Chervotochina (3)

 

The Sea of Okhotsk

2015

 

105 years in suspended animation.

A depth of 400 metres. Adaptations and replacements over the years. A deal with the Soviet Army in the 1980's - buried with bribes and energy trade - a typhoon-class submarine. 175 metres long. A submerged displacement of 48,000 tonnes.

105 years of monitoring and reporting quantum fluctuations.

A tunnel of magnetic energy.

A convergence of dimensions.

105 years of watching the door. Making sure it would still be there next time.

Pustiakoff was well used to coffin dreams. Confined spaces. Cramped conditions. He eased off the rack in his cabin. He wandered into the corridor. He hit the back 'aft and baked a potato on the engine throttle.

All nonessential systems were down. A steady thrum underpinned everything. Pustiakoff's boots clanked as he made his way to the control room. He was forever hitting his head on protruding bits of metal. 

He ate leaning against the periscope. He checked the sonar readings. Ghostly blips. He wiped his mouth, sat down, and slid over to the console.

105 years. He had long ago memorised the function of every one of the thousands of valves. 

He pulled the headphones on. He checked the screen. He leaned into the mic and read the string of numbers. The signal carried. Extremely low frequency ranges. Low ground conductivity.

Pustiakoff was past seeing the point. He had become a creature of habit. Everything moved in patterns: numbers, fluctuations, decades.

He knew the wormhole was shrinking. Soon it would collapse. Those inside had clearly been disregarding the signal output for a long time now. Perhaps they were all too old and decrepit to make any sense of it. He knew they struggled for fresh blood. He'd witnessed the dwindling numbers since the collapse of the Soviet repressive system. He was just another redundant link in a redundant chain.

Still, the urge to go on. To live.

He slid the headphones off. He cracked open a tin box. He lifted a needle and a smaller, circular receptacle out. He clicked the receptacle open. There was a little puddle of silverish liquid inside. He strapped his arm. He dipped the needle into the metallic fluid. He filled it.

Pustiakoff was 137 years old. Every day for the past 105 years had been exactly the same.

He punched the needle into his arm.

 

Talon

2015

 

52.8736° N, 149.3658° E. 14-10-15 22:08

14-10-15 22:08

Flight - Moscow Vnukovo Airport to Sokol Airport in Madagan Oblast. Cheap rental car - Sokol Airport to Okhotsk - a four and a half hour drive.

Two days to go.

Mirsky chewed his lip. Three days off it. He still woke to sweat-drenched sheets. He still felt desperate. Cut loose from the world. Nevertheless, he felt an anchor in the case and its insanity. A reason to be. The world revealed itself one day at a time in the glare of sobriety. All its horror, weirdness and beauty.

Night driving. Caffeine jerks. Rural stretches in the Olsky District of Magadan Oblast. Rain drilled. Mirsky squinted through the scuzz of the wipers. Mist coated the fields, hills and treelines beyond as if a malevolent entity cast from a thousand lost souls moved to reclaim the land as the world slept.

Yellow eyes floated in the rearview mirror. Mirsky tracked them. Forty miles now. Sometimes the car would pull back. Sometimes it would draw close. It never overtook.

He glided through Talon. A tiny village: rows of small houses. A dingy-looking hotel. 

The houses thinned. The streetlights disappeared. He pulled into a petrol station. He opened the door and eased out. Rain greased his forehead. He looked round. The car pulled in: three pumps down. 

He squinted. It was too dark. He took two steps towards the kiosk. He stopped. He turned, opened the boot, and lifted the cardboard box out.

He walked to the kiosk. He watched the reflection in the glass windows. The suited man stepped out of the car.

He pushed the kiosk door. A bell jingled above. Bright lights. Three small aisles.

Mirsky hit the third aisle along. He dropped the box by the dairy section. He paced back to the till. A gangly teen wearing a red uniform and red hat put his phone down and stood up.

He flashed his badge. The teen blinked. Mirsky leaned over the counter.

'Get on the ground,' he whispered. 'Get down and stay down. You're in danger.'

The teen blinked again. His lips moved. The bell above the kiosk door jangled.

Mirsky hit the aisles. He ran past the milk. He stooped and tore the box open. He lifted the Gatling out. The suited man rounded the corner. He clipped down the aisle.

Mirsky bolted. He ducked past the booze. He spun the crank shaft. Copper-sleeved barrels rotated. Cogs whirred. Bottles exploded above him.

He pivoted. He saw metal slide-rules retracting. He sprinted for the end of the aisle. Bottles shattered. Alarms shrieked. He skidded on spillage. He cracked his knees. He scrabbled to the discount section, dragging the Gatling. He staggered up and spun the crank shaft.

The suited man rounded the corner. Mirsky pumped the crank. Neon fluid flooded the rail. Elements blended. The suited man raised his hand.

Mirsky dived right. Mayonnaise jars burst by his head. He aimed. The Gatling belched a jet of neon juice. It sputtered and seared his hands. He dropped it and rolled.

He saw the teen behind the counter. Deathly pale. Slack-jawed.

He looked back. The suited man was standing stock-still. He had no head. Smoke coiled from the neck. The discount section was coated in pink spatter. Bone and metal chunks.

Mirsky knelt. He looked at his blistered palms. The headless body wobbled and fell.

 

-

1965

 

Kovalenko turned in his bunk. There were no lice here. He was glad of that.

Forty years. Time was meaningless. Nothing had changed. It was best to mete out existence in seconds.

In the mornings he would see the white sand. He saw the white buildings in the distance, before they were taken down to the mines.

He gathered rumours. Snippets of information. Prisoners talked. They spun tales. He pieced the history together. He mapped out the tale of his prison. At nights he would replay it in his head. 

In the early 1700's, a young recruit named Constantine Repin joined the newly-formed Russian Navy. He developed a distinguished reputation in battle, and was soon promoted to commander. In 1724, he was chosen by Tsar Peter 1st - Peter the Great - to lead the first Kamchatka Expedition across Siberia to the Pacific. He was tasked with determining whether or not the Asian and American continents were connected.

Repin left St. Petersburg on Feb 5th, 1725. The initial stage of the journey involved reaching Okhotsk (a grimy, isolated settlement on the north shore of the Sea of Othotsk). This in itself entailed a two-year trek.

Repin was never to fulfil the purpose of his expedition. He was never to return. Repin, his crewmates and ship disappeared on the preliminary two-year trek across the Sea of Othotsk. 

Search parties uncovered nothing. Possibilities were thrown around: pirates, harsh seas. The story faded, and was lost. Repin appeared condemned to life as dust on the ashheap of history.

In the mid-1800's, rumours spread amongst factions of the waning Ottoman Empire - and in particular amongst the brutal and undisciplined bashi-bazouk - of an affluent colony flourishing in a indeterminate area in the Sea of Othotsk. Strange additions grew - a hidden world. A burgeoning civilisation. Energy and riches derived from black magic. Tenuous links were made; it was the work of Khlysty sect - self-flagellating monks; it was the work of the Skoptsy sect (self-castrating specialists).

These rumours peaked during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. Whilst an expansion-driven Russian Empire and an overstretched (and near-bankrupt) Ottoman Empire engaged in conflict, a group of bashi-bazouks - internationally condemned for atrocities committed during the Bulgarian Uprising - stole across the Sea of Othotsk. They returned with a cryptic series of coordinates, dates and times, and strange tales of metal-limbed men.

The bashi-bazouk revisited the area two years later, on the back of the information gleaned from this initial run. They subsequently disappeared.

Kovalenko still saw the wizened Turkish faces, the white moustaches, strapped to the great silver shell in the mines. Since 1880 the organisational network within the wormhole continued to procure new prisoners in ten-year cycles, aligning with every entrance opening. Private deals were struck with labour camps; the world within the wormhole was awash with money and state-of-the-art energy resources.

The boom had passed. Stalin was dead. The Gulag institution was closed by MVD order in 1960, and although forced labour camps did continue to exist, the prisoner influx dwindled. Kovalenko saw the waifs and stragglers the agents rounded up during the last cycle. 

He lifted the ragged blanket over his shoulder. There was still energy to be harvested. Buildings to be erected. He was growing older. They fed him strange injections. He knew there was something sustaining him here. Their options were narrowing. They relied on feeble old men. 

He sniffed and scratched at his beard. Time was meaningless. It was best to mete out existence in seconds.

 

The Sea of Okhotsk

2015

 

The boat was still. Black water sloshed against the hull. Mirsky looked up at a sky full of stars; as if he had cast a million lit matches into the gloom. One match for every clean day. Fuck it, be hopeful. Always be hopeful.

Talon to Okhotsk. Three hours. One headless body, one traumatised petrol-station attendant and one two-hour nap. He dreamt. In his dreams he saw strange versions of people he knew and people he had known. People he had been close to. People he could be close to again. 

He saw places he had lived and experienced. They were smaller than he remembered. They were smaller because the world became smaller with every passing year; with every obstacle and every moment of weight. For all this narrowing and realignment, it was not deprived it of its miracles and possibilities. Its constant potential for change.

He awoke feeling it might be okay. It might not be okay now, but perhaps tomorrow, or in a year's time. That was enough. It was just time. There was oceans of it. 

52.8736° N, 149.3658° E. 14-10-15 22:08

14-10-15 22:08

22:08

Mirsky checked his phone. 22:05. The Gatling swung in his hand. Waves rose and broke. The hired hand was below deck. Strict orders.

22:07.

There is only one of you in the history of all time. If you don't do it, nobody else will.

A metal block rose from the sea. It snapped. It unfolded in segments. It buckled and arched into shapes. Cubes. Hexagons. A vast maze. A miracle.

The block came to rest on the deck of the ship. A hollow end.

Mirsky blinked back tears. He stepped in.

The puzzle in the sky snapped. It folded and disappeared.

*

The tunnel was cramped. Steel walls. Mirsky palmed along. He emerged.

A white room: cream carpet. White wallpaper.

Three old men sat in faded leather chairs. Two of them snoozed. One man peered at Mirsky. He drooled. He reached for a book on the desk and dropped it. Mirsky stared. He walked past them, quietly. He hit the button on the wall. Vertical doors opened. 

*

The elevator creaked. Mirsky heaved the Gatling up. He spun the crank. The doors hissed open. Rock faces. Carts. Tracks. Mines.

Two suited men ran towards him. He aimed. The Gatling belched. Bone and metal chunks spritzed.

He passed the headless bodies. He tripped over rock and scree. A large silver shell dominated the centre of the mine. Prisoners were strapped around its exterior. He tracked the circumference. The convicts watched him with sunken eyes.

Thirty men. There were no more than thirty men here. Two security agents.

He cut the prisoners loose. They reeled. They clutched at their shoulders. He held one man up. The silver shell rumbled. Red dots flared in its interior.

'What's your name?' He shouted.

The old man looked up. His face was a web of wrinkles.

'Kovalenko, sir.'

Mirsky stooped. He laid his hand on the man's cheek.

'Kovalenko, I need you to take these men to the white room. There's a way out, isn't there? We found escapees. There's a way out.'

Kovalenko nodded. The silver shell ground to a halt.

*

Mirsky trailed the cart tracks. He located the second lift. He rode up.

White sand. Sharp blue sky. Prisoner barracks. Tall white buildings, like pristine office blocks.

He wandered over the sand. Wind tousled his hair. There was a loneliness to the place. An awful loneliness. A strange sense of peace too, he felt; of being removed entirely from everything. He remembered Sofya.

Don't spend too much time by yourself, Mirsky.

A circle of white buildings. A large column in the middle. He turned. He crossed through the great blocks. He hit the column.

The door was blocked with sand rifts. He had to kick an entrance. The door swung open slowly.

He clipped up a circular stairwell. His footsteps echoed. He passed small windows and glanced out at the unbroken stretches of white sand. The was something about them that made him profoundly sad.

He reached the last step. He pushed a wooden door open.

A small, circular room. Blue sky filled the windows. A white desk. Stacks of paper. Dust everywhere. An old man sat behind the desk. He wore a green fur-lined coat. A felt hat. Red tunics. A blue sash.

Mirsky walked across the room. He stopped before the desk. The man's hair was powder-white. His skin was parchment-thin. His lips moved slowly. He did not seem to register Mirsky.

Wind blew through the room. Sheets of paper fluttered. Mirsky knelt. The man looked through him. His eyes were cloudy. The pupils were a hazy blue. His hand pawed the table. His lips smacked.

Mirsky read the engraved desk sign.

Constantine Repin

Director

He dug the balls of his palms into his eyes. The old man wheezed. A string of saliva hung from his bottom lip. Mirsky rose. He left.

*

The artificial wormhole was set up in the waiting room. It was a surprisingly small device. A three-layered object consisting of two concentric spheres with an interior spiral cylinder. A thin shell made of high-temperature superconducting material lined the inner cylinder.

Mirsky walked out of the elevator. Kovalenko was bustling around the device. Prisoners shuffled and eyed Mirsky. The old men looked up from their chairs. They blinked and leaned forward. They looked confused.

Mirsky nodded. Kovalenko flicked a switch. Magnetic field lines funnelled from one side of the cylinder to another. Fuzzy blue trails. Static crackles. A length of steel tubing slinked out of the exit side. It expanded. It grew. Mirsky gathered the prisoners. A steel doorway stretched and strained.

*

Lapping water. A metal puzzle crisscrossed the sky.

Thirty old men staggered over the deck of the boat. They cried. They sunk to their knees.

Mirsky turned. He saw the vast maze collapse and disappear. He felt his own subjugation leave with it. His hands were still. They did not shake. 

 

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