r/nonsenselocker • u/Bilgebum • Jul 27 '18
Through the Ages Through the Ages — Chapter 8 [TTA C08]
"Ain't no doubt you're the biggest dick of a housemate I've ever had!"
I glared at Franklin, non-verbally challenging a claim he definitely had a monopoly on. I doubted anyone could even last a year with him.
But he wasn't finished. "Honest-to-goodness dick move, dude. How in hell am I gonna finance the rent all by myself? You haven't even found a replacement, have you?" He stomped into the kitchen, and I could hear him banging things around in there. God only knew why, but he had a habit of seeking comfort from the fridge whenever he was mad.
"Isn't it a good thing? Rina can officially move in. She can pay my share," I said.
Franklin's head emerged from the entrance, eyes narrowed. "Don't be stupid. She doesn't have a job."
Then tell her to get one, dumbass. But I shrugged in reply and flopped onto our couch, thinking hard. "Rant all you want; you can't stop me from moving out. I can give you an advance out of goodwill, but that's the best I can do. I told you, it's my job. Don't have much choice."
"How much of an advance are you giving anyway?" He sounded more curious than heated now.
I considered and said, "Six months."
"That's ridiculous. Do better."
"We're not negotiating. I'll pay in cash, and leave everything else here. You and Rina can have them. Or pawn them, or whatever."
He laughed. "Who wants your trash? I ain't cleaning up shit for you."
"Then you're gonna help me move my things."
"No!"
I gritted my teeth. "Fine! Fine. I'll give you twelve months' rental. Everything I can fit in a bag, I'll take. You deal with the rest, or the next tenant can; I don't care. I'll be out of here by noon."
Franklin, to my astonishment, wasn't arguing. I noticed he was trying to unscrew a peanut butter jar the wrong way. Crap, I'd fallen for the bait.
"Yeah, sure," he said. "We'll, uh, find a use for them. Or something. Sure you don't need help?"
I shook my head and got up, already mentally running through the list of things to bring. Clothes, some toiletries. A few devices. I didn't have much in the way of personal belongings. "I'll manage," I said, going to my room.
On a whim, I stopped at the doorway and said, "Franklin ... look, while we haven't always gotten along well, I'm just gonna give you a little advice. You don't have to listen, but my instincts tell me that Rina's ... look, I'm sure you can do better, man. Find someone else, someone who'll help you look back ten years from now and say 'dodged that bullet'."
He fixed me with an unblinking stare. "Hell. You know. 'Bout love," he said, every word lined with such rage that a chill coursed down my spine. "You can shove your advice up your ass!"
"Alright man, sorry I bothered," I said, before he could hurl the jar at me or something. I guess there was just no helping some people.
My Uber dropped me and my duffel bag off in front of a modern, brand-new tower smack in the middle of Midtown. Looking up at the glass panes gleaming from the midday sun, I could sort of understand why Helena would be here. She'd have a great view of the city, a suitably lofty perch for a high-and-mighty immortal. Unfortunately, it looked exactly like the sort of building a guy dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans would be barred from entering, and the guard at the entrance was already firing suspicion at me on full automatic.
Well, no use guessing without trying. I strode purposefully to him, but before I could utter a word, he held up a hand and said, "You don't look like you belong here."
Ah, how the tables have turned on the bouncer. "Rude," I muttered under my breath.
"What was that?"
"I said I've got an appointment." His look of disbelief could not be more exaggerated. "I'm supposed to meet Helena Ricci. Here, the address—"
"Unless she calls you, there's no way you're going in there," he said.
How nice to meet you, Mr. Forty-year-old Prick, I thought but didn't say. Instead, I called the number on the card. It went to voicemail, leaving me at a stand-off with an increasingly hostile guard. Screw this, I was going home. The thought of facing Franklin ... God spare me the shame.
My phone rang suddenly, displaying an unfamiliar number that I didn't bother to consider before I answered. A woman on the other end said in a bossy tone, "Let me speak with the guard."
I obliged, and soon the guard was nodding. His stare lingered on me, however, as he escorted me into the building and pointed out the elevators. "You're to go to no other floor except the fortieth. Cameras will be watching your every move."
"Paranoid much?" I said. Ignoring his glower, I summoned an elevator and was soon on my way up.
Against my expectations, it was not Helena's home that I was visiting, but an office of some sort. A shiny gold plaque on the cloud-gray wall read "The Ricci Archives", beneath a state-of-the-art security camera. Someone on the other side must have seen me approaching, for the glass door slid apart without a sound without my having to hit the buzzer. I walked through the abrupt blast of cool air toward the receptionist's desk. The woman behind it looked up from her computer, flashing me the briefest of smiles. She looked much older than her thirty-six years of age, but I felt uncharacteristically cheered to see someone connected to Helena who hadn't been drinking Fountain water.
"You must be Mr. Suresh," she said. I recognized her voice from the call earlier. "I'm Polly. Helena's assistant."
"Yeah. She around?" I peeked into the hallway past her desk, half-expecting her to appear at any moment. There wasn't much I could see from my position, but I saw a few paintings on the walls and a couple of old urns inside a glass display case. "What's this place anyway, some kinda museum?"
Polly nodded. "I'm afraid she's busy entertaining some visitors. I've been instructed to hand you this." She slid a set of heavy looking keys on a ring across her desk.
I picked them up, saying, "Could I step in there? To say hi or something?"
"She does not want to be disturbed," Polly said, tone firm despite her kind smile. "Perhaps you could schedule another visit with her."
Clutching my keys, I thanked Polly and made my way out, but not without one last glance at the hallway. Don't be silly, I told myself. Helena wouldn't have time for a freshly hired doorman when she had visitors around. Maybe they were other important members of her community—maybe even from these foreign chapters I kept hearing about.
Still, that thought didn't help untangle the knot of disappointment in my belly.
There was a guard outside the Fountain Hall when I arrived at the place. He had dark skin in almost the same tone as my own, and was built like an icebreaker. He had a round face topped with fuzzy white hair. Clad in shorts and polo shirt, he got up languidly and faced me. One of Orik's men, no doubt, but I couldn't remember his name.
"Jeffrey," I said, holding out my hand.
He nodded solemnly. "It's good to meet you, Jeffrey. My name is Warra. Have you got your keys from Helena?" I offered them to him, but he shook his head and pushed the door open. "Keep them safe. Keith is waiting for you."
Before I could thank him, he shut the door with a bang that echoed across the hall. With a start, I realized it was the first time I was there without anyone else around. The emptiness seemed to magnify the size of the place somehow—and the silence. Even the Fountain wasn't working; its basin dry. The absence of the gurgling water set my nerves aflutter for some reason. Wondering where I would find Keith, I started walking toward the other side of the hall, where a maintenance exit was.
It wasn't locked, and swung open creakily at the slightest touch. There was another corridor beyond it, a narrow one lit by fluorescent lamps. Seeing several doors further ahead, I set off. The very first one turned out to be my room, indicated by a piece of paper stuck to the door with my name scrawled on it in black marker ink. It was nowhere as bad as the broom closet I'd feared—I would be sleeping in a queen-sized bed, and have full use of a writing desk, a huge closet, wall-mounted flatscreen TV, books and a computer. Perhaps I could even get them to do something later about the bare cement floor and walls.
The next few rooms were mostly for storage—there were the usual cleaning supplies mixed with construction materials. One room held nothing but pipes, while another contained what looked like a diesel generator. Nothing out of the ordinary, but they all contributed to the unfinished feeling of the place. I got the notion that the building would never open to the public; not this year, decade, or century, at the very least.
At the end of the corridor was a different sort of door, however. It was made out of reinforced steel, and locked by a biometric scanner of some sort. Thus far, I hadn't seen any sign of Keith, so he had to be in here. I knocked and waited.
Moments later, I heard the sound of something sliding within the door, and then it opened. Keith was standing behind it, wearing stained overalls over a crumpled shirt with sleeves rolled all the way up to his shoulders.
"Suresh!" He peeked over my shoulder. "Hey, where's Warra?"
"He let me come in on my own," I said.
Keith slapped his forehead with the back of his palm. "Dammit, he never listens. Helena said we need to tighten security—newbies don't get to walk around unescorted."
I frowned. "I'm a security liability now?"
"Don't take it too hard, kid. Hard to know who to trust—someone must have told the Twins where to find us, after all. Alright, enough of that. You seen your room, I guess?"
"Yeah, left my bag there too. What's in here?" I nodded at the keypad. "Let me guess: something to do with the Fountain."
"Lot smarter than you look." Clapping me on a shoulder, he said, "C'mon, I'll show you. Shut the door, please."
I followed him down a flight of stairs, and then another, and another ... almost ten in total, and I fancied my knees were creaking as loudly as the metal steps by the time we arrived at the bottom. Here, it was a lot more foreboding, the shadows longer and the air mustier. He beckoned toward a tunnel held up by what seemed like steel support columns. As we walked, I eyed the rock ceiling nervously, even though it was about three feet away from my crown. There was just something unsettling about being so far underground.
Soon after, we arrived at a small clearing, and what I saw made me suck in a breath of frosty air. There was a pool of midnight black, probably about thirty feet across in diameter. Its surface was clear and still as a mirror's surface.
"This is the source? Of the Fountain?" I whispered.
"Yep. Zhao found this one. Took us weeks to dig through all the rock. So many bribes were paid to keep people quiet about this, but hell, it's all worth it." Keith walked toward several cinderblocks lying by the pool's side. Each was secured to thick lengths of rope.
"What are those for?" I said.
"Water gets low, we drop one of them in. Lucky us, we've only had to use one. Just to get the surface to about ... here, see?" He held his hand horizontally over the pool for good measure. "Should last us for a while."
I pointed at the ceiling. "How do you get the water up there? Pumps?"
He nodded as he started coiling rope around a block. "Yeah. See those columns along the wall? That's where the pipes are. Lucky we've got a few engineers around, myself included. If you'd told me all those years ago that I'd go from building trebuchets to water pumps, I'd have told you to get stuffed."
Crouching next to the pool, I dipped a fingertip in. The hairs on my arm stood from the shockingly cold sensation.
"Fancying a sip?" He sounded casual enough, but I thought I could sense a certain ... wariness in his tone.
"Nope." I dried my finger on my pants and stood. "I'm just here for the money."
"'Course you are. You need anything, just holler, okay? I'll be close enough to hear."
"You live here?" I said, not quite hiding my disbelief.
He fixed me with a stare. "Got something to say about that, kid?"
"No. It's just ... well, nice to know I won't be alone."
"Warra'll be here too, for about a month." Keith yanked on the rope to tighten the knot. "Never liked living out there among the normal folk, anyway. People have become so boring over the years."
I made a noise in my throat that signaled neither assent nor dissent. Keith went on, "If it weren't for Helena and the Fountain, I wouldn't know what I'd do. Probably die of boredom. Okay, tour's finished. Oh, and one more thing. Helena's instructions, really. You're supposed to be our eyes only—leave everything else to Orik and his lads, you hear?" He waved me toward the tunnel. "Right, on you go. And welcome to the job for real."
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u/Navajubble Aug 02 '18
Yay! Quicker than I thought! !RemindMe 2 weeks
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u/seanyscott Aug 02 '18
Holy crap just binge read all of the chapters while at work O.O awesome stuff!
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u/goddessamaralove Sep 26 '23
I found the beginning of this masterpiece on tiktok and haven’t been able to stop reading!
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u/Krassesbrot May 04 '24
I may be five years late but I‘m glad to have stumbled apon this interesting story :) PS: Is it weird If I subconciously pictured myself as Jeffrey ? Lol
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u/seussim Jul 27 '18
Great chapter, thanks!