The Malicarn #3
Herbert Kaminsky, 67, of Pasadena, died Tuesday after a brief illness.
Soon they were deafening, a groan that stretched around the room, enveloping Lilly and the computers and tables and equipment and everything else.
When the lab was empty the only sound was the hum of those servers against the wall, terabytes of future work sitting and waiting for deployment.
Lilly stood up and walked across the room to the closet where the neuroscanners were kept.
She entered the closet and closed the door, hoping to shut the sound out.
There was a light in the ceiling. The closet was a small circular room of shelves, all holding gray neuroscanner boxes, each box plugged into the wall behind it, charging itself up.
Nearly a dozen of them, each with a blinking red light.
Charging, charging. The lights grew brighter, redder, filling the room.
They were worse than the humming, they were blinding.
Lilly blinked, tried to close her eyes, couldn’t get the brightness to stop.
served eight years in the Marines, including a tour in
She left the closet, walked back across the room. She didn’t look back, didn’t want to see the red lights. She held her hands over her ears as she passed the servers. She walked into Whitman’s office. The large corner office, enclosed by glass walls. She shut the door.
The room was cold, an air vent in the ceiling too strong for the little space.
With the door closed it became even colder.
Lilly put her head down on Whitman’s desk, a glass table empty of pictures or trinkets or any sign of personality.
But she could feel it now, the cold, against her face on the glass.
The cold took over the table, pushed against Lilly’s cheek.
She could feel it creeping into her, grabbing her from within.
The whole building felt cold. A heavy cold, a dry cold, like an old corpse, one that wouldn’t move or escape.
he studied electrical engineering
The lab was too loud, too bright, too cold. Lilly went to the break room, whose door opened onto the lab but at least provided some separation. Once inside she kept pacing.
I can’t talk to Glenn, she thought. What will he say?
He’ll talk about work and about how Jules is a hard-ass and how he isn’t sure the story is working.
He’ll be unhappy because he’s always unhappy but he won’t be sad, he won’t be upset, he won’t be distraught.
He won’t hear the humming or see the lights or feel the cold.
Lilly opened the break room refrigerator.
A leftover pizza box inside. Lilly took it out and opened it.
Double cheese and mushroom. The smell wafted out of the box, and pulled at her shirt, her hair.
A sickly smell, the smell of staleness and rot and decay.
She threw out the pizza, but the smell was in the lab now, all over.
She couldn’t get away from it. She hurried back to her office.
for over thirty years
The smell hadn’t reached into there yet, and the neuroscanner closet door was closed, the light hiding behind it.
She stayed away from Whitman’s cold office.
She could still hear the servers, buzzing against the wall, and she had to decide what she hated worse, what she could stand the least. The sound, the lights, the cold, the smell.
It was only then that she tasted something.
She hadn’t eaten. Still, there it was in her mouth, rolling over her tongue.
Something inside of her that she couldn’t ignore.
It was subtle. A sharpness, a tartness, sucking the moisture from her mouth.
Drying her out. And it was growing. And she couldn’t make it go away.
survived by his wife Lisa, daughter Lilly,
She turned her computer back on, loaded the news, and saw images of fires. A wildfire in Simi Valley. There was a smoke warning in Los Angeles County. Dangerous to be outside.
Funeral arrangements are private.
It was in that moment that it first occurred to Lilly that all of the world’s neuroscanners, all that tech, all of their data, all their documentation, had made its way through the circuitous and terrible logic of litigation and politics into this very room. And nobody was there except for her.
A fire in Los Angeles. A fire to celebrate her father. Fire was bright. Fire was hot. Fire smelled strong. Depending on what you burned, fire could be very loud. Get close enough to fire, you could taste the embers, let them singe your tongue.
Get close enough to fire, and you wouldn’t feel anything else anymore.
3.
After he poured his morning coffee Glenn tried to read his email again. Earlier he couldn’t connect to the internet, but this time his inbox refreshed.
TRAVEL PROHIBITED. No studio staff, crew, or cast are permitted to travel to or from the Malicarn set until the tropical storm has passed. Winds are expected to be in excess of 95 kph with heavy rains through Sunday evening.
Essential on-set activities relating to food, medical, housing, and other basic services may continue, but no storylines are to be advanced at this time.
Further updates to come.
The weather in Madeira continued to flummox him. It was January and they had to worry about hurricanes. Or maybe Madeira had nothing to do with it and weather itself was just weird now. Glenn wasn’t sure.
So far, it was still sunny outside. Glenn wondered if this meant he could skip a trip as Gregorian to the castle.
He tried to email Jules but his internet went down again, and his phone wasn’t connecting, either.
It’d be nice to have a Saturday that was actually a Saturday but half the staff was coming off a holiday and he decided it was better not to miss their morning production meeting by feigning ignorance.
The last time he tried that he got an official reprimand from Larry.
So he threw on jeans and a shirt and slipped down his tower into the service tunnel, unplugged a golf cart, and drove it himself to the Citadel.
It was still very early, and traffic in the tunnel was light.
When he got to the Citadel, he took the elevator up to the production offices.
Despite the hour, Jules was already in the writers’ room, his legs propped on a box covered with a blanket.
He was reading a thick book, The Collected Letters of J. D. Souard.
“I thought maybe this would give me some story ideas,” Jules said as Glenn entered, putting the book down.
“You know, information and tidbits Souard cut out of the novels or something? But it’s just lots and lots of blather about publishing contracts with his editor or whatever.
There’s like twenty pages where he bitches about de Gaulle. Why are you here anyway?”
“Happy New Year to you, too. I’m here for our meeting. I tried to call in but the internet’s down.”
“Oh yeah, the storm! Good news, huh? The suits were badgering me about story before Christmas. But they can’t fly in to berate me now. We can run this one completely on our own, no interference! Once they see it, they’ll understand why it had to be this way.”
“So you still want me to go to the castle today?”
“Oh, you have to. Important stuff to set up. The props department has cooked up something special. Probably wait for deployment until after the storm, not sure what our timeline is there, I don’t want to rush it.”
A fire alarm, blaring and shrill, emitted a shriek throughout the floor. Lights began strobing over the exits.
“Ah, shit,” Jules said. “The security system is all tied together on the network. You said it was down, right?”
“Yeah. Should we evacuate?”
“It’s probably nothing. It happens sometimes.”
“What about our production meeting?”
“We just had it. This was it. Go back, look over your notes, plan to be at the castle this evening.”
“But the server’s down, I don’t have any notes.”
“Ah!” Jules barked, then shook his head, blinked a few times, and reached for a sheet of paper with handwritten scribbles. “Sorry about that. Here. Take this, look it over. I’ll text you if service is restored. You’ll be fine.”
Glenn tried to take an elevator back down, but it was inoperable, so he walked all the way to the tunnel using the emergency stairs. A few security guards were giving orders, directing people to the lobby.
“What’re the alarms about?” Glenn asked one of the guards.
“Not sure, something in the lab I think. Can’t get down there now.”
Glenn rode a cart back down the tunnel to the Old Village. The emergency lights were on, and the tunnel was extra dim. Glenn didn’t think much of it, though he thought he smelled smoke.
He still got back to his apartment before his servant had even made breakfast, and jumped in the shower. When he came out, only a towel wrapped around himself, he was surprised to find Lilly pacing in his kitchen.
“Um hello,” he said.
“I’m sorry to drop in like this. I have to tell you something,” Lilly said. “I’m leaving. The Malicarn, the lab. I’m quitting.”
“Is this because of me?” Glenn asked.
“What?”
“What did I do? Honestly? I’m not in charge here, Lilly, I—”
“Christ, Glenn, no. This isn’t about you.”
“It clearly is! At least a little bit!”
“Am I mad, Glenn? Yes. Am I mad at you? Probably. And I should probably be over it by now but … Do you think you could put on some clothes?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Glenn ducked into the bathroom and reemerged clothed a minute later.
Lilly was sitting on the couch. “You don’t even know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“I snuck out. If they find me … God, don’t you see what they’ve done?”
“Who? Jules?”
“All of them! Jules, Larry, the executives, everyone who bought into this shit. You! What are we doing here, Glenn? Art? Science? What have you been doing if you don’t even understand what’s happened?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”