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Gaia NPC Story Contest Entry: Step by Step |
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Step. Step. Step. Step. Each step echoed in the narrow hallway, lit only by his own glow. He had only been there several days, but it felt like an eternity. One more eternity of searching, stumbling, finding nothing. He was finally here, in the old facility, but it held no answers. None of the answers he so desperately sought. It was abandoned, he knew, four years ago -- and it was four, not ten -- but he had hoped that, maybe, there would be a scrap left over. Something that would tell him what he needed to know.
When he had investigated the facility beneath the mansion, he had found a charred, crumbling husk. Ashes floated down from the edges of broken walls, stirred by his footsteps. Tiny shards of glass littered the floors, some with identifiable numbers and lines, some with worn labels still intact. He was astonished. Surely, he had been there mere days before, and it had been alive and functioning, but now...
Alive...
That, it seemed, was the key. Alive. He had woken up in a graveyard after the chemical neutralizer had proven weaker than normal, and everything had changed. For the better half of a month, he had come into contact with thousands of people -- how strange to meet so many people, but he was stranded outside of the facility, it couldn't be helped -- and all of them had tried to convince him that he, himself, was dead. It was preposterous, really. He was sentient. He was solid. He was...well, he had been sporting a strange, deathly pallor of late, but that was merely stress. He was stressed, certainly. How could he not be overwhelmed and disoriented by how much the world had changed in only a few hours? Days at most?
But he had found a laboratory, a small makeshift facility, within the chaos, and the comforting atmosphere of scientific progress had eased some of his fears. Certainly the people working there were eccentric, and spent most of their time on idle chatter and odd activities, but he had worked with sublevel 29; he was used to that. But they had also stirred up even more questions within him. They had told him of strange and impossible things and given him ample evidence, evidence that was difficult to contradict. They had demonstrated knowledge of G Corp, far beyond what was declassified. They had almost convinced him that somehow, as unlikely as it sounded, six years had passed him right by.
They were gone now. He had left them in his search for answers, and when he returned, the place was empty. The streets surrounding it, which had been so full of life during that fateful October, held nothing but remnants; it was, dare he say it, a ghost town. He was reminded of the time when, along his quest, he had ended up in a strange place, a place called Halloweentown...
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"Oh, pardon me," he said, turning to face the woman he had nearly bumped into. When he did so, he noticed that she was abnormally pale, and appeared to be glowing in the dark. (He had noticed that the place was always dark; it was an intriguing phenomenon, one he would have to return and study someday.)
"It's no problem," said the woman easily, smiling and turning to walk away.
"Err, wait a moment," he said to her. "Have you perhaps thought about seeing a medical professional? Because, no offense meant, but you look rather unwell."
She studied him critically for a moment. "You're a labtech, right? Or are you just dressed as one?"
"Dressed as..." He glanced around at the perpetual Halloween decorations, and recalled the numerous strange people he had seen on his way through the town, all dressed in costumes as if it were Halloween all the time -- vampires, zombies, werewolves, extraterrestrial beings with large green heads and black eyes, even some that appeared to be minor deities of some sort -- and considered his answer. "I'm from out of town," he responded, "and I am indeed a labtech. However, my work is highly classified, and I cannot--"
"I knew it," she gushed, beaming widely. Then she frowned. "You...would you happen to know any labtechs by the number 13 or 62?"
He blinked, suddenly on his guard. "I worked with 062's team on several projects recently, and 013 was among the workers on that team. How do you know them?" he asked, suspicious. He had hoped the security leaks had only spread to the people he had dealt with over Halloween; the thought of certain things being known to the world at large was a frightening prospect.
"Well..." she began, hesitant. "I haven't seen them since they died, and I was wondering if you might know where they are..." She stopped, looking down and rubbing her wrist uncertainly.
"I don't know why people keep telling me that I and my coworkers are dead," he snapped, more harshly than he intended; the woman looked at him sympathetically. Desperate, he rambled on. "I don't know why everyone is telling me that the year is 2010. And I don't know why I can't find anyone, or anything, or any scientifically viable answers to this madness."
"You're one of them," she said quietly. "You don't know yet." He waited for her to elaborate. "Let me tell you something about this town...what's your name?"
"Rory," he answered.
"Ah," she nodded. "Well, I'm Julia. I live here...well, I wouldn't say I live, exactly. You see, this is Halloweentown. It's the only place where people of all states of life...and afterlife...can lead normal lives. If I were anywhere else, I could only exist at night, but here it's always night. I can be with my daughter, even though I'm dead." She smiled. "Nicki loves it here. She's made friends with some of the witches in her school...even learned some magic from them. I can raise her here, and I can be as strong and as real as a human, all of the time." She spread her arms and grinned. "It's a wonderful place."
He looked at her carefully. "So you're saying that all of these people are actually...vampires, and witches, and aliens?"
Julia nodded. "You thought they were all in costumes, didn't you? Well, you get used to it. And people do come here just to walk around all dressed up and bask in the spirit of Halloween."
He shook his head and fixed her with a cool stare. "There are no such things as ghosts," he said flatly. "There is no such thing as life beyond death." She looked down again, clearly disappointed that her ruse had failed. "I must be going, but if I find 013 or 062, I will give them your regards. Farewell." With that, he turned and left, determinedly ignoring the lights and the sounds, the sensation of something unnatural around him. Instead, he focused on his footsteps.
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Thinking back on the encounter, he felt a chill run through him. He shivered, but kept moving forward. Step. Step. Julia had tried to feed him the same old insanity. Step. Step. He would never find the truth surrounded by all these lies. Step. Step. But how could so many people be wrong? Step. Step. Perhaps there was some truth to this ghost business after all...Pause. No. He shoved the thoughts away. Irrational, all of it. He continued walking, focusing only on his feet...the one thing he was sure of, now that the world had fallen apart around him.
The sound of his footsteps faded away as the sun began to rise.
 LabTech Kestin · Sat Nov 17, 2012 @ 01:50am · 0 Comments |
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