Re-Oracle

Long ago- at least, according to the doctors- there was a place... well, not quite a place.

It served the purpose of one, though. A million computers, passing information among themselves, guided by human users ad infinitum. Communication, entertainment, education... and other things, spoken of in whispers, that the doctors said Reca would figure out when she was older.

It was there that the Re-Oracles had gathered. They were guardians of truth, or perhaps that was just how they thought of themselves. Their ideal was non-partisan, and they sought to, in a world fraught with division, provide clean information.

Reca had said they sounded legendary.

The older doctor, who remembered them, had said they weren't all that.

Deca sat in a field of dry red grass. There was a hill a short ways away, and beyond that hill was an old mansion, practically falling over, candlelight in its windows, sagging with the weight of many years come and gone. The grass around it was cut short, growing wild beyond its fences. There were no other houses around here, only a little yard with unusually-shaped stones. The early-morning sun cast the front of the old house into shadow.

"This is the place?" asked Reca. Deca flashed her lights. Rivergal had stayed behind to play an arcade game the hospital had in the back.

With that, Deca scooted around the hill and arrived in front of the mansion.

The front gate had long since fallen off its rusty hinges and was now lying in the grass near the fence. The garden had ornately-patterned flowerbeds devoid of flowers and old, moldy ceramic statues of gnomes. A rotting garden hose snaked around into one of the empty beds. If not for the candelight inside, Reca might have turned around and gone back to Deca, but the idea that someone lived in this decrepit place was intriguing. Besides, she had been waiting for this for so long.

She performed her usual one-two knock to no response, then noticed a doorbell, hanging by its wires off the wall. When she pressed it, a metallic screech erupted from somewhere inside the mansion, bearing little to no resemblance to a ding-dong noise. Was that an intentional creative decision or just the result of years of sound decay?

"Come in," said an equally-distorted voice through a speaker near the doorbell. With a hesitant touch, Reca reached for the handle... and it broke right off! The door swung open into darkness and stopped short at about 25 degrees, blocked by something hidden in the shadows. It no longer budged, and so Reca slipped inside and found that it was an impenetrable wall of what felt like stacks of paper. She had been taught a method of labyrinth navigation that involved putting one hand on the wall and walking on; it seemed as good a time as any to use it, and so she felt her way forward, shadows closing in...

Something silver and speedy scuttled by in the corner of her vision. Then silence.

Reca watched the empty darkness where the thing had been for what felt like an eternity. Nothing else came by, so she sallied forth, one hand against the wall of books (were they books?) until she came to a sharp corner... that led the path right into the darkness where the silver thing had just been.

She didn't let that disturb her. Sure, it was dark, but the walls would lead her to the end of the labyrinth, assuming it had an end at all. What if it didn't? What if the 'maze' was actually just an impenetrable book fortress? No- that silver scuttler was going somewhere. If she followed its path, she would surely see where. And she did! Just at the end of the next hallway, there was an old wooden door surrounded by a faint border of light flowing in from the room beyond. It scarcely illuminated anything except its direct surroundings. The walls were made up of books, after all, as well as stacks of disorderly papers and albums.

The handle made a terrible creaking sound when Reca turned it, but that was forgotten as soon as the room beyond the door was revealed.

It was a kitchen. A single bulb hung loose from fraying wires, casting a dim yellow glow over rusty stoves and stacks of empty pizza boxes. Only one path wound among the stacks, but it was fraught with scarred tiles- one had to walk single-file, one foot in front of the other, to stay on it. This path wasn't made for humans or demons, and yet it had clearly been used- the coating of dust on the pizza boxes was entirely absent from the path.

Reca's effort to toddle along proved futile as she tripped on the stray corner of a box. Before she knew it, one of the smaller stacks had started wobbling, and it surely would have fallen down if she hadn't grabbed it and propped it back up. With a silent exhale of relief- a loud exhale seemed unfitting, given the spooky silence- she managed to get over to the only door in the room not blocked by a pizza barricade, twisting the knob and finding only pitch black beyond.

The atmosphere of this place was different somehow- it felt less stuffy. As her eyes adjusted to the near-darkness she managed to make out, first, a reclining chair, and then the immobile person reclined in it, and then a mechanical figure at the foot of the chair with a glass of water in its claw. That had to be the silver thing from earlier!

The rest of the room was hard to make out, but it was clear that the stacking tradition persisted. There were book towers up to the ceiling here as well, but there were also stacks of mysterious devices- strange electronic boxes- filing cabinets- odds and ends. The only visible wall in the room was hardly a wall at all- it was a curtain directly behind the chair.

She held her breath and silently stepped to the side of the recliner. It was so dark she couldn't make out whether the man was breathing.

"Hey," she whispered. Nothing- not even a twitch of the eyelid.

Before she had the chance to regret it, she held up her hands- and clapped with all the force she could muster!

As if brought forth by her motion, a blinding light erupted from all sides, searing her eyes red momentarily and nearly making her collapse in shock! The man in the recliner suddenly stirred, opening his eyes- which were milky- and turning his head towards Reca. Then he tapped the edge of the chair with his bony fingers and it churned upright, pushing him into a sitting position.

Reca stood like a deer in headlights.

"You," he said in a voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible, "Who are you? Why are you here?"

Reca gulped.

"I'm h-here to see someone... a Re-Oracle."

"Then you're in the right place," he huffed. "Pity you had to wake me up. Number Three, go fetch another glass of water."

The silvery mechanical thing scuttled out of the room without a second of delay. After there was silence again, the man closed his hazy eyes and pointed with a shaky finger to a short stack of books. "Sit," he commanded, and Reca obliged.

"I'm here to learn how the apocalypse happened," said Reca.

"Tall order."

"...So you don't know?"

"Depends how you define 'know'..."

Reca visibly deflated- not that anyone was looking. She half-wanted to get up and leave. There were no answers to be found here after all.

"Could you tell me what you do know?"

"Look around you."

When Reca did as he asked, she once again scanned the towering stacks of odds and ends, and a pit former in her stomach.

"You're saying-"

"Back in the day," he interrupted, "the Re-Oracles- it wa'nt our job to know anything. What we did was we looked it up and we aggregated it. Sure, we knew some, but you lose it over time... you lose what you know. And now with time like this, I'm losing almost everything."

"...With time like... this?"

"Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

She hadn't noticed anything, but then again, it was tough to discern what he meant by 'like this.'

He tapped thrice on the frame of his chair and suddenly the curtain-wall opened up, revealing a tunnel that stopped short at a set of massive metal vault doors. Another two taps and the doors slid apart with a great hiss. They were each as thick as five encyclopedias and seemed impossibly heavy- if the opening mechanism deactivated, Reca doubted anyone would be able to make them budge.

A ticking sound- or rather a hundred ticking sounds- became audible as the pathway opened. The man tapped once and was flung backwards, revealing the tracks his chair sat on. Reca followed soon after.

The room beyond the vault doors was unlike anything she had ever seen. It was grandiose, practically a tower, but the real odd thing about it was the decor: clocks, of all shapes, sizes, and colors, that covered every inch of wall space, stretching all the way up into darkness. Some were digital, some were analog, some of them were scarcely identifiable as clocks at all, but that surely had to be given the room's theme.

"What is this place?"

"Clock room," said the Re-Oracle matter-of-factly.

"I know," said Reca, "but what am I supposed to be looking at?"

"The clocks," he said again. If Reca had a drink in her mouth, she would have spit it out. Still, she looked up at the clocks, musing over their meaning and eventually coming to a disconcerting realization- none of them displayed the same time. Some of them had dates, as well, and yet the dates were all different...

"...Why have so many clocks if they don't, well, work? As clocks?"

"No clocks work," he said. "Not since the missing day. Since then, time hasn't been working."

"Missing day?"

"The apocalypse."

It was a poetic name, and yet it conveyed something that Reca hadn't heard mentioned before.

"Why's it called that?"

"Because it went missing. One moment it was yesterday, and the next it was tomorrow. Missing day. Just gone."

"So you're saying that you fell asleep before the apocalypse and woke up after, then."

"I wasn't asleep," he said. "Or maybe I was- but it didn't feel like it. They said maybe everybody just forgot, but then they found out there was no security footage- nothing. Nothing on that missing day. Just nothing."

Reca's mind spun, unimpeded by the ticking of the clocks all around her- no one remembered the day of the apocalypse? Was that why it was such a mystery?

"But- but- the aftermath! Surely if you missed the apocalypse you'd be able to tell what caused it the next day! Like, if everything was irradiated, nuclear war happened, and if everything was glitchy, the collision of universes happened? Right? You were there- what was it like?"

"My memory's not so good," he heaved. "But it wasn't any of those things. Total collapse- freakouts. Mass freakouts. And now time doesn't work."

"Surely someone could make an accurate clock-"

"All of them were. At one time, they were all in sync. Tell me- you've heard of Consie, correct?"

"...Should I have?"

He raised his eyebrows shakily.

"The oracle. Many centuries ago, she told the people of this world the exact date when the apocalypse would happen."

"I've heard of an oracle, just not one named Consie."

"That was her name."

"Odd name for someone many centuries ago."

"Well, for all we know she could be from our future."

"Sure... okay. And what's your point?"

"Everybody knows the date of the apocalypse," he said, "But no one knows how long ago it happened. That seem strange to you?"

Reca thought back. The man on Iris street- the old village leader- they had both experienced the apocalypse, and yet their ages were so far apart. How long were people supposed to live? Moreover, what was the current date? Reca had never even considered any of that before. Why not?

"I guess so," she said. "I never thought about it."

"No one ever does," he grumbled. "No one ever does 'til I tell them. Like something's keepin' it from them. You- what's your name?"

"Reca," she said. He laughed a little and looked over at her.

"And you were saying Consie's name was odd."

"Is Reca a weird name?"

"Sounds like a purgatorian thing. They had names like that- not like you're a purgatorian, are you?"

"Uh- what's a purgatorian?"

"That's a no."

He closed his eyes and pointed back to the main room, which Reca took as a command. His chair zipped back moments later and then the vault closed up again, obscuring the ticking entirely and revealing another sound- the legs of the metal scuttler returning from the depths of the house with a glass of water. Perhaps there was only clean water in some other kitchen.

"What is that thing?"

"Robot. Can't get up out of bed anymore."

"I figured."

There was silence. Reca almost thought the man had gone to sleep, since his eyes were closed and his chest was gently rising and falling.

"So, then, I guess you have no answers for me?"

"Maybe not," he said, clearly still awake. "Maybe so. My whole house- I never throw anything away. Not a scrap. It's all the information we gathered. I printed it out before the internet went down- maybe your answers are somewhere here."

"...How big is this place?"

The Re-Oracle didn't answer.

"And if I wanted to, I could just go through it?"

"Long as you put everything back in place after."

That wouldn't be easy, but then again, how would he tell if things were out of place? Reca didn't see a way for him to get out of the room.

"I will," said Reca, half-lying.

"Before you go, could you clap?"

She obliged and the room was once again plunged into near-darkness. The lights were sound-activated, then.

"...Thanks for all the help."

No response- only dull breathing that turned rapidly into snoring. Reca shut the door and made her way out of the kitchen, careful not to catch her foot on any boxes this time. There were so many books. Where to start? Well, she started by clapping, which lit up the hallway- the wall of paper was revealed to be one of many, though it seemed impossible to get to the ones further back except by climbing over the ones directly in front of her.

As she scanned the immediate stacks, running her fingers over the dusty pages and spines, she spotted a thick red book two-thirds of the way up the tallest one. Its was emblazoned with bright yellow text that read 'DISSERTATION ON THE NATURE OF THE APOCALYPSE'. No way to reach it...

Her eyes fell upon a shorter stack nearby, and then upon a slightly longer stack directly next to it.

One hand went on top of the shortest stack and it jiggled, but ultimately stayed put. Could she...?

She decided she could. One foot went onto the little stack, and then the other. It was hard to balance. All she had to do was make it to the taller stack, and then she could reach the book. There was a dictionary of some sort sticking out from the taller stack that she used as a dusty foothold.

Reca realized with a start that the next stack was even less stable than the short one had been. She held her core and treaded like a tightrope walker to the tallest stack. She could do this. She could- because if she couldn't...

Reca put it out of her mind and reached for the red book. One hand went above it to stabilize the pile. One hand, shaking despite attempts to stabilize it, held the book and pulled... and with a tug-

The top of the stack collapsed, hurtling towards Reca's head. She flung herself backwards and crashed to the floor, hitting the base of another stack. No time! Where was it? In her hand! She had the book-

Her thoughts were put to rest by the sensation of ten towers of heavy hard-backed tomes collapsing on top of her. Everything went black. There was pain, for a moment, and then that vanished too.

.

..

...

..

.

"Reca!"

A voice. Someone- it wasn't the old man. Who?

"Reca! Reca!"

She remembered with a start that she could open her eyes.

Rivergal's face hovered above hers like some sort of apparition. No, wait- she was on her back and Rivergal was above her, looking down!

"Where-"

With a quick twist of her head, she realized where she was. It looked like a tornado had swept through the room- there were books all over here and on all sides of her. Only two towers were still standing. A sharp pain coursed through her left leg. It had probably been under her when she fell! Try as she might, she couldn't push the books off of her. There were just too many.

"We should never have let her come here," said one of the doctors from the hospital. What was she doing here? And why did she think she 'let' Reca do anything? "Look at her leg."

Reca hadn't even realized they'd taken a book off of her leg. For good reason- she'd lost all feeling in it! When she sat up, she realized that, to her horror, the foot wasn't facing in the right direction. She tried to twist it around. Without warning, a dull pain shot up to her thigh, forcing a yelp out of her throat.

"No way we can fix that," said the other doctor. Reca's pupils shrunk.

"You... wait! But you're doctors!"

"Human legs don't work like ours," said the bigger demon. "You'd have to find a human doctor."

"Is she human?"

Reca was about to step in, but decided against it when her attempt to sit up was met with more pain.

"I think so."

"Then what I said is true."

"Sure- but where's she gonna find a human doctor?"

Something deep inside Reca kept the tears from flowing. Maybe it was the shock.

"Wait," said Reca, and all eyes were suddenly on her. "Yesterday the guy on Oracle Street said that the Re-Oracle had an apprentice. Who is he?"

"That-" spat Rivergal- "That's what you're worried about? Not your leg?"

"I need to know," Reca pleaded as the books were removed from her chest.

"We'll go and ask him," said the bigger doctor, "But first, you need to get back to your ride. Use these."

He handed over a pair of oversized crutches that, with a little bit of assistance, Reca was able to use, if uncomfortably. Her leg resisted attempts to move it and so she hopped ungracefully to the exit door, where Deca waited in the yard, having driven over the flimsy fence.

"I found something out," said Reca, still unable to cry. "About time."

Deca thought that it was, indeed, about time she found something out, but then Reca clarified-

"I found something out about time."

That was intriguing.

"I'll tell you later," said Reca. Without another word, Deca opened her doors and Reca was finally able to rest. There were no human doctors in Pandemonia, apparently, and it wasn't as if there were any back home, either. Where in the universe was there to go? Would she be using crutches for the rest of her life?

The doctors and Rivergal approached and Deca slid the window down.

"We found out where the apprentice lives. On the boardwalk- she runs a library," said the little doctor. "But if I were you I would look for a doctor outside of Hell."

"There's nothing outside of Hell. Just desert- desert and little towns that are falling apart."

The smaller doctor shrugged flippantly.

"Well, just drive down to the boardwalk and ask for Katana at the Burgermeister. can't miss it."

"What?"

"Those are the instructions he gave us. Sorry- I'm not going back in there again. That guy snapped at me!"

Reca buried her face in her hands. Jus then, Rivergal slipped into the seat beside her holding a familiar red and gold book.

"This thing is beyond my grade level," said Rivergal, squinting at a few complex diagrams.

"Hey! Give me that! That's the book I was trying to get!"

"Of course it is. You had a vice grip on it when we found you. But I don't get any of the stuff in here- I think it might not be helpful."

Reca grabbed the book despite Rivergal's discouraging remark. It was complex for sure, and it didn't help that the older girl had flipped straight to the middle rather than starting at the beginning. Every time Reca tried to immerse herself in the wordy prose, she found herself distracted.

"Let's go to the Burgermeister," said Reca to Deca, and they bumpily backed over the flowerboxes and the fence, back into the grass near Subgehenna Hill. Reca's mind turned to the predictions the fortune tellers had made, but the events of the previous day seemed almost dreamlike in the afternoon light, and she was unable to figure out which of them had been correct.

"Consie," Reca mumbled to herself. "If only I could talk to you."