The Hole Story
By Rik Hunik
Copyright 2013 by Rik Hunik
A slightly shorter version of this story appeared in Tales Of The Talisman, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2009.
Chapter One
I woke up in a gray room. White noise surrounded me, a susurration that diminished when I put my hands over my ears, so it wasn't in my head, it was background noise. Gray light entered through a square window that was a lighter, brighter gray than the stone the room was carved from.
The volume of the sound jumped to a gentle roar as a door beside the window slid open for half a second, letting in a blast of cold, wet air, and a teenaged girl. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was clad in a dark green jumpsuit that showed off her thin figure and small, but fully formed breasts.
Her lips moved. Her words came out gibberish to me but a split second later a voice behind my ear, similar to hers, overlapping it, said, "Oh good, you're awake again. Is your translator working yet? I talked to you a lot while you were out of it with your brain fever."
I held up my hand and said, "Stop." My voice was thick and sounded strange even to me. Awake again? Did I know this girl? Translator? I raised my hand to my ear, felt a little something tucked securely behind it. "Yes," I said, recognizing that much. "It's working."
She sat down at the foot of the bed, avoiding my feet. "Good. Now you can tell me who you are and where you came from."
"Sure," I said, intending to do just that, but I couldn't. I wanted to tell her, I felt like I should be able to remember, but the information was not available to me. The girl gazed at me expectantly but I was drawing a blank. I recalled fleeting images from my childhood; faces of people, rooms, buildings, landscapes, but I didn't know who or what or where they were. "Far away," I said, mostly to myself. Then louder, "Where am I?"
She sighed and leaned back on her arms, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "You don't remember anything, do you."
I sighed and shook my head. "Just a few brief images of people, my family I guess, from my childhood, but that doesn't help me now."
"I was afraid of that but it doesn't matter." She smiled and said, "Apparently I know more about where you came from than you do."
I couldn't help myself. "Tell me."
Her blue eyes sparkled as she laughed. "You were caught in the Net, so it's obvious you didn't come from below."
I was having trouble with my memory, but I wasn't stupid. It seemed to me that she was implying that there was only one other direction. And then there was, "The Net?"
She nodded. "Come on. I'll show you." She bounced up and stood near the door. "Do you want to see it?"
"Of course." I threw off the light blanket and swung my feet to the floor. I was dressed in a gray, one-piece jumpsuit with built in shoes. Only my head and hands poked out. It didn't feel very thick but it was comfortable and moved well with me as I stood up. I felt some muscle stiffness, and a dizziness that quickly passed. I took in a deep breath, stood up and stretched my arms to the ceiling. Joints snapped and popped but except for several sore spots, probably bruises, I seemed fit enough. I crossed the room. "Lead on."
She touched the wall, the door slid open and we stepped out. That ubiquitous susurration was louder now, but not loud enough to interfere with conversation. I felt the cold on my hands and face but it didn't penetrate my jumpsuit. It was more invigorating than uncomfortable. The door closed behind us.
I was on a catwalk, about two feet wide, cut into the rock of a cliff-face. The black handrail dripped with condensed moisture. When I looked down over the edge I saw only mist, and to either side I could see only forty feet into the thick mist.
The girl set off to my left, gesturing for me to follow. I was a bit shaky at first, holding onto the rail to steady myself, but my soles gripped securely on the wet rock. We walked about a hundred yards, then climbed three flights of stairs, zigzagging up the vertical face of the cliff. The zigs were cut into the rock but the zags, made of the same black, nonmetallic material as the handrails, protruded into space.
I was puffing at her heels when she stopped. The mist was thinner up here and when I turned to look in the direction she was facing I suffered a moment of vertigo. Instead of the vertical handrail there was the Net, spreading horizontally in front of me, fading into the mist like I was standing at the edge of a gigantic spiderweb. I stepped back, clutching at the solid rock behind me, trying to grab onto the smooth solidity.
She laughed at my reaction. "Silly. You're safer here than anywhere else in the Hole." Even through the translator I could hear the capitalization of that last word. She pointed along the cable in front of us. "That's where I found you, about four hundred yards from here." She glanced at me. "There was no mist then."
I nodded. "How did you get me off the Net?"
She laughed again. "It was a simple task for anybody who knows how to use the equipment and I am, after all, a Netrunner." She immediately proved it, running twenty feet out, her dainty feet dancing along the intersections of the cables. Only the cable near her feet gave, bending slightly under her weight. She turned around. "Come on." She jumped up and down, did a flip, then bounced off her back to her feet again. She kept jumping, bouncing higher than my head. "The cables have more spring further out and you can jump even higher. Come on."
My mind shied away from trying to figure out the physics of that.
"No way." The cables were as thick around as one of my fingers and they were only ten inches apart, but even though I couldn't fall through, I wasn't going out there. But curiosity brought me to the edge of the rock to examine the cables. When I squeezed one it felt slightly resilient. They seemed to be fastened directly to the face of the rock, but I reasoned they must be anchored deep into it. I kicked the cable and it vibrated slightly. Even without my memory of events I knew this material was unlike anything I had ever encountered before.
I looked up, wondering how far I had fallen, how far I could have fallen without serious injury, but all I saw was more mist. It was a fitting metaphor for my memory, a small, clear center surrounded by blank nothingness. But I knew what a translator was and I knew that mine was powered by my body heat.
The girl rejoined me on the solid rock, her face beaming, her posture emanating pride.
I stood up. "Very impressive. What is it for?"
She looked at me like I was mentally deficient. If she said the local equivalent of "Duh," the translator didn't pick up on it, but I'm sure she thought it. "It's for catching things that fall. We have the mines and we recycle nearly everything, but it's good to get other raw material."
"What if the object is too small and falls right through, or so big it tears through?"
"That's why we have bigger Nets higher and smaller Nets lower."
She pointed. "This is our smallest, but the Grimpniks have one size smaller than this." My translator tripped over the name. "We have a long-standing treaty with them. They get everything that falls through or that we drop. They aren't very friendly so nobody dares to violate the treaty."
I wasn't quite grasping the picture here. It all seemed too bizarre to be real. I pressed my hands to my head, trying to squeeze out a tangible, sensible memory.
"Hello Neola. Who's your friend?" I heard that from the translator. With my other ear I heard the actual voice and turned in that direction. My companion, Neola, I assumed, turned faster, her eyes wide with surprise, her face shadowed by guilt, quickly concealed behind a mask of a smile that didn't reach to her eyes.
"Well, hello there, Zyla. Fancy meeting you here when you're off shift." Neola stood with a hand on a hip, her voice dripping irony. When she continued a bitter hatred tinged her voice. "Why aren't you down below in your apartment fucking Ben?"
I se
nsed a serious rivalry.
The other girl, Zyla, stopped only a few paces away. She had a fuller figure than Neola. I could guess what had happened with Ben. Although Zyla seemed to ignore the vulgarity I saw a spark of fury ignite in her eyes, but she didn't let it heat her cool, sweet voice in the slightest degree. "Don't worry girl, we're getting along splendidly and the sex is great, but I'm taking a break because I'm going to get such a great deal of pleasure out of bringing you down." She turned her attention for the first time to me and studied me closely. "You're not from around here, are you?"
I didn't reply.
"You better come with me."
I didn't move.
Neola said, "I don't think so. He's coming with me." The hand on her hip edged back, reaching for a narrow metal tube I hadn't paid any attention to before.
Zyla laughed. "Where are you planning to go? You can try to hide again, but when I tell the Guild that you have a live Faller, like in the legend, the search will be thorough and he will be found. You're already in trouble for not reporting him. If you don't come down with me now you will never be allowed on the Nets again." She said it like it was the worst of fates and I saw Neola blanch a little, but when she replied her voice was steady.
"I don't care. We're going up."
Zyla backed up a few steps to take a better look at Neola. "Come to your senses girl. You're not the stuff legends are made of. No one has been up top for decades. There isn't enough air up there, and no food or water. You don't even know where to go."
"My dad told me the way, and he told me how to get air and food too."
Zyla turned back to me. "Her father was insane. You can't intend to go with her."
"I have too many questions." I pointed up. "That's where I'll find my answers." I didn't know if I was as sure as I sounded, but I admired Neola's determination and used it to strengthen my own.
Zyla took in a deep breath and let out a huge sigh. "I tried reasoning and it didn't work. You leave me no choice." She shook her arm and a metallic tube dropped from her sleeve into her hand. She flicked the end at Neola and it telescoped out, but even as Neola dodged she whipped her own tube around. The telescoping end shot out and touched Zyla on her left shoulder. Purple light flashed at the point of contact, Zyla stiffened for a second, then dropped, totally limp. Zyla's tube retracted, knocking itself out of her limp fingers. It clicked against the cold stone as it bounced and rolled toward the edge. I jumped and pinned it under one foot just inches from falling. Whatever I was, I had trained reflexes.
Neola said, "Grab her stunner and let's go." She bent down and took something from one of Zyla's pockets and put it in one of her own.
I picked up the metal tube, cold and damp with condensation. I pointed it at Zyla. "What about her?"
"She'll be just fine." Neola walked away and I followed, slipping the stunner into a leg pocket of my jumpsuit. "When she wakes up in fifteen or twenty minutes she'll have a headache for a while, but she deserves it. Without her comm unit," she patted her pocket, "even if she hurries, she's at least ten minutes from the nearest comm box. That gives us about half an hour head start before she sics the posse on us."
I slowed down. "Are you a criminal?"
"No, I'm a misunderstood hero." She half-turned to look back at me, to catch my reaction, but she didn't stop walking. "I'm going to save the Hole and you're going to help me." She wasn't smiling. Her certainty made her sound demented, and my face must have betrayed that thought. "I'm not crazy. I don't have time to explain right now, but I'm sure that what you want to know is up there too. Come on." She increased her pace. She didn't look back.
"Zyla said there was no food."
"What does Zyla know? A long time ago I already stashed more than enough food and water for the trip. It's high above us yet, where no one else ever has any reason to go anymore."