CHAPTER 4
"Hi! I'm Kate," the familiar girl says as I walk inside the living room. She's a tad shorter than I am, but I can see that she definitely has her father's eyes. She's got shoulder length brown hair and a smile that actually makes me think different of her than I saw in the one vision. She has actually a nice smile.
"Hello, Nathan," I say, nodding my head as I walk in and look around. "So, your father told me that you were to be my guide for the day?" I ask.
"Yeah, I guess so. He always wrangles me into stuff like this. Case and point me even being here," she jokes, leaning on the side of the wall.
"I assume it's not really all that interesting staying here all day, huh?"
"No, not particularly. I had to drop out of school because me looking after the other kids was the condition on my father working here. So it became either a matter of education versus survival."
"Ah, where are the other kids now?"
"They're asleep. It's early, you know."
"Ah, right, time's been slipping away from me as of late. I don't think I even know the date anymore sometimes," I laugh, fishing for a time.
"Well it's going to come back to you real quick here, that happened with me the first few months here. It's weird to think how much school was in helping me realize what day it was."
Damn it all to hell.
"Are you still in school? You actually look really young."
"Uh, I graduated college early," I say.
"Huh, how old are you?"
"Only twenty."
"Wooooow, you're old."
I make a sound of humility, "I'm not that old."
She rolls her eyes, "Well, okay gramps, where has my dad shown you so far?" Goes to show I'm better at socializing when I'm not even myself.
"Just the first five floors. He said he was busy and here I am," I say.
"Sounds like him. Okay, well I hope you realize just how tall this building is,"
"I understand you not going through every single floor. If you want you can take me to the ones I'll probably be in the most often. That's what your father suggested."
"Okay, that sounds like a plan."
"You know, he spoke pretty highly of you," I say.
"He did? Well, I'm his daughter so..." she says, looking the other way.
"Well, he did so to a complete stranger if that helps your view on him. I'm sure he would have kept you in school if he could have found a way."
"Well thank you."
"It's no problem. Don't worry about it."
"We'll have to make it somewhat quick since I can't be away for too long considering these guys can't really feed themselves," she says, pointing to the room in the back.
"Right, right." I laughed. "My mother used to say that about my father all the time."
Bit of a mistake here going into detail about them—especially considering I had already told Mason they passed when I was young. Those kind of details weren't things young children remembered about their parents. I had to pull back from that topic before it created any issues moving forward.
"Seems very much like a guy thing, though, don't tell my Dad I said that. He tends to get annoyed when I point out things like that," she winks at me.
"Solemn promise," I sign in front of my chest.
"Alright, well, as you can see this floor is basically where everyone sleeps if they plan on staying a few nights to get work done. There are twenty different suites on this floor, but we only really use one or two considering how little people we actually have working here," she explains.
"Makes enough sense. Crazy they let the rest of this building just go to waste. I mean, how much space do you realistically need?"
She gave off a look of mutual confusion. "Yeah, I've asked myself that question ever since he started working here. Keeps it nice and quiet though. A little too quiet sometimes." She changes pace on a dime. "Now come with me, we're going up to the fifteenth floor."
"What's on the floors between us?"
"Food storage, mainly. Bigwigs definitely don't like my Dad and the rest of them being outside of work a lot." She looks off to the side. I can recognize the derision from that statement from a mile away. Lord knows I didn't agree wholeheartedly with it—but I definitely couldn't show all that now—I was supposed to be one of those dedicate yourself kind of scientists now.
"A lot of it is also empty space. It would be where the IT department would be, but we outsource any technical problems we have to the President. Anything beyond that is beyond what I've been able to eavesdrop."
"Lord knows you tried though?"
She smiles coyly. "Sure did."
We walk towards the elevator and she presses the button, calling it to us. "Why's that, though? Happen to pick up on why things are kept so tight lipped around the things around here?" I hold for a minute. "I mean, it's not like they give this info out during the interview process."
She chuckles. "It sounds a lot more complicated, definitely, but my guess is that it keeps bodies in the building. Less people that can spill any super confidential secrets or interpersonal drama. I guess the goal was to attract as little attention here as possible, that's why the other guys like my dad are all freelance, not connected to any big names to attract attention."
"How'd your dad manage to find out about this work?"
"He was in the army before I was born. I guess he had some sort of connections. I don't know about the others, I only really see them when we've all eaten together on special occasions, and even then we don't really talk."
"Ah, I see."
The elevator doors open and we step inside.
"Yeah, I don't really talk to too many people. Sometimes when the kids are asleep I'll head down to talk to Jeanne downstairs. She's the only other girl here I can talk to so it's nice to at least have someone." She presses the button for the fifteenth floor.
"Yeah? She seemed kind of...aloof," I say.
"She isn't the best on picking up clues I guess, doesn't make her a bad person in the slightest. She always tells me stories of her at home and it makes me wonder how things would have turned out if my life were a bit more normal."
"I understand that thought completely."
"Yeah? Tell me a bit about yourself."
"Well, My parents died when I was young, like, really young."
"Oh I'm-"
"It's okay, really, before you finish that apology." She nods her head. "They're the reason I'm here, and I guess the reason why I keep moving forward. It took time to realize that. For a long time I was mad at them."
"Mad? Why?"
"I guess I blamed them for leaving me in such a shit place."
"Where'd they leave you?"
"Oh uh...some orphanage," I say. Fuck. This got too real. I can't let this distract me from what I need to be doing. Nor can I reveal that I was stranded and living on my own in an America which doesn't seem to have existed yet. My best guess is this is sometime in early 2007. The elevator sounds as the doors open and I see massive machines lined up until the very end of the room. There seems to be very little walking space.
"Okay, so this is one of our generator rooms. You probably saw the one on the fourth floor when my father was bringing you up."
I did, it was rather small compared to this one, it only housed one of these large machines instead of the almost fifty that sit in this room now.
"That fourth floor one powers the first three floors. It's basically a backup that we can reroute to any of the higher floors if an emergency happens. This here is where all the main power for the next fifty floors comes from. Everything above is connected through one of these generators if not more."
"That's insane, I'm used to having trouble with my phone charger, much less a power source for an entire building."
I don't have a phone.
Well, then it's good you'll only be down here in case something goes wrong. We've been here for a few months now and nothing has gone wrong so far, though," she says.
"When did you first get here?"
"Tail end of 2006, it was mid November when I first got here. I think we were some of the first ones here. Now here we are, four months later."
Four months...so it's March 2007. Jesus, finally do I have a grasp on when I am. This is about a month before the Radical-9 incident in April.
"All right, you ready?"
"Yeah, where to next?"
"It's a surprise," she says.
"Oh, come on. That's hardly fair," I say.
"Well, it wouldn't do so much as to spoil the surprise, now would it?"
"I guess not." The elevator begins rising. It keeps going up and up.
"We're going past the thirtieth floor, aren't we?" I ask.
"How'd you know?"
"Seems like an awful long time for fifteen floors of distance."
"I guess you're right."
The elevator shakes a little as it stops and the doors open up. I see the familiar sight of the roof of the Republic Plaza, and I can feel my heart sink into my stomach. She walks out towards the center of the roof looking out. I step out slowly, the doors almost close on me as I do.
"This is where I sometimes go to just lose myself when the kids are asleep."
I look to my side and I see the spot where Grace fell down and died.
"I find this area so peaceful. Sometimes I like to look out over the edge and just imagine all of the tiny little people down there."
I walk out with her and look out over the edge where I chose to end my life. I feel the cold rush into my body all over again. It's such a weird thought that not too long ago this place became nearly leveled because of my body exploding. If Grace had somehow managed to survive the Tubocurarine she definitely would have gotten caught up in the blast.
"Are you okay?" She asks. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Funny you should say that," I say. "No, I just don't do well with heights."
"Ah, fuck. I'm sorry. I thought it would be interesting at least."
"It's okay, you didn't know. It's not like I would have said anything anyways," I say.
"Okay, well, I'm still sorry about it. Why don't we head on back down and I can show you the floors with all the food in it?"
"I like food," I say, still a bit nauseated.
"I hoped you would," she says, sarcastic.
The cold feeling rushes to my head, and almost immediately I feel my head spinning. I feel myself thrown back and my view changes back to the small square room back on the moon. I hit my head against the wall and am lying on my back beside the pod.
I throw up.