adam clenched his fingers around the pages, crinkling them unintentionally, and looked intently at the drawings on their surfaces. With each passing concept, Adams eyes grew wider. He smiled.

“You’re amazing, you know that? Why didn’t you ever go to CERN?”

Adam sure knew how to hit Graham’s soft spot. “Long story short, I like where I am… for now.”

Curie put down the pages, finished looking at them, and handed Graham another check for the remaining balance. “What?” Graham asked. “Why did you come with this?”

Curie stood up, revitalized slightly. “James, I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I’m paying you for the rest of this work. Build what you’ve got; I’m satisfied. More importantly, in a few days I might not have the money to pay you! So there it is – while I still have it. You know, my publisher spoke with me today…”

“Yeah, sorry about catching you in the middle of that.” Embarrassed, Graham raised his hand behind his head and smiled, hoping to look innocent and blame-free. “Did it go well?”

“Well? I’ve got nothing to show – they want me to produce something, anything, in two weeks, or I’m out, contract terminated.” The bags under Curie’s eyes returned, it was clear he was desperate for a solution, and that he’d known he was about to get the boot long before he came to Graham asking for the lock. Why would Curie be spending all this money – what did he want to put in the bunker that would somehow save him from this desperation? “Luckily, it looks like, if nothing else, I’ll get the shed and bunker before I have to foreclose… if I have to foreclose.” He tried to smile, but his muscles wouldn’t move. He paced the room, leaving more mud tracks. “Yeah, this is good work.”

Curie’s hair looked like it was graying – and with the thin layer of hair he had, Curie looked like an old man already. His steps were not in rhythm with one another, his hands shook, and his whole body pulsated with anxiety. He made for the door, but Graham stopped him. “You’re not going anywhere. Stay here, get some damned rest. I’ll tell Vanessa, it’s only across the street.”

Vanessa was concerned, but didn’t ask for an explanation. Instead, she complained about the lack of power and wished that Graham could have just called, because she didn’t appreciate being lied to. Graham apologized and said that Adam was going through a rough patch at work – but this only made Vanessa more upset, to which Graham told her not to worry, it was nothing serious. But Graham knew it was serious, and given Curie’s work ethic they would most likely be forced to foreclose in a matter of weeks.

Curie most likely knew that it wasn’t enough time for Graham to literally build his elaborate lock. Design, sketch, prototype perhaps – but building it could take a month, or many months. Graham made it his mission that night to get Curie thinking, to get him typing somehow. Lucky enough, the power eventually came back on, and Graham could turn on his computer and sit Curie down in front of it with only one objective: Type.

“Nothing,” Curie said, banging his fist on the desk. “There aren’t any ideas, dammit!” Graham held his fist still and urged him to calm down. There were ideas – they were somewhere, lodged in his mind, and all he needed to do was use his hand to pull them out instead of using it to bang on the desk. It eventually became late enough the Graham fell asleep, but Curie was still awake, staring at the monitor. Eventually, the man fell asleep at the keyboard, and by morning the power was shot again – even if Curie had written something, Graham wouldn’t have been able to see it.

But what Graham was able to see was Curie’s excitement when he was woken with violent shaking. “James, I’ve got it! There’s no power here for God knows why, so I’m going back to my house to get started on a draft.”

They had been upstairs all night. Curie bolted down the steps, creating large thuds, with bags under his eyes and that same strange, unsyncopated rhythm in his step. Graham, tired, fell asleep once more, and didn’t wake up until noon – the power was still out.

He didn’t see Graham at all that day, but he did begin to see people out on the street, wandering around conversing with one another. It was another bright, yet chilly autumn day, but such beautiful days weren’t enough to bring droves of citizens out of their homes in this age. Graham’s instinct was right – they were out conversing with one another not about the beautiful day, but about the lack of power. It seemed to be a widespread panic; the general consensus of the group stated that power does not go out on such beautiful days.

Graham didn’t get the newspaper, but if he had he would have seen the headlines, as the people in the street had – inexplicable rolling blackouts in suburbs across the country we causing people to approach their power companies in protest. But the power companies couldn’t do anything; according to their monitoring systems, and their engineers, everything was working properly. They had even sent men to investigate the power lines and see if there was some form of break; the simple explanation provided by the media was that there was no explanation. Naturally, it was more than just Graham’s neighborhood in an uproar.

Graham went outside. The thin air was saturated and made thick by mindless chatter and the sounds of drills and saws working to set up Curie’s bunker and shed. The workers were making great progress – Graham had never seen a structure set up so quickly. They didn’t just wheel in a shed an turn it into a room; they had laid a small foundation and built it up, the way one would a home. He shoved his way through the crowd to get a better look at the house, and noticed that the people around him were attempting to organize themselves and go to the nearest power plant, and eventually they had all left, their homes still just as dark inside as they had been before.

Graham went back into his home and began working on Curie’s lock. His firm would cut the metal and the parts required to assemble the lock if he provided all the accurate dimensions and drawings, and he imagined that would take over a week to machine. The problem remained that Graham hadn’t actually designed the lock – he’d only sketched it, and yet he’d been paid for the full design, manufacturing, and assembly of a product that didn’t yet exist. So he sat down, and began to make it exist. Hours passed by, and he worked by the light of his Maglite – and when the batteries died, and he discovered he was out of batteries, he used a candle. It was during times like these that he was thankful for not relying on computers for his drafting. By morning, having worked nearly twelve hours straight on the mechanics, he had a rough draft that was probably suitable for a rudimentary machining, and mailed it to his firm, which he was sure would have power. While he was out mailing the drawings, he picked up a newspaper from someone else’s doorstep without guilt – it looked like they had gone and camped overnight at the power plant in protest of the lack of power, and wouldn’t be coming back until late that afternoon. At least, Graham thought he’d heard someone saying that the other day – if he was wrong, the most someone lost was his or her newspaper.

The headline on The New York Times read, “AMIDST SHRINKING ECONOMY, POWER FAILURES SPARK CIVIL UNREST.” A recent collapse of several large American banks had left many investors concerned about their futures, and alternative fuels eventually took center stage because fossil fuel producers were making record profits during a recession. When the power companies suddenly failed to provide sufficient energy, communities at large began demanding that they use renewable, unlimited sources of power as opposed to the limited fossil fuels. But Graham knew that the power companies didn’t cause the problem and, in fact, sympathized with their management teams, whom he figured must have been having one hell of a time calming down entire townships.

And yet, the entire fiasco would cause his manufacturing to take several more days than it could have. Normally, he would scan and email the drawings to his superior, who would approve the designs and begin the machining process. Under normal circumstances, assembly instructions were provided in the drawings, but this time Graham did not provide them. He didn’t want the finished product delivered to him – he wanted to assemble it himself.

As the days passed by, he saw less and less of all three Curies’ and more of the citizens around the neighborhood. Power was sporadically turning on and off, to which the people attributed the efforts of the power companies to restore electricity to their homes. But it was problematic; light fixtures would burst from the rapid power switching. A fire broke loose at one point, causing half of an older couple’s home to burn down. Graham began to hear emergency room stories, both through the newspaper and through town residents just looking for something to do outside, about people who had suffered lacerations caused by shattered glass and plastic.

And yet, the power companies were praised for their efforts. A nearby PSE&G plant, unbeknownst to Graham, was holding a corporate party in celebration of their marvel of engineering that “fixed” the problems they had supposedly caused. They hailed, amongst themselves, their innovation in clean technologies that effectively restored citizens’ active, electronically driven lifestyles. But this was no time for a party.

It only took so long before Graham’s computer suffered an ill fate, but this was no loss to him – he kept very little important files. Too many people had told him he was living in the past, but here he was, completely prepared for an electronic crisis. Not a single important document was lost when his computer wouldn’t turn on. He didn’t even bother trying to get it repaired.

In the middle of the week, just as the construction workers finished Adam’s external room, the man decided to visit Graham. When Graham opened the door, Curie was holding a package. “I think this is for you,” he said. “It’s pretty damn heavy!”

Graham took the package, and then saw that Curie had been carrying a thick stack of papers underneath it. It looked like writing was on the pages. “I’m glad this is here. These are the machined parts to your lock, Adam. I should have it assembled soon, so you can have it by next week.”

“Good! I’m going to see my publisher tomorrow, and I think I’ve finally got something worth showing. Check it out.” He handed the stack of pages to Graham, who laughed.

“Did you go out and buy a manual typewriter to do this?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It seems like something I’d do, I suppose, not you.” Graham didn’t bother reading the manuscript and instead handed it back to Curie. He wasn’t interested in the story, so long as it kept the man in his house. “Is Vanessa better?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been taking care of her as I write. In a way, she’s been taking care of me, too. I finally remember why I married her… she’s such an inspiration, James. You should get yourself married; I’d bet your engineering would improve. Not that it needs improving, let’s see that lock.” He eagerly went to open the package, but Graham stopped him, and told him not to touch property that wasn’t yet his.

“I still have to assemble this. It’s complicated; don’t screw it up for me. It’s going to take long enough as it is. And Adam,” Graham said, “don’t mention my personal life.” For only a moment, Graham regretted not having written the assembly instructions for his firm. In hindsight, it might have saved him a lot of work – but on the bright side, he thought, there would be something to do while the power continued to jolt on and off.

Adam continued to talk about his newest novel, and then transitioned into the loss of power. “That’s why I got this typewriter. It’s been surprisingly reliable. I’ve been doing a lot of my writing in my new room, too, when I’m not with Vanessa. It’s nice to have a space all to yourself, away from the home – if even only a few feet away. And the clicking of the old typewriter keys is soothing.” Graham could tell that Curie was proud of the typewriter, and more proud of his own ability to forge words from ideas. It’s a skill that Graham had always wished he’d had, and in a sense he was jealous of Curie now that the man was writing once again.

He wouldn’t remain jealous for long.

Curie soon left, and Graham began building Curie’s lock. Within an hour he had assembled it nearly a quarter of the way, and began to wonder if he underestimated his skill as a builder. But it was here that he began working on the smaller, almost microscopic portions of the lock – the most important portions of the lock that would ensure that it not only stayed together in one piece, but also created the backbone of the locking mechanism.

With precision tools Graham assembled the framework for the most complicated lock he’d ever built – or seen, for that mater. A delicate and intricate network of gears, pipes, rods and bearings created a flowing, circular motion inside the lock. The lock itself looked like a six-pronged star, with a hole at the tip of each prong for a color to display through. Unfortunately, it was powered by an electronic LED display, so Graham did not know how he and Curie would activate it.

The entire matrix of gears and electronic innards was placed inside the metal shell that had been specially machined for the lock. This lock would fit into any door, if the door was modified, and Graham could modify any door himself with enough time. And so he painstakingly assembled the miniature parts, connecting them to create a structure Graham could only call stunning and beautiful. As much as he wanted to work at CERN, he often forgot how fascinated he was by his own technology. This lock was certainly not the work of someone living in the past – it looked like the work of someone from ten years in the future.

It greatly upset Graham that he wasn’t able to turn it on. There was no software running the machine – every color was represented by a simple number, and inputting the number triggered a series of events within the locking mechanism’s system that, in turn, displayed the correct color on the LCD screen through the little circular hole at the tip of each prong on the star. It was by no means simple, but that only meant that an outsider would have that much more trouble unlocking the system without the combination.

And yet, Graham worried that because it was still a prototype design, it could, somehow, be easily broken through. He had no way of knowing whether or not this fear was baseless, though he supposed he’d eventually find out.

He never would.

The afternoon of the next day, Adam Curie once again appeared at his door – his eyes lined with the dark stains of fear, the bags underneath those eyes flooded with tears, his hands shaking from the cold autumn breezes. “Cancel it,” he cried, “give me back my check! I need it; I need everything I can get. They hated it, hated everything about it!”

“What are you talking about?” Graham asked, motioning for Curie to come in, utterly confused. Curie was shaking furiously, and his disheveled appearance suggested he hadn’t been home yet.

“They didn’t like my concept. They got rid of me, told me I was worthless. That I should find a new hobby. A hobby! They honestly said ‘hobby’!” He broke down, and once again collapsed onto Graham’s couch. “**** the drawings, James. **** the lock.”

“Adam, I can’t just give you the money back… I’ve already built a lot of it. I used the money you gave me to pay for the materials. Now, calm down.” But Curie was restless; he wouldn’t even lie still on the couch. His whole body twitched, and he complained of aches and pains near his stomach like a whining child. There was nothing Graham could do or say to make Curie feel comfortable with what had just happened.

“Listen, James, I haven’t told Vanessa yet… but without a job, well, it looks like I won’t have another one for a while. I’ll probably have to sell the house, liquidate a ton of ****. Get my hands on whatever I can and move Vanessa, my son and I to somewhere cheaper.”

“You’re talking crazy. You won’t have to do any of that.” Graham looked at Curie’s face – it looked as though the man had aged another twenty years since the day before and two hundred years more miserable. “Listen, get up, and go back home. Tell this stuff to Vanessa, not to me, and you two will work something out. I doubt you’ll have to sell your house. I’ll keep this lock around, and I will finish working on it by next week, at which time I’m sure you’ll still be here.”

Curie just shook his head and wailed louder. Slowly, graham coerced him to get off the couch and go back to his house – even if the man’s life was falling apart, Graham figured the mental breakdown stage should happen in front of his caring family, not in front of a friend who didn’t need a greater burden. As Curie walked across the street in the cold, alone, Graham wondered if Curie really believed that he would have to sell his house in order to afford basic needs and, by the next day, wished that Curie, too, hadn’t taken stock into his own words, because the very next day the “For Sale” sign went up, and the Curie family began making plans to relocate far, far away.

Graham wished he had electricity so that he could substitute breaking something physical with something virtual. But there he was, standing next to his desk by the front door, the contents of Curie’s lock scattered across the room like the millions of tiny snowflakes soon to fall upon the frostbitten ground.

Okay, I lied. He’s not in Talos yet, but only because I had a flood of inspiration and felt very satisfied with how things were rolling out. So, he’s almost in Talos - but not yet. Something will happen tomorrow… well, just wait and see what happens with the typewriter. Oh, and don’t mind Lars Othret. He couldn’t possibly have any relation to the supposedly-deceased Danil Othret.

Word Count: 10,010





It was not even three days later that Graham found Adam Curie setting up an open market full of his old knick-knacks and useless junk, clearly hoping to make a small profit that would sustain his family for a few weeks. Several prospective buyers had stopped by to look at Curie’s house, and one of them was quite sure he and his family would buy, but didn’t want to be too hasty. That customer was tying the knot on a long string of visits to various homes across the state, and was happy to have finally “found one that suited his family’s needs so well.”

Only in utter disbelief did Graham visit the Curie garage sale, which was covered in old newspapers to protect it from the early falling snow. The headlines on the newspaper raved about the lack of power, and terrified the public by preaching about the coming of a second Dark Age. Business and e-business firms were closing en-masse, causing even greater financial worry in an already tumultuous economic environment. Panic was widespread – whole districts were losing power inexplicably, and it wasn’t coming back.

How could Graham, then, feel so calm? How could he be so at ease, when even his most cherished neighbor’s family was to be scattered, destitute, to some other part of the planet?

Graham peeled away one of the newspaper layers to look at the frozen items beneath it. Cups, silverware, an old fan – all junk. He couldn’t imagine how Curie planned to sell any of this, especially when half the town went out complaining to the power company and the other half worried so greatly about their financial assets that they, too, might sell their homes and relocate just to ensure that they would have disposable income in the future. Although everywhere around him was silent, Graham could hear the screams of the destitute crying out for financial security, crying out for electricity, crying out for any modern convenience, coveting any combination of the three they could convey

Then he saw it, sitting alone, with a light layer of fresh snow spread across its surface: the typewriter. Snow sunk between its keys, undoubtedly harming the inner structure. Graham wiped the snow off of its surface, revealing several of the keys, and blew the dusty snow out from its innards. The snow exploded into the air, sparkling in the sunlight, and hit Graham’s face – in the areas protected by his rather small beard, he wasn’t cold, but the rest of his face suddenly felt frozen. He spit out the snow that had fallen into his mouth, and from a distance heard Curie laughing.

“I suppose if you want to say, ‘If there’s one thing I can still derive pleasure from, it’s the sight of you covered in snow’?” Graham said, almost shouting. Curie laughed again.

“That sounds about right.” Curie walked over to Graham, and made his face somber. “Since we don’t have power, I probably won’t see you again for a while.”

“When do you leave?”

“Two days.”

“What?!” Graham was in disbelief. There was no way, even with all the resources available in the world, for a man to clear out of his house so quickly. “You must be coming back for certain things.”

“Oh, well, yes, but we won’t be living in this house anymore. Eventually I’ll make a trip back to gather the non-essentials, but without power most of it is effectively useless anyway. I figured if I can sell the house fast and lighten my load, I’ll have the new homeowner take care of the electronics until power returns to America. The other countries must all be laughing at us right now, I swear!”

“Well, what’s the buyer going to do with his stuff?” Graham asked.

“Move it in; there’s plenty of room. I told him he could shove all of my old junk in the closet, and that I’d be holding this garage sale to get rid of the really useless junk. Though I see you’ve found the typewriter.”

Graham didn’t think that the typewriter was useless. In fact, he was sure that it could be used to create the next great novel of the century, and that these chances were magnified by the cross-country rolling blackouts. There was no doubt in his mind that every smart author in America at that moment was using some form of ink on paper to create their stories out of fear that they might lose their drafts to a sudden power outage – and that was if they could get power at all. If not, then they’d be forced to put their pens to the page, literally.

“You’re sure this guy is buying?”

“Well, no. But he seems pretty close to being sure, and looks like a great guy. I’d like him to buy it, if no one else.” The bags under his eyes had deepened, and Curie looked more tired than ever. His child and wife were nowhere to be seen; Graham assumed that they were out having lunch and had left Adam to hold up the garage sale.

Graham ended up staying with Curie the rest of the day to maximize the time he had left with his good friend, and in between interesting conversation he helped Curie run the garage sale. They sold a good deal of merchandise, and made a fair bit of cash – enough to support the Curie family for many weeks to come in their new home. He wondered how Vanessa felt about this whole ordeal, and how his child would cope with growing up in a home that was undoubtedly less lavish than what Curie had just sold. But in the end, Curie advised Graham that it was the best for their financial assets. Pulling money out of their mortgage would have been a death sentence in the current market, and thus they had no choice but to relocate and start saving. Curie continues by stating that if, perhaps, he one day reclaimed his job and made a small fortune off of a new novel, he could move back to this neighborhood.

The sun began to set, and Graham had work to do – his other clients wanted to see how his drawings had progressed, and Graham knew that they hadn’t progressed very much. He spent the night tirelessly working on all of his peripheral projects that he had ignored when focusing on Curie’s lock, which was still scattered in millions of pieces across his carpet. He wouldn’t bother to clean them up; he kept the parts scattered that way as a motivator, as a symbol for the uselessness of work done quickly. If it were any other piece of equipment he’d engineered, it wouldn’t have fallen apart from being thrown. That it broke meant there was a serious structural flaw, and he wouldn’t let that happen to any of his other projects. He saw the breakage as giving meaning to his anger at Curie for bailing out when times got tough, and plowed through his other projects by morning.

He had never checked yesterday’s mail. Tired from the long night’s work, he decided to take a two-minute break and sift through the mail. The paper and ink reminded him of how Curie’s draft novel looked, simple and primitive, not at all like modern words on a flickering screen. Once again proving that a good part of him was born in the wrong age, he expressed his enjoyment of traditional mail to himself. It was tangible, it was personal, it was intimate and did not come often. Whenever he received a letter – one that wasn’t junk, anyway – it was a painstakingly created, personal message. E-mail could be easily rectified, changed, and sent en-masse. But traditional mail, once it was written and sent, was set in stone. Which was why Graham had reason to be surprised that he found a letter from his boss in yesterday’s mail.

The letter was marked as urgent notice and was sent via first-class overnight delivery. It read,

Mr. James Graham,

You may know that we have all been experiencing tumultuous times in America. It is during times like these that we exercise caution, or lose our own blood. We must protect ourselves with all the power we can muster, and it is with a heavy heart that I say our Tesla Engineering is no exception to this rule. With the rampant economy, and the recent power shortages, Tesla Engineering has informed me that I must downsize my staff by the thousands. I cannot tell you how hard this is for me to do, even more so because I know many of you personally and have followed your careers through since their inceptions. But when times are tough, we’re called upon to make tough decisions.

Do not finish your current projects, Mr. Graham. While I wish you could still provide your services to us, it is Tesla Engineering who can no longer afford you.

I chose you, Mr. Graham, because I feel that you are one of the most independent workers I’ve ever seen. If there is any Tesla faculty member that can survive on his or her own, it is you. Your commissioned projects have been canceled, but I think you may find success in freelance engineering until the economy picks up and the power crisis ends. Do not give up hope that there will be an end to these crises. Find recluse knowing that few are as innovative and resourceful as you, and that you will undoubtedly become very successful if America should suffer without electricity for longer than we’d all like it to.

Keep your friends close, and your designs closer. God speed,
Lars Othret
Tesla Engineering
Head of Management

P.S. Let me know when you find yourself someone special; she’ll be a lucky one, that girl. I know you’ve been searching for a while, and one day your patience will pay off – I’m sure sooner rather than later! Trust fate, and trust your ingenuity.

Graham, sitting at his drafting desk, put the letter down and cried. Tears fell over his current projects – not only for his lost job, but also his lost time. And yet he remained resolute, knowing that there would be future opportunities. If he could gain more opportunities like Curie’s lock, there would be hope for him to become a freelance engineer. He could remain in his home and continue business as normal, work three projects at a time, and make profit enough to keep himself going through the crisis. And for the first time, it truly resounded in his mind that America was in a crisis, a crisis greater than any nation has experienced in decades, perhaps centuries.

But now that he, like Curie, was out of a job, he found that he worried about it less than when he had let it pass him by idly. Now that he was a freelance engineer, he made his own schedule and deadlines. He did everything on his own. And like Lars Othret had said in his letter, Graham could handle it. So he remained calm and collected after the tears had dried up; after his projects were ruined. He sighed after the long bout with his emotions, This wouldn’t have happened to digital copies.

At the same time, he also no longer blamed Curie for bailing out in a panic. Now that he understood the pain and terror caused by losing your only job – with absolutely nothing to fall back on – he sympathized with Curie. And then he knew what he had to do to cheer Curie up; he ran upstairs to his bedroom and fetched Curie’s check, which he hadn’t cashed yet and hadn’t planned to cash until he finished the lock, which clearly wasn’t going to happen, put on a coat and dashed across the street. The old newspapers covered the lot of junk, which meant that Curie was still asleep.

He rang their doorbell several times before their child opened the door. “Is your daddy home?” Graham asked the innocent child, who wiped his eyes of sleepiness and nodded. “Think you could go wake him up for me?” At this, the child woke up and procured a wide-mouthed grin, then ran up a nearby flight of stairs. Moments later, Graham heard a surprised screech and then a disgruntled moan, and smiled as the child had.

“James? What the hell? It’s six in the morning - are you insane?” Curie rubbed his eyes, his fists caught in their deep sockets. Sleep would not leave him, but had clearly left Graham.

“I want to buy it,” Graham said with a hint of urgency.

“Buy what?”

“Your typewriter.”

“You woke me up to ask me if you could borrow my typewriter? James–” Just as Curie began closing the front door, Graham stopped him.

“Not borrow, buy. I’m interested in your stories. I’d like to write my own. Really, I would. And without power, your typewriter is the only way I could possibly write anything with any speed. Please let me buy it from you. I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of thoughts I want to get off my chest.”

“A-alright. Come on, I’ll show you to it.” Curie led the way from the front door to the driveway via a stone pathway, and removed the newspaper tarp from one shelf of junk. “Here she is, all yours.” The snow had melted; it was slightly warmer that morning. And even if the snow hadn’t melted, it would have been blown away by the wind, making the typewriter look as though it had only just been manufactured.

“Great! And you cleaned it, too,” Graham said, reaching into his pocket. He yanked out the check and forced it into Curie’s left hand. “There’s your payment. I hope it’s enough.” Graham watched Curie unfold the check, hoping that the man would become wide-eyes and thankful, but that’s not what happened.

“Is this a joke?” Curie said, blinking furiously.

“What? No, I— I wanted to give that back to you, since you need it more than I do. Not that you’re needy, of course, but because I never finished your project.”

“You had to cover costs. Please don’t give me back my own check, James. I’m destitute, yeah, but you’re not exactly king of the castle yourself. And I’m not letting you take me over.” A pause, and then a change of heart. “I can see you really want me to have this, so stop looking at me like that – I’ll keep the goddamned check. You’re going to need a new ribbon, though. I’ve got one lying around here somewhere…” He sifted through piles of junk, until he uncovered a box containing a new typewriter ink ribbon in a far off Rubbermaid container. “Ah-hah! There we go. Take this. And listen, when I leave today, I’ll send you some mail. When you respond to it, you’d better be sending it in a thick manila envelope with your first story.”

“You got it,” Graham said while clamping the box containing the ink ribbon between his jaws and grasping tightly the typewriter with both hands. “Hay hare!” he said with a full mouth, and walked away from Curie one last time, satisfied with the transpired events. Curie, however, was now reluctant to leave. Graham purposefully left out that he’d lost his job when talking to Curie, because he knew that would cause Curie to cancel the sale of his home and try to make ends meet with a steep mortgage, and he didn’t want to be the cause of Curie’s bankruptcy. No – curie would have to forge out his own path, away from Graham, and sometime in the future the two would meet and share their experiences, for better or worse, knowing they made the right decisions at the time.

Of course, Graham had no way of knowing that his decisions were right, or that selling out was the best decision for Curie, but he did know that Curie needed to learn to get along without the help of others. And Graham, well, he just needed to learn to get along.

“Take care yourself, neighbor!” Curie called back, in a strangely unfamiliar voice. Unsure of what he had heard, Graham doubled back – was that really Curie I just heard? It was as though, in the mere moments in between Curie’s previous sentence and his goodbye, his voice had changed completely. It was clearer, more resolute, deeper and confident – nothing like what Graham had ever heard before. He was completely bemused.

The voice bothered him through the rest of the day, as he destroyed his old projects by burning them in a fire. Unfortunately, drafting vellum wasn’t quick to burn, so he used a starter log and some firewood to jump-start the process. He took immense pleasure in watching these old projects burn, and thought about his prospective job at CERN. He hadn’t lied to Curie when he’d said that he was comfortable living where he was – in fact, he was ore than comfortable, but there would always be second thoughts. In the end, he took those second thoughts and burned them in the fire with his old drawings.

To hell with CERN, he said to himself. I’ll keep at what I’ve been doing, like Lars told me to, and never regret my work.

With that, Graham took a broom an swept the pieces of Curie’s lock into a pile, and shoved them in front of the couch, then looked outside to see the moving van carrying the majority of the Curies’ materials. When the van moved clear of the driveway, he noticed how successful the garage sale had been – the lot was nearly empty. How had he not noticed people coming and going throughout the day? Once again, he heard the strange, impossibly confident voice of Adam Curie; something had changed in him then that enabled Curie to attract more customers and sell all of his old junk. Still in bemusement, Graham supposed that some strange, otherworldly force induced by large amounts of stress, given Curie’s situation, possessed the man.

But that was behind him now. Curie was gone, and someone new would be living in that house tomorrow, someone that Graham wouldn’t need to bother with. It was only Graham, his potential clients, and his hand-me-down typewriter to get him through this difficult time. Graham braced himself for tougher times, and let the fire die down. The vellum was long since destroyed, and he felt so very tired after watching it burn.

Obama is president elect! Thank goodness. Oh, and James Graham is in Talos.

Word Count: 13,430





It was with a heavy heart that he fell asleep on the couch, in front of the fire, right where Curie had once rested himself. He slept soundly, without dreams, without thought, without motion. The bright November sun shone down upon his face to wake him up in the early hours of the day – he arose abruptly and immediately began shivering; the house was freezing cold, and he’d slept motionless with no blanket. He tried to move his fingers; it was as though they were frozen. Mustering his strength in this half-awakened state, he stood up and stretched, looked around.

Something was missing. The lock. Where was the lock? Panicking, he ran around the room, ducking under his desk and moving the couch so he could check the wall behind it – it was nowhere to be seen. He checked his front door – it was locked, just as it had been the night before. No signs of a break-in. Had he sleepwalked? No, he hadn’t – no footprints on the ground, no imprints in the carpet. No signs that he had ever left the couch. So, where was the lock?

He took his mind to the kitchen and made breakfast. Was the lock in there? No, nothing was in the kitchen but milk and cereal. Until noon he abandoned thought and reason to search for the missing lock, hoping that somehow it would turn up and relieve Graham of the worry that someone may have broken into his house. But nothing else was missing – it was just the broken lock. How someone else would have assembled it was beyond him, so he couldn’t fathom what whoever had stolen it was do with it, or the pieces of it. It wasn’t made of any special metal or anything particularly precious – unless LCD screens had recently become a precious and rare item – so he couldn’t even think of a motive for someone to steal this lock, much less use it for practical purposes.

At noon, he gave up his fruitless search and instead transpired to begin the writing he’d promised Curie that he’d do while his neighbor was away. Graham truly believed that Curie would come back once power returned – and he believed that power would return, too. He hoisted up the typewriter from under his desk, where he’d left it the night before, and placed it on his desk, destroying whatever blank vellum he had left. When he sat down, he felt immediately uncomfortable – it felt as though the desk was for mechanical drafting, not for creative writing. There was in inherent clash of mind states at this desk when the typewriter was present. Thinking for a moment, Graham knew the perfect place to sit and write – Curie’s external writing room.

He decided that he’d have to sneak into the room when whoever was living in that house had gone to sleep, so he waited until nightfall by doing several meaningless tasks, which was more difficult than it sounded without electricity to make those meaningless tasks equally effortless. When it was the appropriate time, he found a large, strong bag and put his Maglite, the typewriter and ink ribbon into the bag, then lugged it as fast as he could across the street to the Curies’ former home.

If there had been any electricity, Graham would have been graced with the presence of beautiful blue automatic lighting – but there was no electricity, so Graham found himself, stumbling in pitch darkness over cement blocks, tree roots, and all manner of obstacles specifically tailored, it seemed, to rip his feet to shred. But at last his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he found his way to the shed-like abode behind the house.

He hoped the door to the incredibly plain-looking room, and saw through his adjusted vision that its interior was just as plain looking. It was smaller than a prison cell, with enough room to stand and walk forward a few feet before bumping into the elongated wooden desk that filled one-third of the room. There was a lamp, but it didn’t look like it would work, since there was an extension cord running out from its base. He put his bag in front of the desk and reached over to flip the switch that would have turned the light on.

Suddenly, the room was filled with wondrous yellow light. And a loud churning sound.

Graham looked underneath the lavish, intricately carved desk, and found that Curie had placed a power generator underneath it. It looked like he had pumped power into it with his foot while writing in order to keep the light going.

To Graham’s left was the door that led down to the bunker. He had no clue what was down there and had no intentions of finding out; he simply sat down, heaved the typewriter up onto the desk with heavy breath, slipped the new ink ribbon onto it, loaded up some paper and began to write whatever came to his mind. The click of the keys, the twisting loading up the paper, the way each key felt when pressed – it was an engineering marvel, the first typewriter. He was nearly humbled in the presence of such an elegant machine, and tapped each key with great care.

Words began to form, flowing from his hands surprisingly easy and naturally. He instantly understood why someone like Curie would find this experience so enjoyable as a profession. He let go of all his thoughts, and drifted into the dream he hadn’t had the pleasure of having the night before. Then, one key moved out of place. He looked at his work; he’d felt the key move when it shouldn’t have. This typo reflected on the page: This mental renaissance ended with an abrupt coup of the man’s mind by thoughts on other topics he originally intentionally avoided.h

h.

Graham backed away from the typewriter, pumping the generator with his foot and listening to its hum. Was this writer’s block? It couldn’t have been – it was something much, much stranger. Without warning or explanation the typewriter keys began rapidly moving on their own. From his previous sentence it returned two blank lines, then swiftly, in delicate keystrokes,

Hello,

I am your friend.

Graham fell backwards and out of his chair at the sight of this, bruising his head and elbow on the floor. In pain, he picked himself up and wiped some blood off his elbow. The blood left a stain on the light carpet flooring, but Graham’s attention was focused entirely on the typewriter. Was the typewriter his friend? Graham waited for more, but nothing came. Curious, he picked up the chair as well, sat down, and began typing.

“I’d like to be your friend, too,” he wrote. After about a minute, the typewriter responded.

Check your door.

Graham turned around and looked at the entrance of the room, but saw nothing but an ordinary door in an ordinary room – nothing spectacular. The keys clicked of their own accord once more, and Graham couldn’t believe what he saw.

Try the other door.

It wasn’t possible that the typewriter – or whoever was commanding the typewriter from afar, could see what he was doing. Startled, he ripped the paper out of the typewriter and threw it under the desk, then overturned the typewriter in hopes it might break, and finally, in a fit of insanity, began searching the room for hidden cameras.

“Don’t make a fool of me, Curie! Don’t you dare!” Graham shouted to nobody, in hopes that it was his old neighbor spying on him. “Your tricks aren’t going to turn me into an author.”

Graham leaned against the wall and felt his sweat rub against the textured paint, then drifted down to the carpet floor. For a moment he rested before picking himself up, thinking, hoping he’d heard something. After turning around, he faced the door that led to the bunker, only now it was no longer the same door he’d seen moments ago. It was entirely transformed. Outlined in brass and made completely of steel, it was carved with intricate designs that bore resemblance to the designs on the desk. In its center, asphyxiated to and engraved within the door itself, was an object shaped like a six-pronged star. Each of the object’s eighteen circular LCD screens became active and immediately simulated the shuffling of several different colors around in a whirlpool of light.

Curie’s lock.

For a moment all that Graham could do was stare are the swirling colors on the lock. It was inexplicable how the door received its power, or where from, since the generator was not hooked up to the door. Initially, Graham had planned to run a power line from the house to the room and hook it up to the lock from within the door, just as had been done in front of him, but naturally scrapped that plan when Curie decided to move away. There was no connection to any electricity in this room aside from the generator, so not only was it impossible that the lock be in the door in the first place, it was equally as impossible for it to run fully powered.

Bewildered, Graham approached the lock. Having engineered it, he knew precisely how to open it, but not quickly enough for the door. The lights continued to shuffle themselves and, just as Graham’s arm extended to touch one of the LCD screens, the pattern on the lock was solved and the door burst open in a cloud of steam, creaking violently as its heavy structure forced itself upon weak hinges. Upon reaching the wall adjacent, the door slammed into it and left a mighty indent. Not bothering to fear for the integrity of Curie’s lock, but rather scared half to death, Graham looked into the deep darkness beyond the door. Where there should have been steps leading down below ground to a vacant storage area there was a black void, and through that void Graham swore he heard voices talking, whispering – not about him, but about some project that several men had been working on.

Graham breathed heavily.

I just don’t know what we’re going to do with the isotopes, one voice said.

Graham choked.

Perhaps if we tampered with the structure of their nuclei even more, we could increase their instability and increase our chances for—

No! a third voice interjected. Are you mad? Listen, take time off, and don’t speak of this to anyone. Both of you, if you don’t figure out a solution in two weeks, I’ll have your heads and then some!

At this, Graham gagged, and screamed, his hands groping the floor for support, his mind praying that these hidden figures wouldn’t burst out front the darkness and engulf him. He saw the void growing, reaching out of the door and encompassing the room. Graham backed away, but hit the wall, and the blackness came for him. The voices had ceased; Graham was afraid they had heard his gasping, but there was no way for him to know this and, unbeknownst to Graham, no way for the voices to know of this either.

The lamp suddenly shut off; there was no distinguishing the darkness in the room from the darkness emerging out of the steel brass-lined door. As the room faded into complete darkness, so too did Graham’s consciousness fade, until there was nothing left for any of his senses to grope in the room. It was a feeling of complete mental and physical isolation; there was nothing Graham could do at this point to regain control over his body. He felt his mind slip into oblivion, and cursed his body for enabling the darkness so.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Blurry but stable, Graham’s vision returned. He was on a bed of leaves somewhere in the middle of a forest, but didn’t recall ever living nearby a forest. Rolling over, he noticed that it was not leaves he rested in, but a bed of ash. He witnessed an entire forest of ash come into view as his vision cleared, and yet even this sight was not enough to wake him – he fell face first into the ash, coughed, and lost consciousness for several hours. When he awoke from this sleep, the ash was gone, and he was face-first on a field of fresh grass. In the distance, a small cabin bellowed smoke. The smoke invited Graham in – even its smell was tantalizing, and the entire visage exuded hospitality.

Graham made an attempt to stand up, but his clothes were covered in ash and soot, and the dust made him cough. In this weakened state, the coughing became violent and he doubled over, dry heaving until the ash content of the air was low enough for him to regain control over his body. He stumbled over to the house several hundred feet away, yet it felt like miles of rocky hiking terrain to his worn legs. He looked under his clothes to see his aching skin covered in bruises in every conceivable location, and thought about the men in the void.

Where was he?

As he drew closer to the cabin, he noticed that it was not made of wood or stone as he’d expected, but entirely of metal; it looked like steel and brass, just like the door that had appeared with Curie’s lock engraved within it back in the writing room. Or was he still in the writing room – was this what Curie had hidden behind the door? Not a storage bunker, but a passageway to some strange green wonderland? The wonderland was not all green, for behind Graham he left tracks of ash, proving that he had not hallucinated the bed of ash that caused him to lose consciousness.

It fell from the sky, and often, he later heard. Ash every few hours from the heavens, coating the land thick, spreading disease and illness all around. The hour next a strong wind would blow all the ash away, supposedly to some other far off land. But it wasn’t their fault. It was never their fault.

Graham knocked on the brass door of the cabin afraid of what he would find behind it, but found a small piece of relief when a young woman, albeit dressed in the strangest clothes, stood behind the door.

“Good day, sir. Oh, my! You look terribly ill, and you’re filthy. Come in, please. Mother!” The woman motioned for Graham to enter. Inside the cabin light flooded in through the windows and ceiling, and he saw the oddly garbed woman rushing around with a wet towel. Everything seemed to be made of metal – the bed, the countertops, the walls, and the fireplace. While Graham expected a quaint little abode like this cabin to be ill equipped for consistent living, the quality and construction of the metal shell that forged the building was comparable to a bomb shelter, and the sheen and purity of the metals would have, in any other circumstance, dictated the extremely wealthy. These folks, however, looked more strange than wealthy.

The woman forced herself upon him with a hot, wet towel, and wiped his face all over.

“That burns!” Graham shouted.

“Oh! Well, excuse me for trying to clean you up, sir,” the lady protested. Her mother came into view, a tall women garbed equally, if not more strangely than her daughter, apologetic for her offspring's actions.

“Now, now, Vanessa, don’t hurt the man. He is our guests, and we must treat him as we would treat a gentleman.” She smiled at Graham, who looked away, and then at the woman’s daughter.

“Vanessa? What’s your last name?”

“Last name?”

“Yes, your surname.”

“Oh, um…” She was clearly too embarrassed to answer. It seemed like this mother and daughter received relatively few visitors.

“Ah, never mind. I was wondering if you might be related to a friend of mine.” Graham knew she couldn’t be related to Vanessa Curie, but anything was worth a shot to make him feel more comfortable in this inexplicable household. He let Vanessa clean him up, set him up with new clothes – strange clothes like theirs, though he refused to wear certain garments in order to create a look that most closely resembled what he’d already been wearing – and show him around the small cabin.

“Where am I?” Graham asked.

“Where are you? How could you not know?” said Vanessa, looking at Graham strangely.

Graham suddenly realized that if he had been taken somewhere by a malicious group, it would be improper to get this innocent family involved. “Ah, just a traveler passing through. I’ve been hiking for so many days I don’t know where I am anymore!”

“So, you’re one of those people? I thought you left a long time ago, once I had shooed you all with my broomstick!”

“You can’t shoo people with a broomstick, I don’t think,” Graham retorted. Vanessa smiled, and her eyes squinted just the slightest bit.

“It’s a very powerful broomstick,” she said with pride, holding up two hands to show an invisible broomstick. “But still, if you were with a hiking group, how can you not know where you are? Surely you must have known the terrain to be hiking it.”

Graham sighed. “Alright. You’ve made me come clean. I was a hiker, but I wasn’t a very good one, so I, and I apologize if I sound silly, slipped and fell off a cliff. All the other hikers were laughing at me, I hear, and they dragged me up and left me in front of your house for kicks, so I have no idea where I am right now.” Vanessa appeared flabbergasted, as if his words had flown by her ears and ignored them.

“What are you talking about? Ah, no matter, you’re in the Oceanic Confederacy. We’re an outpost of sorts near the edge of Alteria, by the shore, that many countries share and protect. There aren’t many people here besides mother and me, and you don’t look like one of those hikers. You dress oddly. You’re not from around here, are you?”

“It doesn’t seem like it. That’s what worries me. You don’t have a map, do you?”

“Not with me, no, though I think there is a cartographer a few kilometers away, if you’d like to speak with him.”

A cartographer? Graham was sure she must have been joking – were there really cartographers in a day and age ruled by satellite imagery? Then again, he’d been seeing stranger recently, such as raining ash, so it was not beyond him to believe that there really could be a cartographer nearby. When Graham asked her about he’s go find the cartographer, she responded that she really had no knowledge of where he might be, but that her mother might.

The mother walked over on request. “If you’re looking for a cartographer, there’s no doubt in my mind that Marcus is the best man for the job. He lived a few kilometers north from here, just outside of the Confederacy. If you can stand to walk, it shouldn’t take more than several hours to reach him, and you’ll be glad you did. I have not kept a decent, accurate map around this house in ages…” she said, and went off on a tangent mumbling about other things, eventually talking to inanimate objects such as pots and pans around the house.

Then, something caught Graham’s eye – apparently windows were not the only source of light in this cabin. Across from him, on a nightstand against the steel wall, was a glowing orb of light. At first he’d thought it was a light bulb, but it did not share the same structure as a light bulb. He reached out to touch it without knowing the temperature of his surface and let out a quick yelp. By the time he retracted his hand the blisters had already formed.

“I see you like our Light Sphere,” said Vanessa. “But please don’t touch it; it’s the only one we have, unfortunately. Wealthier families have lots of them and can even use their homes at night, but we are poor and only have one. The Confederacy does not fund us well here, but we get paid to live here, and that’s always been enough for us.” She stood up and traversed the room, touching the walls with her delicate fingers and leaving audacious marks on their glossy surfaces.

“Vanessa, please! I just shined the walls.”

“Sorry, mother.” Vanessa smiled again.

Not even a day has Graham been in Talos, but he’s already discovered the planet’s name and structure - Graham finds Marcus and procures a map, and faints when he sees that none of the maps show Earth, but all show Talos. As of right now, his “mission” is to find out why he was sent to Talos, or how he came about to be in Talos, because he believes that will show him how to return to Earth. However, a we know, he will run into the authorities along the way… even if what he might at first thing is a utopian society, he’ll soon begin to experience the seeds of civil unrest and martial law that hold him in Talos. So, not only will it become his mission to leave, but he’ll be forced to flee and attempt to escape, and… well, I won’t ruin more for you. That’s pretty much a summary of the next several days, perhaps the next week entirely!


Word Count: 16,748











Graham felt the blister on his finger. Within minutes it puffed up like a painful balloon, and it begged to be popped – but Graham wasn’t about to irritate a second-degree burn. He wanted to shut off the bulb and see its insides – as it was, there was some strange gas floating around inside it blocking everything but its brightest components, two coils of wire that crossed over each other at a ninety degree angle. He couldn’t tell if the glass encapsulating the gas was thick or thin, he couldn’t see the port to which it connected to its base; the device was astoundingly bright, and without the translucent gas within the bulb it would easily be blindingly bright.


Graham stood up. “Well then, I suppose I have no choice but to find Marcus. Though without a map it might be hard to find this mapmaker. If you could give me a lift, I’d appreciate it. Got a car around here?”


Vanessa stopped and looked at the floor. “No automobile runs off of the paved roads, so we can’t have one out here. We have a horse and buggy, but not many people like to ride those anymore, and with the ash storms that come every few hours transportation is difficult without losing your lungs. I was surprised that your and your hiker friends made it here.”


Graham couldn’t believe that she bought the hiker charade, or that there had really been a group of hikers that had wandered by conveniently, but he couldn’t let them know the truth – that he’d never heard of any of these countries, and was frightened by the strange clothing, accents, and culture that he had thus far witnessed. He looked at the fireplace across the cabin – a fire burned brightly in an enclave surrounded by brass and brass piping, and it simply gleamed, but he wished that it didn’t, because then he might have a lead on his location. As it stood, he still had no idea where he was – Alteria? The Oceanic Confederacy? It all meant nothing. These were not real countries. Someone’s pulling my leg, Graham thought.


The tables were steel with brass lining, the floor was magnificent shining tile, the countertops matched the tables, but their clothing and mannerisms didn’t match any of it. Graham feared that his experience in Curie’s writing room had driven him insane; perhaps, even now, he was actually in a coma, in some hospital in the real world. Even if this was true, Graham had nobody to sit nearby him, to talk to him, to try and get him to wake up. He was stuck in this strange place, for better or worse.


Finally, Vanessa’s mother handed him a decorative compass, carved with intricate floral patterns and made of recently polished brass. “Take this, and travel northwest. You’ll reach a village called Gorom; there someone will assist you in finding Marcus. Gorom is a large village. So long as you keep walking, you’ll have no trouble finding it.” She placed some food in his lab, mostly bread and cheese, and told him to get going.


He thanked the woman for her hospitality and exited the household. An ash storm was happening; Graham choked on the particles of soot that flew by – from the looks of it, the ash was coming from the east. He suspected that there was a large factory out there spewing the soot, but east wasn’t his destination. He held the compass close to his face and began walking uphill, northwest. After a few hundred meters the ash began to die down, and he could see that its fall cut off abruptly at a line, creating a natural border between the ashen ground and the clean ground. The entire area behind him became an ash forest; the trees that he had originally landed between were soaked in ash, leaves became ash, and the once sparkling cabin became a mess of soot and black smears.


He wiped his compass on the ground to clean the glass cover of soot, and watched the grass turn black. A tear rolled down his cheek, but he couldn’t determine why, but something about his situation made him inextricably sad, even though he was separated from no one and not on good terms with his family. Perhaps it was the compass that refused to work properly, or perhaps it was the glimpse of a black ocean beyond the ashen forest that he saw in the reflection of the compass’s brass backing. He wiped the tear away and journeyed on; several kilometers was a while away, and he hadn’t been told explicitly how many “several” was. For all he knew he could travel fifty kilometers, only to find nothing and be forced to double back in the other direction.


Luckily, that didn’t happen. He followed the compass northwest faithfully, noticing several landmarks that indicated the direction of Gorom. The sky cleared up behind him, and from the top of the mountain he was surprised to have climbed on his own, he could see the tiny cabin bellowing steam and smoke from the fire, and noticed that the mounds of ash had since blown away into the sea several hundred meters away, where they clumped together and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Yet, amidst this pleasant vista was a dark omen, another cloud of ash floating overseas on the horizon. Whatever the ash was, it was coming from across the ocean, and that it came at regular intervals meant something manmade must have been producing it. From his position there was nothing he could do, so he trudged down the other side of the mountain.


It took several more hours for him to reach Gorom, during which he rested in the thick grass and enjoyed the warmth of the incredibly close sun. The sun was considerably larger than he remembered it being the other day. In fact, the entire season was changed – no longer was it on the brink of winter, but it appeared to be full-blown summer. Trees had full, green foliage, flowers were in bloom everywhere he walked, untamed grass made its mark all across the land in thick droves. He was only able to find the village by its miraculous sparkle; whomever the architect was that designed the buildings in this area clearly had a special attachment to shiny objects. Pondering this, Graham couldn’t recall a soul in human history who didn’t.


On approaching the village he noticed that a large wall blocked it off, and there was no way for him to enter except through a very large security gate. In front of the gate were two guards clad in grey armor of which the likes Graham had never seen in his life. They carried awkward and ancient looking guns, and stood in perpetual stillness until he approached them requesting to enter the city.


“Identification?” one guard asked.


“I have none. I’ve come to find Marcus – he’s a cartographer, do you know him by any chance?” Graham asked.


“Never heard of him. If you don’t have identification, we can’t let you into the city. Show us some sort of district pass, personal registration card, or midnight pass. Anything in your wallet will do nicely, but we must verify that you’re a member of the Confederacy. This is neutral territory.”


“Yes, you see, about that,” Graham began, “I’m quite lost. I was travelling with a large group of hikers, fell off a cliff and lost consciousness. I don’t know where I am, and a nice woman and her daughter Vanessa told me to travel here – this is Gorom, right?”


“Border patrol sent you here?” The other guard said. “Alright, this is what I will do for you, only because you seem to be telling the truth. I’ll broadgraph border patrol. It’ll take a while, but wait here. Hey, watch him while I’m gone – make sure he doesn’t run off anywhere.”


“Yes, sir,” said the other guard, clearly a subordinate of the one running off to make the call. But Graham hadn’t the slightest idea what a broadgraph was, and ended up waiting over half an hour twiddling his thumbs and pondering what sort of border patrol that woman and her daughter could have been doing back there. Vanessa had mentioned that they were paid to live there – were they really a normal family? For the first time, Graham wondered if there was a father in this picture, if the family was split apart by this border patrol business.


Then the guard in charge returned. He looked at Graham and kept his face still. “You were not lying. I’m impressed.” He motioned to the other guard. “Open the gate for him.”


“Yes, sir.” The guard rushed to what appeared to be a nearby control panel, and pulled a large level on the panel. A few seconds after this act gears around the gate began to turn, prying the open with great force. Graham caught his first glimpse of the walled village through this open gate, and with enthusiasm and hope he stepped onto the cobblestone roads of Gorom. Plenty of people were out and traversing Gorom’s many roads, and Graham made witness to several decrepit automobiles that looked at least a century old. The sidewalks were made of concrete, but lined with the same brass that seemed to cover everything else. There was a building on every corner lined with pipes that spewed steam and waste; gears turned and churned out products that Gorom’s inhabitants readily consumed without inhibition. The village’s people lived contently this way.


The first building that caught Graham’s eye was what appeared to be a simple candy shop, but on the inside was anything but. Large and complex contraptions had been built from gears, switches and pipes; they were homebrew candy producing machines, built as a spectacle and as an assembly line. Graham marveled at this magical joint effort between marketing and engineering, then realized that he had no money and could not reward the store’s owner with hard earned bills. From this he migrated to several other buildings, all which he inspected with utmost curiosity, consistently asking people if they knew a certain Marcus the cartographer – but nobody had ever heard of such a man. Graham began to think that asking people on the street was not such a wise idea, and so he asked at a building more location-oriented; through various efforts, he managed to make his way to one of several local post offices. Atop this post office was written, in large, gleaming text: “GOROM POSTAL SERVICE, 2ND DISTRICT”, with the subtext “Delivering within Gorom and to the Alteria outlands.”


A postman was sitting at the service desk, waiting to receive packages inside, twisting his gargantuan mustache around a finger to match. “Excuse me,” graham said, hoping not to interrupt the man’s important mustache activities, “would you happen to have a map of the area, or know where I could find the cartographer Marcus?”


“Marcus, eh? “ the postman said, removing his finger from the facial hair. “Yes, I know that man. One of our staff members regularly delivers parchment to his doorstep.”


“Could you tell me where he lives?”


“Heavens no! Customer-postman confidentiality,” the man said staunchly. When he lifted his chin to speak, his mustache seemed to rise up over his nose. Graham had to prevent himself from laughing.


“…of course,” Graham said with a muffled voice, recalling his confidentiality agreement with Curie over the lock. “Well then, how can I find him?” Graham thought of another simple lie to explain his existence. “I’m a tourist, you see. This is my first visit to, well, wherever this is, and I’d like to have a map handy. To speed the travel, you know.”


“Ah, yes, well… Marco’s business has been especially active since Gorom got its hands on a thousand name-brand automobiles from the mainland to sell. If you’re looking for an old-fashioned hand-drawn map you might be out of luck, I’m afraid.”


“Oh, no, anything will do – in fact, I’d prefer a printed map. I didn’t know anybody hand-drew maps anymore.”


“They’re becoming far and wide in between, I’m afraid. A tragedy, says I!” Clearly this postman doubled as an actor, for he spoke with great tenor and enthusiasm about such a droll topic.


Graham leaned closer to him, “Listen, if you keep it under wraps and give me, say, a business card, I won’t tell a soul about it. Just let me know where he lives so I can get my information and get out of here. Please, I beg you.” At this point Graham’s voice was almost a whisper, afraid that security cameras or other high technology might be capturing the moment that would inevitably cost the man his job. The postman eventually gave in and procured the address and a long ring of business cards and, while this was happening, Graham looked around for security measures. Although he couldn’t find any cameras, he did find that the entire room seemed to have no security systems at all – it was just a single room with wood flooring, a steel and brass table like he’d seen everywhere else with some exquisite, expensive pens for marking envelopes, and the postman, alone, at his station. The lack of technology in this country was beginning to startle Graham. Perhaps, he thought, he’d been transported against his will to a third world country, or a country whose citizens were in a fit of mass delusion, because this was no way to create a modern-day establishment. The candy store, as well, for all its novelty, was behind the times – something like Curie’s lock was not incredibly technology, yet it dwarfed everything he’d seen since he’d woken up. He left the post office feeling confused and a little disoriented, but not discouraged that he could find out where he truly was. And once he knew where he was, he would know how far he was from his home – and how to leave this place and get back where he belonged.


The address was across town, the postman told him. There was a trolley that ran across town every half hour, but Graham was not wearing a watch, and as he’d already established hadn’t the money to purchase a new watch from a nearby store, of which he’d seen many. The postman pointed out what the trolley stations looked like, even though they were rather hard to miss, and Graham simply waited until the golden vehicle reared itself around the corner and screeched to a halt in front of the stop. He showed the business card to the driver, an elderly man who remarked, “Ah, another one for Marcus? That man will be filthy rich before I die. Sit yourself down, I’ll take you there.”


The trolley was a slow-moving vehicle that reminded Graham of the open tour busses used to show tourists around famous cities and the hotspot locations within them. However the trolley in Gorom was, to say the least, the most complete vehicle Graham had seen thus far in his visit – every other car looked like a prototype Packard, and he’d sworn he’d seen a Model T in the mix. Why these men and women agreed to drive this ancient technology, he couldn’t imagine – Graham couldn’t even think of third world nations forced to ride around in literal artifacts of history.


Ten minutes later, the trolley screeched again and stopped, and the elderly driver yelled out the address corresponding to Marcus’s business. With much enthusiasm Graham existed the trolley and rushed into the store, where he saw countless maps filling shelf upon shelf upon shelf. The room was the first he’d seen whose interior was entirely wood, which gave it the effect of looking even older than it was – how old that was, Graham could not decipher. The maps themselves were brand new. He saw several people inside the store unfolding maps without asking, and began unraveling the cartographer’s work for himself, remembering that he was penniless and destitute.


What he saw was a world clearly not Earth.


Rather, it was an old-fashioned hand-drawn map, with clear inaccuracies, of a land that intricate, embroidered, bold and centered text at the top labeled “TALOS.”


Fictional, Graham said to himself. This guy is good at his work, but I need a real map. But every map that Graham unfolded showed the same world of Talos, or cross sections of Talos, or individual countries within Talos. One of the maps displayed Talos trade routes, both by sea and by land. And, just like that, Graham’s head began to spin. His hands shook, his eyes wandered. With sweat running down his brow, he took hold of the nearest world map of Talos he could find and looked to see if he could locate Alteria.


It was there.


He moved his finger over Alteria and traced it along until he came across a sub-drawing of a city called Gorom, in the southeast corner of the Alterian continent, marked off in its own territory called “Oceanic Confederacy.” Feeling woozy, he looked to see if there was a land to the east of Alteria, across the sea, and there was – a country called Lanford. No longer could he keep his eyes on the map; he was so disillusioned by the thought that he might no longer be on Earth that he passed out.


A splash of water awoke him minutes later. It looked like a store clerk had heard him collapse with the map. Looking the store clerk in the face, and holding his forehead tightly with his left hand, he asked, “Where am I?”


“You are in my shop,” the clerk said with a thick accent whose origin Graham couldn’t recognize.


“Are you Marcus?” Graham asked, out of breath.


“Yes, I am. Now, let me help you get up. Hold my hand.” He gripped Marcus’s hand and wobbled his way to stability thereafter. Only after he was stable did he panic and start looking for the map, which had disappeared. “Don’t worry,” Marcus said, “I took it from you and put it back on the shelf before I poured the water on you. You are not from around here, are you sir?”


“You could say that,” Graham said. “Are those maps real?” Graham pointed to the shelf full of Talos world maps.


“Most certainly not! I take my work very seriously, sir. My maps are the most accurate you will find in all of the Confederacy.” Marcus proudly grabbed one of his maps and began to open it up, eager to show Graham the intense level of detail present in them.


But Graham had heard enough – he began shouting at Marcus, “Is this some kind of joke?” However, Marcus’s response, consisting of silence and a bewildered facial expression, convinced Graham otherwise, and he calmed down. After a brief moment of silence, Graham spoke once more.


“What planet am I on?”


“Excuse me?” said Marcus, placing his precious map back on the nearby shelf.


“What planet am I on?” Graham repeated, with urgency.


“Um… you are on Talos, sir. Talos is the only planet you can be on. Are you alright?”


Graham felt suddenly ill. Something had happened back in Curie’s writing room, something strange and inexplicable, and that the explanation, which would explain the lock, the typewriter, the darkness – even the voices he’d heard and the numbness he’d felt just moments after – was hidden somewhere in this other world of Talos. “I’m, I’m fine,” Graham said, and at this moment he forged a vow within the confines of his mind to find his way home, no matter what the cost. For there was a reason why he had come to Talos, and although he did not yet know it, he knew that once he unearthed this reason, so to would he the path back to Earth.