V #4
Seconds later the two of them stood in the richly decorated office of the chief engineer.
A massive desk, several armchairs, a coffee machine on a side table and beside it never-used cups.
Artificial flowers and several landscape paintings, along with two massive shelves full of books, stood beside a massive old-fashioned safe.
Tomi approached the shelves and began listing them.
"Martin's 'Mechanics and Statics,' Fijan's 'Stress Surges in Tension,' Mladi?, Kosovski…"
Tomi paused as he held a thick book in his hands almost reverently.
"Habler's Electronics and Practical Application." He looked at his friend. "Do you know how much these first editions are worth?"
Nick shrugged in a gesture that meant nothing.
"Millions, friend, they're worth millions. These titles were printed on poor-quality paper and over time have worn almost to illegibility. Only the university library has a single copy of Habler, and it's in wretched condition. And here is…"
Tomi carefully set the book down on the shelf and fell silent with a sad expression.
Nick hadn't expected the pause, so he asked:
"What's here?"
Tomi looked at him sadly and finally replied:
"Here is the ONLY copy of Habler, since the university library most likely no longer exists."
The words brought a momentary sadness into the room, and the two of them sank into thought. Nick roused himself from thinking about the outside world and noticed that the hum of the machinery, which he'd already gotten used to, was absent from the room. He headed toward the safe.
"Well, what now? Let's go find that damned blueprint."
Approaching the safe, for a moment he feared it was locked, but the lock only clicked quietly, releasing as he pulled the handle on the door.
Inside was a small notebook full of papers, a set of key cards, and a cylinder labeled "Plan and Blueprint of Complex 21."
Nick triumphantly took it out of the safe and, approaching the desk, opened the cylinder and pulled out the rolled paper of the blueprint.
Tomi turned on the desk lamp for better light, and they leaned over the paper.
Nick separated the blueprints of the previous floors, which were familiar to him, and stopped over one.
"We're here, this looks like the engineer's office…" he pointed a finger at a spot on the blueprint. "Here's the corridor we came by, but what's this corridor and marking now?"
Nick lifted his gaze, which came to rest on the closed doors.
"That's the marking for the elevator and the elevator shaft that goes up," Tomi leafed through the blueprints. "Look, a mezzanine was built between the sixth and seventh floors, and the elevator shaft ends on the fourth floor."
"What elevator on the fourth floor? I've been there a million times and never saw an elevator," Nick objected.
"Judging by the blueprint, the elevator is in the room with the bar, behind a false wall."
Nick fell to thinking. In his mind he walked through the marked room and couldn't recall seeing any opening or even a hint of an elevator or door anywhere. It must have been well disguised. He smiled. The communists and their secrets.
"Well, at least we've solved the mystery of how the equipment was transported to the fifth floor without using the staircase," Nick announced triumphantly.
"That's right. Look, the elevator has an exit on the fifth floor, just as on the mezzanine."
Nick stepped back from the desk and asked:
"Ready to explore?"
Tomi rolled up the blueprint, put it in the cylinder, and approached the safe. He returned the cylinder to its place and took out the key cards, which he tossed to his friend.
"I think these will come in handy."
Nick put the cards in the pack and nodded, opening the until-then closed doors.
The small corridor ended at the metal doors of an elevator and a small keypad on the side.
He pressed the call button and the elevator doors opened.
The keypad had only four unmarked buttons and, after a short pause, Nick pressed the one that, by logic, marked the mezzanine.
The doors closed with a clang of metal, and the elevator began to rise. Nick remarked:
"You know, I've noticed your problems have been gone for a while now."
"You mean the autism?" Tomi looked at him.
"Yeah, somehow you're — normal."
Tomi sighed.
"In crisis situations my autism actually intensifies. It shuts off emotions and only cold logic prevails."
"But I've seen you debating with Nika and behaving normally."
"That's exactly the thing — why am I like this with Nika? Why is there no sweating or nervousness or tics? You know how I reacted to Ana and every girl I met."
"I know, you had big problems with Ana," Nick agreed.
"Well, it's the same with Nika, but right now we're in a crisis situation and I'm cut off from my emotions. Right now I have no emotions at all. I call it splitting."
"Well, that's good," Nick was pleased.
Tomi answered:
"It's not — after every splitting I feel worse for days. And I have episodes of mania."
"Oh, I didn't know."
"It's not something I bring up, I'll need help in the future." Tomi fell silent.
Nick took him by the shoulder and spoke:
"And you'll have it. Everything you need."
The doors opened and Nick stepped out, missing the grateful look Tomi gave him.
The corridor ended at metal doors and the inevitable slot for key cards.
Nick took the second card Tomi had handed him in the office below and tried it in the slot.
He was rewarded with the familiar click of the door's lock unlocking.
The room they entered was somewhat different from everything they'd managed to explore so far.
An enormous house of electronics that clicked and hummed occupied the central part of the room, while old-fashioned computers filled every free part of the room's concrete walls.
Tomi wasted no time, but approached one of the computers and tapped a few commands.
Nick was still digesting the tremendous quantity of computers and admiring the execution, but it wasn't his turf.
He'd rather leave it to his friend to deal with things Nick didn't know much about.
So he busied himself exploring the room, but soon returned to the entrance, because the room, apart from the enormous computer and the mass of electronics, had nothing else interesting to offer.
Nick leaned against the doorframe and calmly watched Tomi, who had vanished into a sea of information on the screens.
It didn't take long before Tomi stirred and, seeing Nick waiting at the door, announced:
"It's all here, this is the heart of everything."
"What do you mean?" Nick asked him.
"All the controls are here. From this room the shelter is run — ventilation, power, water, generators, machines. It's all here."
"Didn't we turn that on downstairs?"
"We did and we didn't. Down there is the manual control of the power supply, but the actual distribution is done here. And had we not found this room, everything would have shut off again automatically after an hour," Tomi explained.
"What do you mean?"
Tomi looked at his friend and beckoned him to the console he was leaning over. Nick approached and Tomi showed him.
"Look, this is the amount of stored power in the batteries. Those are the boxes where you switched on the systems and the power supply."
Nick looked at the lines of numbers that were, slowly but surely, decreasing in percentages. He nodded, and Tomi continued:
"Currently the generators — of which only one is running, and at that at an eighth of its power — aren't charging the batteries fast enough to maintain the amount of stored energy in them, so they're draining. Slowly but surely, the batteries would drain,
and in about fifty minutes or so everything would revert to primary power, shutting off all the systems."
"Wait, but the ventilation was working, and the water too?" Nick objected.
"The shelter's basic functions would still work. You'd have cold water, ventilated air, because those systems don't use much energy, but everything else would be shut off…"
Tomi looked at his friend, who was struggling to understand, so he decided to simplify: "Look, imagine the shelter is a body…"
he looked at his friend, who nodded, "…and the body is now in a coma, which means all the systems work, but the brain is off. And if a body has no living brain, the body is just a heap of primary functions. For example, you don't need a higher brain function to breathe,