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“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“Don’t think we’ll have enough time for that down here.”

“Just a prelude then.”

He looked like a kid waiting for an ice cream cone from his mother.

“Believe it or not it begins with a kind of mathematical ontology. A sort of philosophy. It’ll sound kind of nuts probably, but that’s the beginning. In short, you have to be a pure mathematician. If not actually one, at least one in spirit.”

“Okay.”

“I understand.”

“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. What I mean is, most scientists use mathematics as a tool. And it’s a great tool. Solves all kind of problems for them. They think math is a device to help us solve problems.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Sure. And a great one. But it’s also something that can beget things we’d never imagined possible.”

“For example.”

“For example, my work. You see, for me mathematics wasn’t created by man as an aid for problem solving. Mathematics was discovered by man. It existed long before man did. In fact, it has always existed. And we know very little so far because we don’t really understand that.”

“I’m not sure I do either.”

“Ready Hardy then.”

“I have.”

“Well then you know that he thought that applied mathematics was ugly. A way to deal with the detail of the physical world. Pure mathematics was to him akin to poetry and painting. A beautiful and eternal truth. We needed worry about what came before the Big Bang or after the universe expands to nothingness. Because mathematics will always be here. The physical world is just one manifestation of it. There are probably many others we don’t know about.”

“And why is it necessary to know this?”

“It’s necessary to begin with that assumption. Then the whole idea of creating life seems like a natural phenomenon. After all physical life came from there as well. Changing your viewpoint fro empiricism to the abstract world enables one to think in new ways. That’s how I proceeded to make progress in my work with so-called artificial life.”

“Mathematics is God?”

“In a way you could actually say that.”

And then the alarm bell rang, piecing my eardrums just as the conversation was getting good. I slammed my hands against my ears and held on tight. I looked around at the others who took the same mode of protection. When it finally stopped, everyone began moving toward the stairs to climb back to the thirteenth and surrounding floors.

“By the way,” I asked David as he walked slightly in front of me. “Why did everyone take the elevator and walk down here? The elevator goes to the basement, doesn’t it? I saw a ‘B’ among the choices inside the car.”

“True. But for some reason the basement extension for the elevators doesn’t work anymore. We have to take the stairs down. In fact, the only room we’ve ever seen down here is the one where we were. It has no other doors or way into the rest of the rooms. For all we know, the elevator doesn’t actually go all the way to the basement and this is all there is.”

“Then again it could, and something is down there we don’t know about.”

“Probably the air conditioner or the heating system,” he said.

“Makes sense,” I said and then he got lost among the others climbing into the elevators. Apparently the bad guys hadn’t stormed the building during out time below. Everything looked pretty much the same as when we’d left it.

24.
I got the thought that maybe this was the time to rejoin the world and turned and headed toward the front doors. Just as I did, however, a member of the royal guard walked by, laden with guns and ammunition. And including one of those automatic rifles that made them so dangerous. I decided to stay in the building and turned back to the elevators, the last of which was just now closing its doors.

I waved it down, but no one saw me. The doors closed and I was alone. And my mind turned to the basement. Not the one we’d just occupied, but the one where the elevators didn’t go. What was in there? Secret government papers from the last administration? An assortment of munitions in case we were attacked? Missing antiquities from the world’s libraries? Lots of possibilities. Intriguing.

Walking to the elevator doors, I looked over the slit between them. I’d opened them before from the inside. How hard could it be to open them from the outside? Then down the metal rung ladder inside and I’d be in the secret area. Could it be that easy?

I tried to pull them open. No go. At least not in the way I’d tried. I thought back to Cassie’s and my escape. How had I positioned myself? To the right-hand side, hanging onto the ladder and reaching with one hand. I tried it and voila, it worked. The doors slowly peeled back revealing the empty elevator shaft. The up-rising car above was still moving and, though distant, the resonant chamber made it easy to hear.

The ladder inside was just where’d it had been those days before. Glad to see that some things don’t change. I grabbed the rail and pulled myself inside the shaft and onto the rungs. Easy. Now I had to hope the elevator wouldn’t return down and hang over the door I’d just come through. No holes in the bottom of the car. I’d be stuck down here until someone decided to take it up again. Could be awhile given that most of the crew on the thirteenth floor stayed put most of the time.

I decided to chance it and down I went.

When my foot hit bottom, I turned, and the elevator doors were gone and the entrance was completely free of obstruction. Completely dark of course, so I couldn’t see what surprises it held for me. But I was down nonetheless. Did anyone else know how easy this was? Did they visit here often? Or never?

I carefully inched my way closer to the door and immediately caught a musty odor that reminded me of my grandmother’s house when I was a kid. Mothballs? Smelled exactly like that. Used for keeping the moths away from linen. Maybe this is where all the old uniforms were kept. Always wondered about that.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark interior I could just make out what looked like a small flickering light at a distance. Like a furnace pilot light. The mere fact that I could see that far made me suspect the place was actually empty. But never say a Francis doesn’t have an imagination, for I still considered the possibility that large storage bins lay to my left and right bringing to mind the warehouse of Indiana Jones where the lost Ark was stored amid millions of other possibly important memorabilia stored by the government.

I stepped into the room, the odor becoming stronger as I did. Still couldn’t see anything. I reached out both my hands as far as my arms would take them and felt around. Nothing. Just air and that smell. The latter so strong now that I cough a couple of times. What else would someone use mothballs for? Pesticide. Long-term exposure can cause all manner of damage to living things. That’s it. Maybe they used the things for taking care of rats and other vermin. Then I remembered my chemistry. Naphthalene and Paradichlorobenzene were the main ingredients of mothballs. Though not typical, if memory served, they could, in combination with other chemicals, be used in certain gases to make WMDs. Weapons of mass destruction. Was that what this was all about?

The stench was beginning to make me sick. Not much longer down here, I told myself.

I reached the pilot light and, sure enough, it seemed hooked to a furnace of some kind.

Then, before I had a chance to put two and two together, the damn thing ignited scaring the shit out of me. A huge roar and the smell of mothballs disappeared with the new smell of natural gas. And the room completely lit up.

I turned, expecting to see something incredibly revealing. And I did. Nothing. The room was entirely empty. Revealing everything it had all at once. In three dimensions. For everyone to see. Nothing. My little melodrama gone to hell.

I looked around the room for any kind of ‘tell’ that something was amiss. Or a trace of anything that would suggest what its previous occupants had used it for. Not much. Cement walls. No windows. No pictures of mutilated bodies on the walls. No blood dripping from the ceiling. Not even a trap door up to the first floor. Boring.

One thing though caught my eye. A large tunnel next to the huge furnace. Maybe three feet by three feet. Moving upward at a roughly twenty-degree angle. Wires and trunk lines falling out of it and entering a fuse-box looking thing on the wall. A way out? Certainly big enough for a man to crawl within. And it would have to emerge somewhere useful. An electrical plant? Not likely. That could be miles from here. Possibly another, even larger tunnel? No idea. But it offered the best route for escape I’d encountered thus far.

With that bit of knowledge achieved, I worked my way back across the room, fast the tie because the light permitted it, and re-entered the elevator chute. Thank God, the elevator had remained up on the thirteenth or something floor high above and I climbed the ladder again, pulled the doors apart, and with a couple of minutes had pushed the button to climb back to the lab and my apartment.

As I worked, my thoughts also turned to Cassie number one. What was going on in North Dakota these days? How long had I been gone? Hard to tell. At least a week. Probably less than a month. Certainly long enough that without letting anyone know my whereabouts, someone should have gotten worried. And what was happening in the real world out there? Politics, world affairs, hottest movies, and so on? Cooped up didn’t cover what I felt right then.

Cassie finally turned in my direction. No idea at this point what she felt about me. But she smiled and turned back to her work. Since our brief skirmish, she’d been hard to read. Probably informing the boss about my every move. Part of the team, along with the rest of them

And I thought about escape. When to do it. How to prepare? My biggest worry was keeping warm. I had no overcoat or any other way to fend off the winter temperatures. Had to do something about that before I made any attempt.

Then I considered my financial affairs. I’d spent all my big cash on Cassie number two’s habit. Maybe I had a few dollars left for a meal or two and, more importantly, a couple of phone calls. Then again, where was my wallet? Not on me, certainly. I’d checked several times. I didn’t remember seeing it in my apartment. No coins in my pockets. And no identification.

I got up from my station and made my way back to the apartment and began to search for it. Nowhere to be found. So, I thought, no way to keep warm, no money, and no identification. How far could I get without those things? Any one of them could put me in the slammer no less right back here. Even more interesting, where had my wallet gone? When did I last have it? When I pulled it out of my pocket to pay the pusher. Before I went to sleep to the sound of Cassie number two’s incessant jabbering. After that, no more wallet. CM had relieved it from me. Knowing full well that he would cripple any other attempts at escape I might make. Smart guy.

25.
I returned to the supercomputer and began what I hoped would be my last revision of the virus code. I’d decided by then to just make the surprise window appear not less than four days after arriving, and then only after six hours of the ‘hello’ window appearing. This made it almost impossible for it to occur, but still likely given the millions of different computers that it would invade. And I’d be long gone if, by chance, Cassie number two actually found it impeded in my system. The trick was so simple, that I had to work at my station for several hours doing nothing at all so that no one would be suspicious of my altered plan.

When I finally retired back to my room, Cassie number two stood up, approached me, and gave me a big kiss. But no open mouth, no clear come on, no suggestion it was anything but a shared bond between opposite genders working on the same project. It took it as an apology for reacting the way she had and headed back for a meal and some rest.

As I ate my breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whatever it was, I happened to reach in my pocket without thinking and found a one hundred dollar bill there. Cassie. She’d somehow found the money somewhere, somehow, and decided to repay me, at least a little, for what I’d done for her. It wasn’t my ID, but it took one giant step toward achieving my plans for ditching this place and making my way back home.

The coat I’d have to steal from someone. Not ideal, but I wouldn’t survive for long, even for a mild winter night in the city, without one. But where? I could return to the top floor stairwell and borrow the night watchman’s jacket. Plenty warm and big enough. But I’d then have to make it all the way to the basement without someone seeing me and obviously guessing my motives.

Then, without warning, Masters entered my apartment. Not out the trap door but through the front entrance. Didn’t knock. He looked angry.

“Finished,” I said, hoping it might change his mood.

“Good. And no tricks this time.”

“No tricks,” I said.

“But actually I’m not here for that.”

I waited.

“Did you visit the basement today?”

“We all did. The alarm rang. What choice did I have?” I hoped by barrage of answers didn’t convince him I was hiding something.

“Not that basement. The other one.”

No luck.

He looked at me to see if I was kidding.

“Did you, or did you not?”

He knew. He had to. Where could he come up with that bit of information if not already knowing the answer? No reason to lie.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because?”

“It was there, that’s because. We’re in an old government building and there’s a part of the building that’s unavailable. What’s not to be interested in?”

“And?”

“And what did you find there?”

“Exactly what you did.”

“Never been down there.”

“Well someone must have been.”

“No one I know of has.”

“No one?”

“Absolutely not. It was one of the provisions of the government giving us this place that we leave that area completely alone. That no one ever set foot there. And now you just have.”

“I never promised not to. No one ever said anything about it to me.”

He mulled that over for a minute.

“What did you find?”

“Curious?”

“Just tell me.”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing but a big furnace that keeps the building warm. That’s it. Nothing else. Nada.”

“How can that be,” he asked.

“Without knowing the particulars of the provision, I wouldn’t know. But, believe me, there’s simply nothing there. Except, of course . . .”

I let him hang on the word.

“There was a pervasive smell of mothballs.”

“Mothballs?”

“Mothballs. My grandmother used to use them in her closets. The small has stayed with me ever since. The unmistakable smell of mothballs.”

Now he looked complete confused.

“But it disappeared as soon as the furnace came on and replaced it with the small of natural gas.”

He had scrunched his face into a strange configuration as he tried to figure out the meaning of what I had told him. Coming to no conclusion, he simply turned around and left me standing there.

How did he figure out I was down there? I thought. If his cameras had caught me, then someone must have been down there. Unless they had installed the cameras in the elevator shaft but not in the room itself. Hard to imagine taking the provision so literally as to notice the open door but not look in. I was getting the idea that Masters was a tiny bit obsessive compulsive. Good to know.

I finished my meal and lay down on the bed again. To finish my nap that had been so rudely interrupted by the alarm what seemed like a day ago now.
When I woke again, to no alarm I might add. Something was amiss. I looked around me. Then it hit. The walls had turned off. No light whatsoever. That had not occurred since I’d been here. No idea what that meant.

I crawled off the bed, careful not to bump into anything in the dark, and found my way to the door. The lights had gone off in the computer lab as well.

“Cassie,” I whispered.

“Yo,” she answered.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Electricity has gone out.”

“I can see that. Why?”

“Don’t know.”

“Happen before?”

“Not that I can remember. Whole city’s out.”

“The whole city?”

“Yes, I took the elevator to the roof. Everything’s dead out there. No lights anywhere except a couple of candle’s in windows here and there.”

“Jesus. What do you suppose happened?”

“No idea.”

“That mean the whole building’s down?”

“Would guess so.”

I’d never find a better time, I thought. Now’s my chance. Take the stairs up to the top, steal the coat, back down to the basement. Hope the elevator wasn’t stalled on the first floor, and out through the tube I’d found and hopefully make my getaway.

I started toward the door, but stopped.

“Cassie?”

“Yes?”

“No problem. And good luck.”

“I’ll need it.”

And I left here. Sitting no doubt religiously glued to her station waiting for the lights to flick on and the computer to restart. Ne, I was on my way to freedom. Or so I thought.

26.
It took me a lot longer than expected to reach the top of the building up the stairs. Not as conditioned as I thought. But I made it. And the watchman’s coat was exactly as I’d left it. I put it on and started down. Lot faster that direction. I made it to the lobby in about the same amount of time as it had taken me to get to the roof.

Things were looking up. The elevator was not on the first floor and I opened the doors with less effort since the electric force holding them in place was nonexistent. With very little effort I found myself back in the larger basement smelling the smell again, and watching the flickering of the pilot light in the furnace. I made my way across the room and found the tunnel leading to what I hoped would be freedom. With something to keep me warm and one hundred bucks in my pocket, it suddenly seemed a lot more possible that I’d escape than it had a few hours ago.

I hoisted myself up with arms and into the hole. Just as I did, timed to perfection, the lights returned to the building. I could tell not by the room I’d just left, but by the reflection back in the elevator shaft from having left the elevator doors opening. They closed then leaving me once again in the dark. I sat for a moment trying to get my bearings and decide how to travel. Hands and knees, bent over at the waist, wiggling like a snake? Before I could decide, a flashlight hit the walls in the room behind me. Someone was down here with me. Another escapee? Or Masters checking out the room now that he knew the provision had been violated. The latter I more than suspected.

I turned toward the upward climbing tunnel and began quietly crawling on hands and knees as I went. With the rake of the tunnel I figured whoever had followed me here would not be able to see me once I gone a hundred yards or so. Even with their flashlight on full blast. I needed to make good time. And I did. Fear works wonders.

I grabbed the various electrical lines as I went to avoid brushing against the sides and making noises. I couldn’t see anything as I went. The mothball scent slowly disappeared but seemed to have done its job well. No rats or other small animals I could detect. No other sounds than my hands and knees touch the bottom of the tunnel. Eventually I looked back and was the flashlight searching in vain for me. Or at least I assumed it was me. Maybe they just wanted to investigate what the possibilities were for their own escape.

After what seemed like a an hour of going ever upward, the tunnel took a sudden turn flat and leveled off just below what I assumed was ground level. I tried to see a manhole cover or something akin to that above me. A way to get myself out of this mess. Too dark. I’d left the afterglow of the flashlight way behind. Finally, I just put my hand above my head and felt left and right for any indication of an exit. Surely, electricians would want access to these lines. In fact, the law must have regulations for such. But I found nothing and continued on my way. No sense in going back.

After ten minutes or so. My fingers touched something that felt like a handle. I passed it before I realized what it was. Or might be. I walked my fingers back and found it again. Definitely a handle. Metal. And, I could now see, a think circle of light coming from above and around it. A manhole. Perfect. Or course, I could imagine all sorts of things above. I’d emerge in the middle of Fifth Avenue during rush hour, Not likely, since Queens was a lot further from Fifth Avenue than I’d traveled. Maybe Times Square. Or Grand Central Station. What the hell. Now or never.

I pushed up. It wouldn't move. Someone had locked it shut. And here I’d stay the night before humbly returning to the Christopher Masters Building to take my place again alongside the Stepford Wives, diligently doing what the master of the house demanded of them.

But then it gave. Obviously not used regularly. As it went up, so did I. Into the good night. And snow falling softly. And lights. Not above me and directly around me, but in the distance. I was in a park. In a cluster of trees. Like the ones that Cassie number two and I’d hid in the night we’d escaped the first time.

I pilled myself out of the hole and returned the lid back into its place. Leaves rattled off it as I did and I replaced them as best I could to give no indication it had been tampered with. Free at last, I looked up at the falling flakes and the trees through which they fell and thanked whoever might be responsible for making this possible.

Looking around me I could see that the snow had just begun falling. None yet sticking to the ground. Behind me I could see the building from which I’d run lit in the floors around and including thirteen, or so I imagine. I had neither the time nor inclination to count at this point. In the far distance I would see downtown New York City. As promised by all the tourist brochures. Once again on the lose, but this time without being chained to a meth addict.

Where to go? Certainly not the same direction we’d gone before. But which way was that? They all looked pretty much the same.

I couldn’t just stand here, so I took off running away from the building, Even if it were the same direction that Cassie and I’d gone, at least I’d know where the bar was. And the hostel. Not that either one would do me much good at this point.

But it wasn't the same direction. The first street I encountered was all businesses. Most closed, but some still open. One was a liqueur store. Perfect place. Get some change. Maybe a bottle of Beam to celebrate. A small one just to warm me up. And then make my way to a phone and make a call back to North Dakota. Earlier there than here.

I entered the place, tinkling a little bell as I did. One man behind the counter. No other customers. Couldn’t be better. Things were finally turning my way. I found the Beam and headed for the register. I passed a stack of newspapers on my way there and something caught my eye. I stopped and reversed course. The something that had caught my eye was a small piece on the front page of the Times titled ‘Serial Killer on the Loose.’ Not a good thing for anyone. But certainly a bad thing for someone with no ID, looking like a bum, and with a lot of money in his pocket. Wandering around the city with no place to stay.