Radical-9

Intermission V:

February 24^th, 2022

1:20 am

The Light Rail is a remodified subway station. It was installed here a few years before the government shut down, full development was halted in installing it throughout the country, but the several testing states are still equipped with them. They run off of light energy from the sun that charges during the day so that it can be used at night.

It transports people to different locations by splitting up their molecules and rearranging them in a different location. It's somewhat like Wonkavision from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I guess they still call it a rail system for nostalgic purposes.

“Come on, are you coming or what?” Jake says as he walks up to the front doors.

“Yes, I'm coming. I was just admiring it a bit,” I say.

“What, you've never been here?” he asks.

“No, I haven't had any reason to.”

“Well then, you're about to be amused,” he says, grinning. He goes to the door, he grabs at the handle and swings it open. Inside I see that the walls and ceiling are translucent like glass on the insides and beams of light color the walls, it’s breathtaking. There is a layer of brick on the outside, so the light is in between the glass and brick. The room itself is rectangular, it is largely empty except for a small tablet in the back and a door on the opposite end of the room.

“This place used to be a library, that's why there is so much empty space,” Jake says, walking inside.

He holds the door open for me as I walk through, escaping the chill outside.

“What happened to the books they took out?” I ask.

“Probably gave them away, maybe burned them,” he says, gauging my reaction. I stare at him hard. “Just kidding! Just kidding, I don't know. Dad just says that they didn't get to outfit it with furniture yet because they were so preoccupied with getting the actual transport to work. When they did they decided to leave the interior decorating to the workers who came in after their break.”

“But those workers never came in,” I say.

“That's correct, they quit when everything fell through. That was...nine years ago now. It's so weird, I was alive for it but I barely remember anything even changing.”

“I can understand that,” I say.

“Anyway, we're wasting valuable time,” he says.

Jake begins walking down the long hallway, I join behind him, staring at the spaces that books upon books once rested. He takes out his father's ID card and swipes it across the tablet's surface. It blinks on and rings a sound of acceptance.

He walks to the wall beside it and then presses against it as if there was a button there and then a sound chimes. A small slot in the wall opens up and Jake inserts his father's ID once more. It seems to suck it up, after a few seconds it spits it back out. The door beside us then opens, inside is a small space about the size of an elevator shaft. We head inside. Inside the doors close and a light seals us on the inside. The ceiling lowers until it’s barely above our heads. To our sides are glowing beams of light that shine as bright as they did in the large room before, the floor seems to be a solid white, but covered with the thick layer of glass the walls are made of.

“Is this a dead end?” I ask.

Jake says nothing, but instead he presses another would-be button on the wall. Blue glowing lines of light streak across the walls and floor, giving it a more futuristic look than it already had. The room begins to shake, I put my arm to the wall to keep myself from falling. After a few seconds it stops shaking and I take my hand off of the wall.

“Let’s go,” Jake says.

“Go? We didn’t even do anything!” I say.

“Didn’t we?” Jake says and then he walks to the wall behind us, pressing his hand against the wall. A line of light shoots up and forms a rectangle on the wall, and then it splits into two, and then they open in front of us. I’m left standing there, confused. I begin to walk out of the enclosed cube, chasing after Jake.

What I see is totally unexpected, it’s not the library-like train station, but a totally new room. Its walls are paneled with various kinds of hard wood, the corners rounded off to extend towards the next wall. The floor is a darker, harder wood, covered in a red carpet.

“Jake, what the hell happened?” I ask.

“That’s the light rail, it’s pretty cool, eh?” He asks.

“How is that even possible?”

“Don't ask me,” he says, laughing.

“It's one thing to hear about it...but to actually feel it, it's like we didn't even move.”

“Ah, but what we feel and what actually happens to us are two different things, right? Now, come on, we’re only a few blocks from my dad's office,” he says.

“That's not too bad,” I say.

We exit the light rail station, outside it is still dark. I see trees beyond trees, and then some buildings even beyond the trees.

“Where are we now?”

“Glendale, it's only seven miles away,” Jake says, and then coughs into his arm.

“We did all of that for seven miles?” I ask.

“It beats walking,” he says, and then starts walking.

I look at him funny, “Isn't that a little...off?” I ask, walking beside him.

“In what way?” He asks, looking back at me with a grin.

“I just feel like we could have walked it, seven miles isn't much,” I say.

“We weren't walking seven miles at one in the morning in February,” He says.

“It isn't that bad out,” I say.

“It is if you're walking seven miles.”

I realize that he is going to continue on this, so I let it go. We're passing by some buildings on our left, they look like houses that are for sale. There seems to be an increasing amount of them. “What's up with all of the houses here?” I ask.

“We're getting closer to Denver, that's what's happening.”

“Oh.”

I'd heard of Denver, heard in school that it was a place you should just stay away from, that the people rioted there and things got crazy. Because of that I'd never even dared of going anywhere close, I'd felt okay living in Aurora. We arrive at the station only a few minutes later.

It is a two story white bricked building with a dark gray roof. There are flower pots hanging next to the windows on the second floor, but other than that it looks pretty dreary. the building stands stories tall, taller than any of the other buildings surrounding it. I peek inside, squinting my eyes through the glass door to see anything, it is pitch black inside. I'm about to go for the door when Jake stops me, putting his arm out in front of me.

“What's up?” I ask.

“It's going to be locked, you wouldn't have access to a locked police station, unless you've got something to share with me?” he asks.

“No, I wouldn't, and I'm going to assume you do with your father's ID?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says, sliding the card into a reader that sits beside the door.

It blinks twice and then opens. The lights inside turn on (I assume by command of the reader.) The doors slide open and we head inside.

The inside of the police station itself is painted green with white and yellow checker patterned tiled floors. The receptionist's desk sits right in front of us off to the left, it is a heavy-set wood. Behind the desk is a bunch of mail cubbies, a large American flag (slightly faded), and a door that says “Chief of Police, Randolph K. Carroway”. In the center of the first floor are two benches facing opposite ways. Behind the benches lies another door which has a plaque on it, “Interrogation Room”. The atmosphere is not friendly, but when would a police station be?

“C'mon, my dad's office is past here, we have to use the door behind the receptionist's desk,” he says, worming his way past the big wooden desk. I follow behind him, it seems to get more cold as we near the door. He grabs at the ID card around his neck and swipes it across the scanner beside the door, I can hear it unlock from the outside.

“Do you think your dad will notice us coming in here?” I ask.

He looks back at me, running his hand through his hair, “He actually left town yesterday for a business trip.”

“What kind of business does the chief of police need to do out of town?”

“I don't know, meet with the board of directors?” He asks.

“Do we even still have board of directors?”

“Maybe, I don't know.”

Jake turns back to the door and grabs the handle, opening it up. Inside is a square shaped room with a large desk in the center. Alongside the walls are cork boards with various pictures tacked up. I see a picture of Jake when he was younger beside a photograph of John Lennon. There's a desktop computer sitting on the desk, the tower must be underneath.

“What we're looking for will be on that,” Jake says, pointing to the monitor.

“And how are you sure of that?” I ask, walking around the desk to face the monitor, it is black.

“Because I know that the police department has been trying to digitalize all of their records in case something happens. The idea has been in planning stages for years, but was finally put into action when the government fell.”

“I see.”

“So anything they have on this Adata should be accessible through this computer.”

“If there is anything on there,” I say.

“If there isn't, then we'll check out Technodome.”

“Do you know how to access that information?” I ask.

“I can find my way around,” he says, smirking. He ducks below to turn on the computer, I can see the monitor flicker on. It shows a prompt for a name and password.

“And you know his details?” I turn to him, he's standing back up, digging his hand into his pocket.

“Nope, that's why I have this,” he says, pulling out a small blue thumb drive. “This has software on it that will crack his password. It runs through all of the possible options until it gets the right one to put it simply.”

“That's either really ballsy or really stupid.”

“How about a bit of both?” He asks as he slides the thumb drive into the computer. The screen goes black for a minute again. It takes about thirty more seconds until long strands of numbers and letters stretch across the screen.

“Just how did you learn to do this, exactly?” I ask, staring at the numbers and letters.

“I've got a computer at my place. I just learned by reading up on it there every so often.”

“This is the first I'm hearing that you have a computer.” I say.

“I don't really like to tell many people,” he says.

“And why's that?” I ask.

“Because then I'd get asked to use it.”

“Oh, what? Do you maybe have something to hide? Would you need to clear your browsing history or something?” I poke him square in the chest.

He grins, standing up and puffing his chest out, “Not necessarily. I don't search up things you might think I would, case in point things like this,” he says.

“Point taken.”

As I say it the computer screen goes pitch black once more, and then immediately it changes, it has logged itself in. Jake's dad's computer is now ours for the searching.

“Now this next part comes from dear old dad, he's told me stories about the programs they use to organize their information on occasion.”

“Really?”

“I don't think he intends it at first. He used to tell my mom his stories about his work before she left. I think it was the stress of his job that made her go, I think, but anyway, when she eventually left he kind of worked his way to telling his stories to me. He'd vent about what was bothering him or whenever something worked in his favor.”

“I always wondered where your mom went, pardon my crude way of saying that,” I say.

“Don't mind it at all, it's fine. I honestly don't think I'd be able to handle her situation either, I mean, I can tell my dad's job is stressful, and he is one that loves how other people view him.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

Jake puts his hands to his side as he coughs, turning his head. “Yeah, that's why he is so keen on telling his stories. He loves the attention, at times he definitely deserves it, he does a good job here.”

Even though Jake doesn't like others to know about his dad's work he really is proud of his dad. Hell, I would be too, it isn't easy being chief of police in a chaos such as this.

“Anyway, I'm sorry for blabbering,” Jake begins, scrambling to the computer, pulling the keyboard close towards him, “My father said that the information is held in this program he called The Vault. It was sort of like a virtual recreation of something like an evidence locker, but on a much larger scale.” Jake clicks through some menus on the computer, he opens a window that holds even more menus on the inside.

“This looks like information overload to me, how are you going to find what we're looking for? There must be thousands of different things if not more locked away in this so called vault,” I say, leaning in close.

“I can do a search of key terms, so if I include something like Adata and Technodome, then I'll condense all of this information to things relating to those-”

“I understand the basic concept of keywords, Jake,” I say.

“Right, sorry.”

“Don't apologize, search,” I say.

He looks over at me with a face I can only look at for a moment without bursting into tears laughing, “Ex-cuuuuuuse me, ma'am?” He asks, cocking his head to the side.

“I'm fourteen, I'm not a ma'am,” I say. “And I said to hurry up. It's one thing getting in here, it's another to do this and get out quick.”

“I'm working,” he says, sticking his tongue out at me and begins typing. I can see the list of objects disappear, words enter and leave the screen, it's so fast I can hardly keep up. It could be that I'm absolutely awful with computers. I've always preferred the less electronic methods. It keeps the body in use. It might also help that it's hard for pretty much anything technological to stay afloat considering the support for it is very limited. Hell, Technodome Inc. is just a fraction of what technological advancement was like before, so I've read.

The words stop on the computer screen, Jake scans his eyes across the screen, his hand rests just under his chin.

“This...actually has information on Adata, a lot of it, actually. It looks like there were some business deals done in the past,” Jake says.

“Really?”

“Something with the whole department donating to the company, it says they ran a sect of the American Lung Cancer Association located in Raffles Place, Denver, Colorado,” he says.

“Nobody in their right mind would situate themselves in Denver. There's absolutely no business opportunity there, but maybe it's the secrecy they wanted?” I ask.

“Maybe, this is all guesswork, still. It isn't showing any other offices, just the one in Denver. There is a lot of records here though, there seems to have been some correspondence between the police and Adata,” Jake says.

“What does that mean?”

“It could mean anything from good to bad to...I don't even know. It doesn't say anything other than the base contact request. It could've been anything from an accidental dialing of the department to an arrest.”

“Well, maybe if we go and check it out we might find something?” I ask.

“Are you sure? I was okay with coming here because I know Glendale is safe, but Denver is much riskier business,” Jake says, backing away from the computer.

“Well, is there anything else there about Technodome?”

“No, nothing that isn't redacted,” he says.

“Well, I personally haven't seen Denver,” I say.

“Trust me, it's nothing pretty to look at.”

“Well, then I won't be looking for real estate, but I do want to go and investigate.”

He looks over to me, his face screams uncertainty, but it shifts quickly into a somber smile as he nods once.

“Let's take a trip to Denver, but don't say that I didn't warn you.”