Spoiler! :
Chapter 3
Markus lay on the couch, relaxing from the feast. Trash was scattered around him, the wrappers and bottles of cheap, unhealthy food designed for a quick snack, not nutrition. Not that he cared. They were the first things he had to eat and drink in a long time, and all that mattered was his stomach was full. While he digested his meal, he rested his head back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, losing himself in his thoughts.
“I can’t believe what I woke up to the building abandoned with nobody around. This wasn’t what was intended when dad decided to put me under…..Dad…. I miss him. I can’t believe that I’ll never see him again, that I barely got to say goodbye. It wasn’t even a real goodbye; I was so hopped up on pain killers I couldn’t really tell what was happening.”
His vision began to blur with tears as he recalled the memory.
The room was white, the walls were white, the sheet was white, everything was white. It was supposed to induce calmness and security. Markus thought it was blinding. Of course, he didn’t dare complain. The room, besides the complete whiteness of it, was the epitome of comfort. The bed was one of those foam ones that conforms itself around the person sleeping in it. A nurse was never far away, and they checked on him every few minutes. Not that he really noticed. He wasn’t asleep, he had done too much of that to feel even slightly tired, even with all the milligrams of painkillers running through his system. But he was practically motionless to the point of most nurses just thinking he was asleep. The television was set to some comedy show, but he was long pass the point of knowing or caring about lame sitcom jokes. He lay there motionless, unable to muster any energy towards what happened around him. His father was in a chair to his right, sitting up close to the bed. He heard him sigh and felt him put his hand on his shoulder. Markus turned his head to face him with the same blank, emotionless stare. He heard his father start talking, the words not meaning anything then,
“Son, I’m so sorry. I wish that there were something, anything else I could do. But the tumors….they are too advanced….growing too quickly.” He stopped and ducked his head, trying not to let his son see the tears in his face. His hand tightened on Markus’s shoulder, his voice choking up as he continued “I…this…this is the only way. They are going to freeze you, put you in….in one of those cryogenic chambers. It won’t be forever, but it will stall the tumors, for however long it takes to find a cure.” His father leaned over and hugged Markus, who continued to sit there with that blank face. He felt his father’s tears on his shoulder as he continued, “I want you to know that I love you. I will always love you. I want you to know this isn’t your fault, that none of this was in our control. I promise I will be there when you wake up; it shouldn’t take more than five years for us to find a cure, ten at the most.”
“Markus, Dearie, I need to talk to you. It’s a bit urgent.”
Markus was jolted out of his memory by G.R.A.N’s picture appearing on the television screen. He looked over at the screen, concern visible on his face. “What’s up?”
“Well, I have a problem. When you woke me up, I began running scans and diagnostics on all my systems when I wasn’t busy with you. Unfortunately, my cooling system is dead, and if I don’t get any help, it’s going to end badly for me.”
Markus frowned, “What do you mean it would end badly for you? Don’t you just turn on a fan or something?”
G.R.A.N sighed in exasperation, “No, if it were that easy I wouldn’t have bothered you. I’m everywhere in the building, but I’m based in one room in the basement. I guess you could say that’s where my ‘body’ is. In that room are my processors, hard drives, and data centers. My entire self is stored in that room. And I need powerful cooling systems to keep all of those running optimally. If they get too hot, they shut down which would shut down parts of me. If they overheat completely, the circuits would fry, and well, I’d probably die.”
Markus shrugged helplessly as he said, “Well what do you want me to do? I don’t know anything about cooling systems or air conditioners. I barely know how to work the remote.”
G.R.A.N sighed again as she said, “My cooling system is based around two things, powerful de-humidifying air conditioners, and a liquid based coolant. The air conditioners are there to lower the humidity of the room while keeping it cool. The coolant is the much more important one however. Each of my mainframes is built around large tubes. These tubes are filled with a special liquid coolant. These coolants transmit the low temperature through the tubes and into the system. The tubes go up to the ceiling and into a special tank in the center of the room. This main tank has a large battery powered cooling mechanism at its base, similar to what the chambers used. This keeps the main coolant cool. Anytime these coolants lost their temperature, they would be cycled back into the tank and replaced. The problem is that when the facility was shut down, the coolant system was as well. This means that all of my coolant is at the wrong temperature, and the main cooler is unusable from age. Something is keeping my air conditioners from doing their job as well. These are physical problems, problems I can’t do anything about. Don’t worry though dearie, I know it sounds complex, but trust me, I know exactly what to do. I just need you to do it for me. Just head down to the basement where you woke up, and I’ll tell you from there. And please don’t dawdle dearie, I’m not sure how long I can keep running before things start shutting down.”
The screen blinked off, leaving him alone in the room again. Slumping his shoulders in defeat, he sighed and thought, “I can’t do this, I don’t know what she is thinking” He stood up, walked over to the door, and sighed again, pausing to think “Dad, why aren’t you here?” before leaving the employee’s lounge.
He made his way down the hallway and to the stairs again. They posed no trouble to him a second time around, as this time he knew where the break was. He made it back downstairs and into the dark hallway where the cyro-chambers were. Not sure of where to proceed, he paused in the hallway and called out, “Alright G.R.A.N, where do I need to go?”
A minute passed, and her voice flickered to life. There was some static in the background whenever she talked, not enough to interfere with what she said, but it was still noticeable.
“Alright Dearie, now I need you to head back into the room you came out of.”
Markus nodded and moved, making his way through the hallway with a little extra speed in his step. Now that he didn’t have anything to occupy his mind, the hallway seemed a little emptier, a little darker than before. He stepped inside the room, the door still open from when he left. When he stepped inside, G.R.A.N’s voice crackled to life.
“Alright, now you need to go to the second to last cyro-chamber. The one right before the one you came out of. The records show that the occupant left long ago, and nobody’s been in it since. The cooling mechanism should still be operational, just waiting for a jolt of power. You need to get behind the chamber, open it up. There should be a large blue canister with rubber grips. This is the cooler, the filter that the air was cycled through to make it cold enough to maintain cryogenic freezing. You’ll need to unscrew the hoses, which might be cold so be careful, put the sealing caps on to prevent the nitrogen loss, and then drag the canister down to the floor below. The sealing caps should be magnetically attached to the canister. Do you understand dearie?”
Markus shrugged and said “I think so; I guess we’ll find out.”
He made his way to the second to last chamber and stared for a minute, trying to figure out a way to get behind it. The chamber and the wall were only separated by about a foot and a half. And the space between that chamber and the next one on the line was just wide enough to fit the long dead computer wired to the chamber before it. The sides of the chamber had one small ventilated square in the center of the chamber wall.
Markus stood there for a moment, trying to judge if he could get behind it. He then moved forward and gripped the computer, which was on a small cart, and pulled it towards the center of the room. He made it a few feet before the cart computer was stopped by the wires. He barely stopped the cart before the computer fell off behind it.
‘Right, need to disconnect it before I move it.’ He thought as he moved around behind the computer. He struggled with the wires for a moment, their stiffness from lack of movement giving him trouble. He managed to get them out with some effort, and finished getting the computer out of the way. Stepping into the gap, he was glad for once about his underweight, emaciated frame. He had no trouble fitting in. The back of the cyro chamber was blank, with a large rectangular panel indicating where the mechanics were. He couldn’t see any visible way of opening the panel at first, but closer inspection revealed the panel was actually inside the rest of the frame. Markus thought for a moment, then put his hands on the panel and pushed towards the other side. It resisted due to age, but he managed to get it mostly open. He exhaled from the effort and stepped behind the chamber, once again thanking his thin form. There wasn’t a whole lot of room to move, but there was enough.
The back of the chamber was completely different from the front. The back was vaguely blank, not a whole lot of wires or electronics. There was a large blue canister in the middle, with a number of hoses hooking it to different things. The vast majority seemed to hook into random spots, aiming themselves at the front of the Chamber. There were two hoses stretching off to the left and right, and close examination revealed that they went to a funnel-like object right about where the vents on the wall were. Several wires stretched across the inside, some plugging into the chamber itself, while the others stretched off to the vent vacuums on either side. They were all plugged in to the base of the chamber, which is where Markus assumed the power was generated. The canister itself was a light blue, with indecipherable writing printed on it. Next to where each hose plugged in was a small, black object. Curious, Markus reached over and touched one, and was surprised to feel his finger slip in sluggishly, as if he were reaching through wet rubber or syrup. He pulled his hand back, and the object regained its original cylindrical form. He poked it a few more times, laughing softly as he did so. After a moment of that, he sighed and grew serious again. He looked for a moment, trying to decide which hose to detach first. He decided to go with the vacuum hose on the left, and, gripping it tightly, began attempt to detach it from the canister. After a minute of it not budging, Markus let his arms fall and stood there, breathing heavily from the effort. Staring for a moment, he noticed a thick copper ring around where the hose met the canister. Gripping the ring, he gasped for a moment at how cold it was before attempting to unscrew it. He was met with some resistance at first, but after a moment, he managed to get it undone and the hose fell. He quickly grabbed the nearest black cap and stuck it on where the hose was, thereby preventing any of the canister’s air from escaping.
That done, he turned his attention to the other hoses, and after a few minutes work, had the canister completely disconnected from the chamber. He saw the rubber grips stretching out from either side of the canister, and with an intake of breath, gripped the rubber handles and lifted the canister up. It came out surprisingly easy, and Markus was able to handle it without too much trouble. As he brought it out it accidentally touched his leg, and even through the fabric he the freezing cold of the canister, making his leg tighten up. He stood there for a moment as he tried to work some feeling back into his leg, and then carefully continued taking the canister out. After reaching the center of the room with the canister, he stood there and called out,
“Okay G.R.A.N, I have the canister, now what?”
G.R.A.N’s voice crackled to life again, the static becoming more noticeable every time her voice entered the room,
“Alright dearie, you’ve done excellent work. Now I need you to head down one more level, the door should be open for you. The last room on your right will be the room you need; I’ll tell you more when you get down there.” Her voice cut out, leaving Markus alone once more. He sighed as he picked up the canister and started making his way out of the room. He could tell G.R.A.N. was getting worse, and his thoughts troubled him as he made his way down the hallway.
‘I don’t know if I can do this. I mean, this is the kind of thing trained professionals do, not guys like me. But G.R.A.N’s voice….She’s getting worse. I need to help her, without her….There’s no point.’
He stopped his thoughts as he reached the stairwell and headed down, going into the floor. ‘At least I’m not going to fall through these steps’ he thought as he made his way down. The steps were solid and hard, having been cut into the concrete itself. They only had two flights of steps however, and he found himself staring at a much different door then the rest of the facility. This one was a dark steel color, and seemed to be made out of solid metal. No windows were cut into it, leaving it looking like the entrance to a vault. In the center of the door was a large keypad, this one with letters instead of numbers. The password was already entered as he arrived, the words “Winter Wonderland” portrayed on the bright green screen. Markus smirked at the quote before pressing the large button on the screen that said, “Open”. The massive steel door slid open with a screeching sound, and Markus peered inside. The steel door led to a hallway vaguely similar to the ones above it. However, instead of tile on the floor and ceiling panels, the walls and roof were of a light grey concrete, with familiar blue lines spread out and intersecting each other like an ethereal spider-web. He stepped inside the hallway and made his way to the turn. The rest of the hallway was similar, with the exception of the solid wooden doors placed into the walls.
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