Barrett slides his badge and papers into the metal tray. The guard sitting on the other side of the ballistic glass window doesn’t even look up from his monitor as he reaches over to collect them. The guard’s lips move, and his eyes shift expectantly to Barrett.
“What?” Barrett puts his head closer to the glass.
The guard visibly sighs and pushes a button. “Transfer?” His voice blasts through a speaker right next to Barrett’s ear.
Barrett recoils. “Yeah.”
The guard grunts, picks up Barrett’s badge, and passes it through a magnetic reader. He pushes it back through the metal tray.
“Welcome to Mu Block.”
Barrett takes his badge back and looks at the concrete corridor in front of him. “I just go down there?”
The guard nods, eyes still glued to the screen.
The hallway — it’s more like a tunnel, one wide enough for two cars — gently slopes downward and curves around to the left. Barrett wonders how far underground he is now.
Once he’s rounded the bend enough to be out of sight of the guard booth, Barrett pauses, waiting for the echo of his footsteps to die down. He feels like it takes longer than it should.
Not much farther and he comes to a set of massive, reinforced hydraulic metal doors, open wide enough for one person to walk through. On the other side is a second guard booth, this one empty. There’s a big C stenciled on the wall in bright yellow paint. This is probably his post.
He keeps walking.
The corridor continues in its corkscrew around to the left, so he follows it on down.
A few minutes in, he wishes he’d thought to check his step count at the beginning of the trek.
Finally, after what must be ten minutes of walking, he hears noise ahead. He picks up his pace.
The floor levels out and there’s a massive window on the inside of the curve. It overlooks a tall room filled with cables as thick as his arm running between stacks of LED-covered server racks. He can’t see the whole room, but he can see two people wrestling with a large piece of machinery. They don’t look happy.
One of them notices him and brightens considerably. She waves at him and points in the direction of what must be the door.
Barrett finds the door without too much trouble. He swipes his badge and finds himself surprised when the lock clicks open.
“New guy!” calls the woman. “Over here! Help us get this condenser connected!”
“Uh, sure,” Barrett says, picking his way around the expensive electronics.
“Here, just hold this here — we have to get it close enough to —”
It takes a few tries, but apparently they get it connected, because some other machinery starts making a humming noise and the woman and the other guy seem satisfied.
“Thanks,” the woman says, catching her breath and extending a hand. “Much appreciated. I’m Tara. Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the front, been kinda busy this morning. Jim gave you a scooter, right?”
“Ah, no, I walked down,” says Barrett.
“Explains some things. He probably thinks it’s funny. Anyway, this is Pressman, well, Tom, but we’ve also got a Tom on Data so he goes by Pressman.”
“Nice to meet you both.”
Tara nods, leading the way out of the room. “Glad to have you. And thanks for the hand; I’ll yell at Jim later. We’ve gotta go get another condenser right now. Grab that pushcart and follow me.”
The thing looks like it’s been stolen from a hotel lobby, but Barrett doesn’t say anything. He follows Tara and Pressman out of the server room, down the wide hallway to a storage room stocked with all manner of large mechanical contraptions.
“What does this condenser condense?” asks Barrett as they lug the thing onto a pushcart.
“So, I know that looks like a server room, but behind all the servers, we’ve got a mothman. Pressman, get the door, will ya?”
“Mothman? Like, the cryptid they made a movie about like twenty years ago?”
“Exactly. I mean, technically it’s nongendered, as far as we can tell, so we’re not supposed to call it a mothman as such, but it’s kinda anthropomorphic, and we haven’t come up with a better term, so.” Tara shrugs. “He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“The mothman doesn’t mind that you call him a mothman? So you communicate with him? And he’s real. Mothman is real?”
“You’ll get used to it,” says Pressman easily, holding open the door so Tara and Barrett can wheel the condenser-laden pushcart in.
“Alright, let’s get this puppy unloaded,” Tara says as if the machine weren’t still heavy with all three of them lifting it. “He doesn’t communicate with us, but he does give us data. We’ve hooked him up to a bunch of computers and stuff. Basically, he predicts the future, and we use a massive AI algorithm to make his predictions better.”
“What’s that got to do with a condenser?” Barrett asks.
“Right! Sorry. So — no, that one goes here — yup — so mothmen are nonlocal — that means they aren’t necessarily in one place at a given time. They’re not bound by the physical constraints of, like, physical-ness. If that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t.”
“That’s fine. Just think of it as, he can be anywhere he wants at any given time, or nowhere. Anyway —”
Pressman interjects, “Again, don’t worry about it. This is all complete lunacy.”
“Yeah, exactly. Anyway, these are nonlocality condensers, and they basically force our mothlike friend to stay put.”
“Uh.” Barrett turns this over in his mind as he holds the condenser steady for Pressman to affix a cable. “So we captured a mothman, which doesn’t need to be anywhere, and made him into a cyborg slave, and he predicts the future for us.”
“That’s the gist, yeah,” nods Tara.
The conduit clicks into place and another machine somewhere in the room starts humming. They lower the condenser to the floor.
“Yeah, sure, okay,” Barrett agrees. “Why not.”
Pressman claps him on the back. “That’s the spirit.”
“Okay, that’s all our maintenance for Mothboy. But, while we’re here —” Tara smiles mischievously. “Do you wanna see him?”
Hello hello!
Thanks for joining us on our little excursion down into the depths of Mu Block. If you’re not up on your cryptids, find out more about Mothman! If you missed previous stories leading up to where we are now, you can also accept a transfer into Mu Block or read the incident report about how to capture a predictive nonlocal entity. But don’t worry, we’ll get more into the mechanics of interstitial mothfolk in the future.
Last but certainly not least, if you have your own mothman sighting, please share in the comments! As always, thank you, reader, for reading. Be well, stay sane, and see you soon!
:: Jaer
Great lead up to the dramatic viewing. Don't leave us hanging too long!