Weary Traveler

Mitch used his thumbs to massage the pinched skin underneath his cuffs, gazed around the elevator. A tiny, black, glass dome with a flickering, red light was wedged into each corner. Cameras spying on his every move. Every inhale and exhale of the Crawlers’ recycled air into his rotten lungs.

The elevator dinged, lurched to a stop on level one. A white light above the door flashed once, remained illuminated as the two sides of the door pulled open to reveal a blinding luminescence on the other side.

Mitch averted his eyes and heaved his hands in front of his face to block the supernova of radiance streaming into his retinas.

“Janitor,” a metallic voice called out from a hidden speaker box above the elevator door, “exit the elevator.”

Mitch clenched his jaw so hard that the bones popped, cracked. And then, he stepped forward onto level one. The chamber was vast, soundless, empty, like a vacuum seal wrapped around the perimeter and blocked it off from the rest of the world. The white floors were populated with rows upon rows of long shelves filled with rectangular blocks of bluish-white light. Every wall was covered from top to bottom with the objects. They looked like the outline of bricks that had been turned vertically and traced with multicolored light and holographic images.

He looked left, then right, shuffled forward towards the nearest shelf straight ahead. Each of the bricks was etched with words that shimmered like they danced with the motion of the cold air flowing through the room. He reached for one at eye level, pinched the top of the cover, and pulled it downwards.

“You must be the new curator,” a frantic voice whispered, so close to Mitch that the tip of their nose scratched the inside of his ear.

Mitch jumped into the air, landed several feet away. He turned his body and stared into the glowing, albino, blue eyes of a Crawler dressed in a white tunic clasped with a silver utility belt around his waist and matching buckle over his left shoulder.

Mitch’s eyes narrowed, analyzed the Crawler’s body. His nonexistent lips. His bare, flat chest. His hairless, blue skin in the cold air made him look like he was sliced from a block of ice.

Mitch shook his head, squinted, leaned closer. The Crawler didn’t have a right nipple.

“Name’s Mitch-”

“Welcome to the Paradise Library,” a second voice said from behind Mitch, equally frantic.

“Fuck!” Mitch yelled, jumping out of the way. He turned, faced the two, identical Crawlers, and took a few steps backwards. “You freaks are-” he feigned a coughing fit into his fist, drawing sickened looks from the Crawlers, “excuse me… you Angels are sneaky.”

“Do not be alarmed,” the Crawlers whispered simultaneously so that their voices sounded like they bubbled up straight from the center of Mitch’s mind. He studied their strange features. Their scalps and eyebrows were shaved so that their heads were like one enormous egg.

“We come in peace,” they said, smiling so wide that the wrinkled skin where their eyebrows should have been crept upwards and melted into the wrinkles of their foreheads.

“I’m the janitor,” Mitch said, raising and wriggling his cuffed wrists.

“Yes,” they hissed, circling Mitch, walking him down until his back smacked into the shelves on the bookcase. “We have been waiting, waiting, waiting for you…”

Mitch averted his gaze from their unblinking eyes and scanned their pale bodies down to their hips. The silver utility belt contained a collection of small pockets with metallic latches and buckles. They each carried one of those orange scanner rods on their left hips. And on their right hips, were small, fiberglass, light pistols with bundles of blue energy, tucked within clear holsters. Next to their pistols, were key cards dangling from short wire.

Mitch’s mind jolted with electric dopamine as if he had swallowed a snapper. His irises lit up in a flash of focus. He cleared the mucus caught in the back of his throat and gulped down the pungent gunk that gathered there.

“Do you-” Mitch said, but his mind flooded with the image of the janitor sprawled across the ground in a puddle of blood. “I’m here to clean.”

“Your task is to swipe the dust and dirt from every Holo-Book,” the Crawler on the left said. “Inside and out.”

The Crawler on the right stuck out a closed fist, bulging eyes stared at Mitch, continued to stare as a gaping smile crept up from the corners of his mouth, filling his face with a flash of perfect teeth.

Mitch cupped his hands, held them in front of him. The Crawler dropped a white cloth into his hands, then yanked his hand back, and stared at the bum like a psychotic gazing upon a bright light for too long, mesmerized. Basking in its magnificence. His egg head slowly tilted sideways as if puzzled by an impossible question, stumped by the bum in janitor’s clothing. He leaned closer… closer… closer…

Mitch leaned away, rubbed the soft fabric between his fingers. The material glistened within the scintillating room, glided like it was made with silk from a distant planet in a far away galaxy. He looked around the room. The rows of Holo-Books stretched beyond his vision, disappeared beneath the blinding light of the vast chamber.

“When you finish,” the Crawler on the right said, awakening from his creepy paralysis, “call for us and we will inspect your work.”

“Then we will set you free,” they said in unison. They slithered closer, smiling wider as their albino eyes expanded. “Set you… free, free, free, free,” they whispered, voices descending like a disappearing echo.

“Alright, alright,” Mitch said, holding up his hands. He squeezed out from under the Crawlers’ noses and escaped off of the bookcase that was digging into his back.

The Crawlers turned towards Mitch and clamped their eyes shut. Their pale, blue bodies swayed like they had descended into a distant realm of unconsciousness. And then, their eyelids burst open. Their bodies darted away from Mitch and they disappeared within the boundless graveyard of bookshelves.

Mitch stared at the cloth and then peered around the room.

“Goddammit,” he said, shaking his head.

He crushed the silk in his fist and stepped up to the bookshelf that had braced against his back.

A slender, holographic placard above the bookshelf read: Nonfiction.

Mitch surveyed the library for Crawlers, then cupped and pressed his palms, lifted his right elbow. The right cuff popped. He slid his hand out and let the restraint dangle from his left wrist. Then pinched the spine of the first book in the top left corner, pulled it out and examined the cover. The transparent material gave the appearance that the text floated in the air.

He read the title within his mind: Silicon: The Answer to Immortality.

He flicked open the cover. There were no pages. The entire inside of the book was a single slab of the soft, fiberglass material the Crawlers used in the construction of their fortress and weapons. The text on the right was illegible, just a series of squiggly lines that shimmered every time Mitch shifted the book.

“On,” Mitch whispered into the book. “Reveal text… activate… power up… abracadabra… open sesame,” he said.

Nothing appeared.

He swiped the cloth across the inside and outside of the book. There was no place for any dust or dirt to collect. Then placed the book back in its slot and grabbed the next in line, read the title aloud.

“How to Sacrifice Humans Beings Humanely.”

Mitch pushed the book away from his face and then pulled it close to his eyes to focus.

“What the fuck…” he muttered. He looked up from the book and then around the room. No sign of the creepy Crawlers. He conducted the same pointless gesture with the cloth, placed the book on the shelf, and read the next few covers in rapid succession without wiping them off.

“Climate Hoax: Convincing Carbon Based Lifeforms that Carbon must be Destroyed.”

“Human Beings: How to Exterminate the Greatest Threat to Humanity.”

“Tech-Gods vs. Flesh Monkeys.”

“What’s this shit?” Mitch said, barely loud enough for the words to fall from his mouth. He continued examining the Holo-Book covers, reading the titles aloud.

“When Demons Descend From Above.”

“Human Depopulation: The Transhumanist Agenda.”

“Consuming the Soul of an Innocent Human.”

“Human Children: Satan’s Secret to Immortality.”

“Fuck this,” Mitch said, slamming the last book into its slot on the shelf. He snapped the right cuff back onto his wrist, stared out across the tops of the bookshelves. “All finished!” he yelled, voice echoing through the library.

No movement or sound returned.

“I said I’m-”

“That can’t be,” the Crawlers said, straight into Mitch’s ears.

“Ah!” Mitch shouted, jumping backwards. “You Crawlers are quick,” he said, chuckling.

The smiles vanished from their hairless faces and the blue drained from their albino skin.

“That language is forbidden,” the Crawler on the left said.

“We are Angles of Paradise,” said its clone.

“Surveyors of the grand, Paradise Library,” they sang in eerie melody.

“Pardon me and please accept my apologies, dear Angels of Paradise,” Mitch said in as close to a proper voice as he could manage. He tipped his imaginary cap and dipped into a slight bow. “Please, observe the cleanliness for yourselves.”

The Crawlers whipped around and grabbed the first two books on the top left shelf. Investigated the covers, flipped them open.

Mitch stepped closer, reached for the light pistol on the hip of the Crawler on the left. He almost gripped its handle, when he noticed something on the back of the Crawlers’ heads.

He squinted, leaned closer. Pounded into the back of their skulls, was a circular button. Scrawled in bold, black, capital letters at the center of the button, was the word: REBOOT.

Mitch jerked his head away, shook it, leaned forward with brows tilted towards his nose.

“These books are filthy,” the Crawlers said. “You will be executed for-”

Mitch’s outstretched pinkies slowly lifted off of the buttons.

The Crawlers’ spines straightened like a pole impaled their heads down through their torsos. He leaned into the small gap in-between their heads. There was a steady, mechanical hum buzzing from their ears.

“Hello?” Mitch said.

He popped the cuff off of his wrist.

“Angels?” he said, tapping their egg heads. They were ice cold, sending a shiver through Mitch’s arm that electrified the hair on his body.

“Crawlers?” he said, shaking their shoulders. “Hey, Crawlers!”

He shoved them hard at the center of their shoulder blades. Their stiff bodies rocked back, forth… back, forth. And then, they tipped forward, collided against the bookshelf with a dense, metallic thud.

“Oh, shit,” Mitch grunted, trying to grip the left side of the case. The slick, fiberglass slipped from his sweaty fingers and tipped forward, smacked into the next bookshelf with a clattering clash.

Mitch winced, shoulders raised up towards his ears in a feeble effort to block out the cacophony of shelves tipping into one another like a set of giant dominoes, sending thousands of Holo-Books spilling over onto the tile floor.

He raced towards the elevator, stopped so fast that the worn out soles from his sneakers slipped against the tile like a rug had shot out from underneath him. He bear crawled back to the fallen Angles, yanked each of their key cards from the wire on their hips, and climbed back to his feet. Allowing his forward momentum to kick his skinny legs forward to the elevator.

He smashed his right index finger into the down arrow button, continued clicking until a ding buzzed from the speaker above the door.

“Authorization card, please,” a voice said.

Mitch held up one of the key cards in front of a black panel next to the arrow buttons.

A thin line of blue light scanned the flat card.

And then, a red light above the door, flashed, flashed, changed to solid white.

“Welcome, Gabriel.”

The elevator doors slid open.

“Please, watch your step.”

Mitch kissed the card, tucked it into the hip pocket of his janitor jumpsuit, and climbed onto the elevator.

He examined the buttons on a golden panel on the right side of the elevator door. Three lower levels were etched with their corresponding names.

Level 0: Robotics

Level 00: Synthetic Biology

Level 000: Advanced Tech

Mitch’s finger hovered over the buttons, hesitated, before pounding 000.

“Advanced Tech,” the elevator said. “Please, hold on.”

He backed away from the panel and leaned the top of his shoulder blades against the elevator’s back wall. Then closed his eyes, tried to capture his breath and calm his beating heart from smashing through his ribcage. Reality swirled around him as his mind filled with the cacophonous roar of bookshelves toppling into each other.