The train pulled into its final terminal at the bottom rear of the ship. The abrasive crust of corroded metal on the tracks could be felt during the descent as turbulence rattled the pill shaped train cars, like a single file line of overinflated slugs. The red light was rendered insignificant without visible structure to paint it’s light on in sight. The Car sized cylinder light fixtures attached to the ceiling, some decent distance away from the train rail, poured their light into the large breach of darkness, the reach it’s faint glimmering spears of red, we cut short, apprehended by the assimilation of shadow, making them look like more of a dome of red spikes rather than an actual light source. This station was dark empty, it’s rusted-brown, gaping-mouthed-metal, open air station seemed to be floating in the blackness of space, even the train seemed like a foreign entity there. Geoffrey gazed about outside the train cabin, with an apprehensive uncertainty. “Is this the real fucking place?“ Thinking he should be more relieved to reach his destination. The train dinged announcing it had arrived at its destination. A red text scrolled past on a black thin strip of monitor above the door “Septic and Sanitation Headquarters”. This was it He guessed, even after double checking with his data terminal armband that ran form his wrist halfway to his elbow. He stepped out of the dingy yellow light, that felt almost cozy, as he left. Noticing the relief he felt of fresh air on his face, and back into his lungs again, the peculiar taste and smell of petroleum seemed insignificant now, compared to the feeling of being suffocated by a damp sock over his head.
The metal grate floor rattled a little more than he liked as he steeped out on to it, even his sharp eyes could barely distinguish the holes from the metal itself. It was dark burgundy with a faint red gleam that could only be seen at a certain angle, that seemed move with him as he did, which he monitored closely to make sure he was still walking on a platform, instead of plunging into the abyss below. Deep below him he could the surface of an ocean that could go on forever and perhaps take up the whole width of the ship, with the same red glint, that seemed to flicker as the waves splashed below him. “God only knows what that sauce is made of!” And he did not want to die finding out. He waked along the metal caged hallway from the platform that, without it’s roof, would look more like it helicopter’s landing pad. He could feel some sway with the platform that was more than just his footsteps, like it was anchored to a skyscraper designed to sway under a current of wind, but in this case the the current was the slosh of the murk below. He trekked along the skeleton of a bridge toward a burning white flare to eyes adapted to darkness. “This better be where I’m supposed to go.” He thought and not some postulating antics throwing him into the control group of some hair brained experiment.
He made his way to a massive building that seemed like some infinitely tall hotel, surrounded by a brief reprieve from the surrounding darkness that was a flat plane of asphalt. A parking lot that would never see cars , perhaps to give a comforting illusion of living on the earth still, that was probably just a loitering lot. Near the entrance of the building was a small plaza of rounded bricks orbited by patches of fake grass with plotted trees, that looked spliced with a Fly Agaric mushroom, with it’s red bark and swirling white blotches that looked like several layered streaks of paint. They wrapped themselves around light posts, feeding on the secondhand light, generated somewhere from within it’s spongy looking leaves tangled with jousting spear-like thorns forming their mushroom cloud shaped foliage. He approached the brick walkway clearing in front of the wide glass windowed entrance of the building. He could now read the giant steel letters, no longer hidden by the blinding glare, just above the entrance that looked like would be more for an old cinema building, that read “Outrigger Junction Estates”. “’Estates’ seems like pretty generous word. More like slave cubicles.” he thought upon investigating the exterior of the building above, noticing the windows between units, some of which had been rotted out of existence like a tooth with a nefariously intervened neglect of hygiene, looked nearly conjoined from a distance. The automatic sliding glass doors invited him in as he approached. The brightness of the light seemed to dull to a less abrasive light of a fairly mundane hotel lobby with a light gray aesthetic, a counter for vats heated coffee, and recreation lounge area, that he fantasized about into diving face first into the cushions of.
“Hey, there what brings you here?” A security guard behind the front desk asked who’s face was barley poking over from his chair.
“Special mission I guess, from the command deck. This is Septic and Sanitation?”
“Yeah, that’s this level! Where you headed? Give me your I.D. I authenticate a lift pass.”
He flipped out a badge from somewhere underneath his jacket draped around his waist, with some reluctance to relinquish it, he handed it to him between his pointer and index finger, a lingering bodily habit of having smoked for 3 years. “My mission report said to head here, then to transit down to Chassis Town.”
“Damn! You look so young in this photo, You’re an officer?!” Remarked the guard upon inspecting his ID photo, that was take when Geoffrey was 18, even though he looked like a frail as a rail 15 years old, In his own opinion.
“Yeah, complete annihilation of one’s state has that effect on a fellow.” Said Geoffrey, subtly letting him know there was more to his story than the fresh-faced prodigy kid on his ID, that was perhaps less savory that the average person would even want to hear about. But no one aboard the Mordant Despair could be wholeheartedly average.
“Oh … Yeah, I’m sorry, I’ve come across a lot of people that come from a similar place. Which was it if you don’t mind me asking? New Mexico, or Texas?”
Both of them already knew he was going to say “Texas”, based on Geoffrey’s attitude, but secretly he the guard had hoped for New Mexico.
“Yeah, it Was Texas.” He said, telling him the opposite of what he wanted to hear.
“Shit man, Sorry to hear that! Texas go hit hard, didn't get the time to evacuate that New Mexico did.”
“Nope, defiantly did not. Guess that whole ‘Impenetrable Front Line’ The Federal Consortium was bragging about to its citizens, was either a flimsy bluff, or gross negligent leadership. Not really sure I am anymore though.” But that’s not what his eyes said as a seething rage had brazed across his eyes. The guard caught it flash through him almost wishing he hadn’t.
“Yeah, for sure! Definitely why we're all here is some way, ‘refugees’ aboard this new home, a new world. But here this will get you where you need to go.” He said handing him his ID back along with an elevator key card, trying to drown the flames of trauma, the had unknowingly stoked with his probing.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” he said having become suddenly a little colder and more withdrawn.
“You’re going to take the industrial service elevator to the bottom back of the ship. Semper Fi brother!” He said pointing down a hallway with a large, complicated vault hatch for a door. Before giving him a nonchalant wave with along with the ancient slogan that was somehow more durable than American systems it was built upon. Though it had lost its true meaning, it was now a catch all for “good luck” among societal outliers and those with maverick intent.
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He made his way to the thick vaulted door into with an exorbitantly long opining ceremony, resembling an industrial airlock, that clashed with the sterile mundane access hallway attached to it. into a round-cornered square chamber, doused with that familiar red light, that was some intermediary point before the actual elevator platform, looking like a chimera between a sweaty locker room, or some kind of prison aboard a steam engine. Once inside this preparation bay, he encountered another airlock door, this one with an electronically opened by a spin wheel hatch like the helm of an old boat, for the unfortunate occasion of a manual opening procedure, below a densely plated window built in the middle of the door. Through the pane, he could see the vast empty hold of hangar elevator platform. with several smaller metal elevator capsules about the same size as his current room, pressed up against an angled wall each tethered to its own metal toothed rail system, surrounding the two mountain sized rails for the hangar itself. “The main cargo elevator” he told himself still astonished at its magnitude, having not seen it since he started his journey aboard the vessel, that seemed amplified by its current peculiar emptiness. He journeyed across the great prairie of metal. The massive wall of glass wall, that could have been some perfectly sculpted glacier ridge, made up the main hangar door. It poured its dingy pale green light from the rising gasses outside, with some of the red light from above trying to pass through turned into burned scarlet, amber orange color. It looked like a chemical reaction of some science channel being broadcast at a drive-in movie theatre, looking illuminated compared to darkness in the rest of the hangar, making his silhouette look like an ant crossing a plane of darkness.
He made his way to a to a multi glass paneled dome roofed tower building, that looked something like a disco ball mushroom, functionally similar to an aircraft control tower, that was the hangar bay observation deck. He made his way up the rickety metal plated staircase jury-rigged to the outside, up to an entrance door. He knew his personal ID card would grant him access to one of the smaller modular elevators, only needing the other key to enter, but he had never really been this far on the other side of ship, and he might never be back for along time. “Might as well see what trouble I can get into, if I’m given the opportunity.” But he did briefly consider “Is this all an elaborate test, to see what I would do left to my own devices? With no one sent to escort me on this supposedly important wild goose hunt?” Though not an entirely preposterous conspiracy theory, It seemed more unlikely, and out of character for Greis Keis to play games, he was a man of direct action , and direct results. But he assumed his paranoia get the best of him. “2nd captain Greis usually, has very detailed outlines of his mission parameters.” He thought still inflamed with curiosity at the unusual open-ended mission, but he would let it rest for now. He twisted the handle on the door that seemed suspiciously unlocked and entered into the observation terminal that seemed criminally unattended.
He scanned across the aisles of computer terminals slightly lower than the stoop at the doorway entrance, looking like some hole in the wall casino. To the back rear up another set of stairs was a balcony terminal that looked like a DJ booth. “The elevator command access terminal.” He recalled having heard it motioned several times during big scale on-boarding salvage procedures. He bounced his knees up to his waist jogging up the stairs, Imitating military training exercises he had never been subjected to but always admired, that he liked to squeeze in to his daily commutes. He locked his wrist terminal into the wide mouthed hole attached to the computer, locking his hand inside as the computer started booting up. “ID Access required” appeared on the screen. He sliced his bar-coded ID badge through a thin seam that ran between his wrist terminal, to the “Sleeve Dock” he was now attached to. “Authorization Successful.” appeared on the screen as his hand and wrist was unlocked and ejected by the terminal. He then navigated an on-screen menu linked to his arm device. “Descent Schedules, Intake Schedules, Mass Decontamination Procedure.” He pressed Descent Schedules, that opened a window showing a weekly time grid based on hours, with only one event scheduled, two days from now for a 4-hour docking decent. “Let’s update the schedule!” He said overtaken by mischievous curiosity. He scheduled a new descent for 5 minutes from now. Would It be that easy? Or was some crucial step missing? He wondered as he waited wanting to see the full capacity of the ship’s main cargo elevator. He walked out into the main hangar bay watching the green numbers on his digital stopwatch frantically change numbers as the seconds ticked by like some gas pump price monitor, as if siphoning gas from the tank instead of filling it. Once the numbers dropped below 1 minute on his timer, the entire facility bay lit up. Orange spinning alarm lights swept across the floor as it was being scanned for anomalies. The alarm screamed howling with its different pitch intervals as the lights painted a black and orange bar code on the floor and walls that seemed to orbit around the room. A brief smirk could be seen, if caught by a keen investigative eye, as light ran across him at regular intervals. He hadn’t really felt real excitement like this in awhile. Too Long. In his opinion he had been more goal focused than soul focused.
The entire facility shook beneath him, a less agile person might have lost their balance, he had not yet whiteness this aspect of the full power of the mordant despair. The room began to descend sending a quake through it as it passed each colossal gear tooth on the rail system. A minute or so later the building made contact with the septic fluid below. It gurgled against the glass as air bubbles released through the dense substance, like being dunked in boiling maple syrup, or some volcanic lava that could not solidify. It did however contain crusty brown chunks that floated on the surface like ice bergs, but instead petrified meteors made of shit. Once he hit a certain depth the alarm system ceased making its racket. The deep the room submerged the darker the room became within minutes Geoffrey could not see his hand in front of his face. The darkness settled, the calm clanking of the metal could be heard drugging on, the only reassurance that he was still on course to his destination without looking at a monitor.
Eventually the gears stopped, along with the quakes in the hangar. He could hear a new set of noised among the absolute darkness. Some large thud above him, signaling he was out of the septic sanitation hull. A large droning roared like an automated car wash dryer as excess fluid was vacuumed away from any seam it could try to hide in. A large flat sounding beep signaled the process had finished. He could hear the sliding of the massive metal walls below him, as faint rays of light traced the glass just enough for it’s existence to be once again verified.
The hangar began to chug on downward like a steam engine scaling a steel mountainside. Geoffrey stared at the glass wall before him with impatient anticipation, as the room crept lower, and more and more light made its way in. Now standing right in front of the glass he could see the whole city from a bird’s eye view. Was it the same as he remembered? The last time he saw it was a chaotic frenzy for refugees of the blood sand desert of good old New Mexico, burned orange by the finally setting sun of, of the skin eating flame storms in Dirge of Desolation. The Orange gold painted city of frenzy seemed like a fever dream compared to what he saw before him now. it probably was a fever from the heat at the time. The last time he was here he remembered it for the miracle sanctuary that it was, but also the tragedy. Seeing the ship security sifting through the piles of corpses to distinguish the dead a from the dehydrated, and those who wished they were dead, who were promptly given what they asked for. “I’m glad I wasn’t in the piles being gnawed at by the rats, glad I was still coherent enough to get aboard, and fight through the horde of people who didn’t even know they were already dead. Glad I got to whiteness it with my own two eyes.” Something that branded his soul that he made sure not to forget. Any reservations he had about the rot and corruption he saw under the hood of Odesscyrah, at least it wasn’t That. Inhuman cruelty, literally inhuman. Just like some goddamn undead, Monsters. Remembering Afghanastasia psychedelic virus, they even used on their own people, a method of forced capitulation. They only give the cure to those who willingly commit to serve. The Unified Body of Worship Allies gave it’s infected a communion serum to maintain their human state. To keep them from mutating into ravenous beasts with cyst like deformities, even going without the communion for a while would leave them permanently altered. But lucky some few, like Geoffrey, were naturally immune. Which to Afghanastasia, were branded Archons of Blasphemy, Damn right I am, if their ‘god’ allows that, then he will have hell to pay, if he thinks he can hide from me!
