Part 3 of 3
By Thomas Ham
As we started walking down the dirt road, I noticed the town was setup in a kind of horseshoe design. The town was dead except for the occasional robot that came out of a door and rolled around to another one across the street.
“This isn’t a very active town, is it?”, said Victor. He looked around in a way that seemed like he was looking for something other than our destination.
“Yeah pretty quiet.”, I said as I looked down at my dusty brown boots. I noticed that we were leaving footprints or rather boot prints all over the sandy path. “Hey, that’s interesting”.
“What is?”, my companion said while he was looking towards a rather large building.
“We leave footprints in the sand.”
“Oh yeah, that tracks our every move in the town.”, he said. Dr. Gehtle stopped and looked at one of his tracks. “And they’re usually permanent.” Gehtle tried to kick dust on the print, but it just made more prints around his original.
“Interesting.”
We approached a small shack that was sitting right next to the very large three story building that Gehtle was eyeing before.
“Here it is”, Gehtle said. He pushed opened the squeaky, flimsy wooden door of the small shack.
“This is the port guard?”
“I know, not very impressive is it. Most of the time these are a lot more secure than this and bigger.”
We stepped inside the dimly lit one room shack. The inside was barely big enough for us both to fit. A small light with no shade hung from the ceiling and wasn’t helping much. Dr. Gehtle approached the far wall which was still dark because my eyes needed to adjust from being outside. Finally, the wall started to become clearer. The entire wall seemed to be covered by metallic pipes coming from all directions. Most of them ended abruptly, while a few made their way toward the bottom of the wall, all coming together into one large pipe.
“Ok do you understand what we’re seeing Mark?”
“What is this school?”, I thought. I approached the wall also. “Umm, well it appears that only these pipes going into the large pipe here”, I said pointing to the large pipe, “have access into the town and the other ones are just cut off and can’t go anywhere.”.
“Pretty much” Dr Gehtle said as he inspected some of the pipes that were dead ended into the wall. “These pipes control everything in and out of this town, basically the ports of the system. If you need access through other ports or pipes you just continue the pipes into the large one.”
“Hmm”, I said. I looked at the pipes and noticed numbers engraved on them and then something else. “What’s this town used for?”
“I think just for a little bit of storage and of course as a postal service”.
“Well, then why do they need the pipe 21 running into the large pipe? What are they transferring around?” I said pointing to the pipe with a 21 engraved into it.
“I was thinking the same thing. I think the email problem was just a symptom of something a lot bigger.”.
Dr. Gehtle went outside to call up the client and told me to continue inspecting the pipes. Everything else looked fine except for that one pipe.
“The owner has no idea why that pipe is being used. He gave us access to make the changes necessary to make it more secure here.” Dr. Gehtle joined me next to the pipes. He took out his gun. “This way is a little messy but it works.” He aimed the revolver at the pipe and fired. The gun sounded just like a real gun. The bullet punctured the pipe and immediately the pipe caught fire with a blue flame, just like the envelopes it didn’t affect anything else and also left no trace of fire on the wall.
“Well it worked.” I said with a half smile.
“I love this thing.”, he said twirling the gun around his finger and then placing it into the holster on his belt. “Well lets start inspecting this…” He was cut off from the sound of the flimsy door squeaking open and then closing. We both turned around surprised to see a thin robot about waste high, with two arms rolling towards us. Dr. Gehtle already had his gun out and pointing at the bot. I moved my tunic and pulled out my gun rather clumsily and pointed it towards the bot also.
“Careful with that, it could do some damage in here.” Dr. Gehlte said as he let the robot roll by him. “Let’s see what he’s doing in here”. The robot approached the wall and started to create a new pipe where the pipe 21 used to be. Dr. Gehtle approached the bot with his gun in hand. “Great it’s a fixer bot. There is definatly someone doing something in this town. Go ahead, take it out.”, he said rather seriously.
I pointed my revolver at the bot and fired before it could finish the pipe it was creating. The gun kicked back in my hand and just like the pipe and envelope, the bot immediately caught fire and left no trace of it’s existence. “Hey, this bot didn’t leave any tracks on the floor.”
Dr. Gehlte put his gun away and bent over to inspect the dirt ground in the shack. “You’re right someone’s trying to get away with something. Come on.” He said as he opened the door and exited the building. “Let’s see if we can figure out what is going on here”. We started to make our way towards the entrance of town when Dr. Gehtle stopped walking. I was walking behind him and couldn’t see why he had stopped. I moved over to the side and saw a dark figure at the edge of the town.
“That’s not a bot is it?”, I said trying to see what the dark shape was.
“No, I don’t think so. I think this is what we’re looking for though.”
The dark figure made its way towards us and stopped about twenty feet in front of us. It was another person. He was tall, medium build with a dark complexion. He wore a dark brown dusty cowboy hat which covered most of his face, his long black hair came out from under it. His shirt was white and his pants were tan and looked dirty. He was holding a large brown cigar in one hand and what appeared to be a metallic lighter in the other.
“Ahhh, the great doctor Victor Gehtle.” Said the stranger as he paused and looked at me. “And your …. twin?” He continued as he turned his head back towards Gehtle. “Fancy seeing you here. A man of your abilities reduced to just a repairman. Nice work in post office by the way. Oh, and I see you met one of my fixer bot, it did a good job keeping this place the way I needed it.”
“How have you been Nigel? Same old business I see. What low life hired you this time?”, Dr Gehtle said. I stood quiet and rather surprised that Victor knew this person, not that I knew Victor that well.
“What an honor you remember me.” Nigel said with a grin. ”Come on, you know I can’t say Victor.” He said with a half smile as he lit his cigar and puffed on it a few times. “You know the only thing I don’t like about this world, there’s no feeling. This, in the real world would be a fine treat but here…it’s a prop…tasteless.”. He said as he took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it.
“So, why would anyone hire you to get into this place? There’s nothing here but a mail service”. Gethle said.
“That right there. That is why I spent 3 months in this place.”. Nigel said as he pointed to the three story building next to the little shack we had come out of with the end of his cigar. “That my old friend is my silver tuna, there was a lot of data in there. I got paid quite a bit for doing this job but all good things must come to an end, right pal”. Nigel pulled out of his pants pocket what appeared to be a stick of dynamite. “And I thought I was going to be the only one to witness this, what a treat.” Nigel laughed in a grunting way and lit the fuse with the end of his smoldering cigar. Small sparks flew from the fuse. There was nothing we could do but watch what was about to happen.
“Well, Nigel I’m sure I’ll run into you later.” Gehtle said rather sternly.
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Nigel said as he threw the stick towards the three story building.
I watched the dynamite fly through the air, I was interested to see what was going to happen, almost excited. The red stick bounced off the bottom of the tall building, rolled on the ground for a second and then exploded. The explosion looked much like a regular explosion in the real world. Dust and a red cloud began to rise, I could only see the top of the tall three story building because of the smoke but it’s roof was burning blue. Then everything went from dust color to white, slowly. I sat staring into the white, for a few seconds, thinking about everything this day brought. I Slowly took off my goggles.
“Well, Mark I guess we lost that one. I think that place is completely destroyed. I’ll check with the client tomorrow to see if there’s anything left.” Gehtle said starring at a monitor looking as if he were in deep thought. “Listen, come over tomorrow, I want to show you the other side of OpenVu. It’s not all work, I think you’ll enjoy it.” He said as we were both removing our gloves and letting our eyes adjust to the light of the room
I left Dr. Gehlte’s office that night actually excited to see what the next day would bring.
