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Faden Rides the Elevator
Wake: Darkness engulfed the elevator. There was something there. A presence. Jesse Faden could hear it. A call. It was faint. Reaching for her from a dark place. Faden was sensitive to visitations. She had them all the time. From her guiding star. And the previous director. She was the perfect receiver. As if she’d been made for this. Faden paused to feel it. The force at play here. It was changing things around her. Subtle. Trying to make her act. Faden didn’t like that. Her guide felt it too. Polaris didn’t flare up in defense as she’d done with the Hiss. So it wasn’t all bad. Not a hostile transmission. It was powerful but it was coming from far away. And made weak because of the distance. It was a distress call. Faden sensed a drowning man. A man desperate to escape. She sensed something else too. A hunger in the dark. Not unlike the hostile resonance. Waiting. She knew that desperate acts can have grim consequences. It was this, more than the man’s despair, that made her follow the call. The elevator lights winked back on. The darkness receded like a memory. There was a new button on the elevator control panel: “Investigations Sector.” Faden pressed the button. The elevator doors slid shut with practiced bravado.
Hartman’s Final Act
Wake: Doctor Emil Hartman was desperate. The Federal Bureau of Control had stolen his life’s work. This was his last chance, his final experiment, what he’d been too scared to do before. Hartman dove into the lake. Was taken. Devoured by hungry darkness. Became the Thing-that-Had-Been-Hartman. Only an echo of him remained. Fragmented impulses on autoplay. Violent, bloodthirsty darkness in the driver’s seat. Emerging from the lake, the Thing was captured by the FBC. Brought in. Contained. Studied. The Thing broke loose. Killed everyone it could. The FBC fell back and sealed the sector. The Thing was alone in the dark. Lurking. Roaming. Waiting. Then something else came. Not darkness. But similar enough. A sound. A resonance. It shouldn’t be a surprise. If there’s one, why not another. The darkness inside the Thing could’ve been immune. Could have resisted. Fought. Could have been passed by, passed through, with no effect. But it didn’t and it wasn’t. Maybe it had grown weaker over time. Not aged. It was timeless. But weaker with no link to its source. A metamorphosis followed. The Thing-that-Had-Been-Hartman went through another change.
The Third Thing
Wake: The resonance carves its way through the Thing-that-Had-Been-Hartman. Vibrating. Remolding. The sound changes the darkness. The darkness changes the sound. They both changed what remained of Hartman. They all turned into something else. A third thing. The sound made darker. The darkness made louder. Hartman was stretched. Stretched as anyone when seen from out of time. Like a worm through time. Almost an ouroboros. A spiral. A maelstrom. The gravity well of a black hole. Twisting inward, tightening, taking you deeper and deeper. To the bottom, the heart, and through to the other side. The Third Thing said: “When you hear this you will know you’re in new you.” He said: “We build you till nothing remains.” He said: “Under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away.” He said: “Baby baby baby yeah. Orange peel.” The Third Thing was a monster. He’d tear apart any ordinary person crossing his path. Now he crashed out of darkness toward Faden. There was nothing ordinary about Faden.
On Writing the Manuscript
Wake: I’ve written. Rewritten. Deconstructed. Reconstructed. Experimented with different voices. Changed the style. Changed myself. Forgotten the language. Relearned the language. Have I been here before? Gone down this path before? The darkness wants to hide the past to make me lose my way. You must know where you’ve been to know where you’re going. I trust what I read on these pages. I wrote them for a reason. My notes to myself. The only way to make progress. Recap. Then write more. The style then: Lose the fat. Make it clear. Ugly. Functional. Present. Be blunt. Only the brutal truth. Cut through the reality. Tear it apart. Rewrite it. Be clever. Make them do the work. Form the image in their minds. They make it. You just imply. Incept. They are drawn to the mystery. Obsessed. You set it up, they put it together. Their interpretation. And there’s only one, because you give them no choice. And they believe in it, because it’s theirs now.
Wake Writes a Beginning
Wake: The story needed many beginnings. Many springs. Streams that turned into a river, a flood, and then, an ocean. This was one. Wake used the materials he had. The connections he had. The people. The places. Wake put them in to make it true. His wife. The psychiatrist. His city. These connections, like magnets, moved things. Alice was a conduit. She’d been in the Dark Place. The Thing-that-Had-Been-Hartman sensed her near. Sensed Wake through her. Went berserk. Broke loose. Wake made sure Alice was already gone by then. Safe. The more springs, the more the story became real. The more people believed. Cause and effect. It was extremely delicate and hard work. It had to go through the path of least resistance. Where success was most likely. Where there was a connection already. Wake felt the pressure grow in his head. Going mad. Wake had to escape. Write his escape. He was already out. He wanted to make it true. Wake needed a hero. A hero needed a crisis. For the part in the story about the government agency, Wake needed something special. Something to convey an alien force mimicking human intelligence. Something that can’t be translated, translated. Wake channeled Burroughs and Bowie. He cut up sentences and words. “Orange peel.” “You are home.” “Insane.” He put them in a shoebox. He pulled out the words. Wake created a Dadaist poem. He’d try anything once. Or had he tried this before?
Valhalla Nursing Home
Wake: The Valhalla Nursing Home. Founded in 2014 for Odin and Tor Anderson of the Old Gods of Asgard fame. For their twilight years. Built after the Return comeback tour. Flip-flopped to be their farewell tour. Cut short. Cancelled. To the chagrin of their agent Barry Wheeler. Wheeler had managed to coax a couple of hit songs out of them before that. Balance Slays the Demon. A couple of others. Three massive stadium-sized gigs. The old men rocked like they were possessed by the devil. Like their namesakes. The backstage parties got out of hand. The air was thick with smoke. Wheeler squinted. His migraine flared. Booze and drugs. A rock ‘n’ roll cliché. They ran off after every gig. Wheeler had security track them down to the craziest afterparties. The Andersons were so old. Vampires. Princes of fucking Darkness. After every gig and the rampaging party that followed it took them weeks to bounce back. And they never did completely. Each time, Wheeler expected them to croak. It was that bad. After the third gig, Wheeler couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t stomach the idea of another client dropping dead on him. Wheeler cancelled. Called it off. It was over. After the Old Gods comeback tour was cancelled, Wheeler set up a foundation with the money from the record sales of the Greatest Hits album and the gigs. A lot of money. Wheeler was good at his job. Wheeler set up the nursing home facility. The old men deserved it.