Vix was standing in a field.
To his left stood a red barn. It looked as if it had just been painted, and was in good shape, even if this kind of barn most definitely must have been built long ago.
The barn was surrounded by green fields as far as he could see, and to his right a horse was drinking out of a wooden trough. The horse was light grey with small black-patches all over and a long ragged mane. He seemed like a kind of working horse rather than a show horse or something fancy.
But he seemed like a good horse, Vix thought.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a person came riding towards him on a tall black horse.
He was dressed in full plate armour, and was holding a long sword in each hand, and at first Vix didn’t recognize him, but as he came closer he could see that it was his friend from the living prison he’d once been trapped inside.
Vix tried to wave and make himself noticed, but his friend ignored him and instead rode straight towards the white horse and decapitated it in one movement.
As Vix stood speechless, the blood started gushing out of the headless body and into the water-tray and the surrounding ground, as if its life-juices returned to their origin of water and earth.
His friend rode towards him holding the horse’s head by its blood-stained mane, his two swords dripping with blood in the other hand.
"What the hell are you doing?" Vix shouted, with tears in his eyes. "He seemed like a nice horse."
His friend just stared blankly back at him, like his savage actions meant nothing at all – almost as though he hadn't even noticed what he’d just done.
Then, a sense of panic grew inside Vix, and he said to his friend:
"We have to get rid of this head. And you have to clean your bloody swords. Otherwise we'll be in deep trouble when they return."
Vix didn't know why, but he had a strong feeling someone would be returning soon, and that they would be in deep trouble when they eventually did.
"That's fine", his friend said.
Showing posts with label blood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blood. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Savage exposed
Mac moved slowly towards the second camp of the House of Lhasa entourage. He had taken out the first party at the previous camp a few hours earlier.
The Eskimo back there had given him quite a hard time, but the House Warrior had been an easy prey, once the dogs had passed out due to one of Mac's gas-tubes. The gas only meant they would sleep for a few hours, but in temperatures like these sleeping almost definitely meant never waking up again. And anyway, sleeping or dead, they were out of play. Without the dogs, the House Warrior had no waking fellow souls to connect to with his mind, and therefore no-one to alert him of the intruder.
"That's the problem with his kind", Mac thought to himself. "Too bloody dependent on others. No self-sufficiency."
He had quickly taken the Warrior out with his knife.
Effective and to the point, and once again aided by the goggles he'd been provided, together with all the other goodies from the R.O.S.E. arsenal of tech: Another hard argument in the ongoing debate among these Ancients concerning their fear of technology.
The Eskimo had been more difficult. He reacted in a split second to Mac's attack on his cave-mate and had been on him in the next moment, trying to wrestle the knife out of his hand in the darkness.
The very darkness that Mac didn’t have to worry about.
Eventually he had managed to win over the knife and swiftly slit the Eskimo’s throat, blood pouring out all over and making crazy fireworks of blue and green flash inside his infrared goggle view.
It had been kind of pretty, Mac thought.
Now he was moving in on the dogs of the second party.
The direction of the wind came straight towards him, and the canine watchers had no clue of the intruder sneaking up on them.
Same strategy, he thought as he closed in, gas-tubes armed and ready. Why change it if you keep winning?
He felt the blood rush to his head.
Njoro woke with a feeling of total terror filling her entire soul.
There was no sound of the dogs. Everything was quiet. Not even the wind was there anymore. The whole cave was still dark.
Still, and filled with the most terrifying fear.
Then she realized it.
Someone was inside the cave.
But it was far too late for a warning now. As the thought hit her, something else did, too.
Hard.
For the glimpse of a second she felt the taste of blood spreading in her mouth.
Then everything went black.
Mac double-checked every inch of the cave through his night-vision. There was no living thing in there except the unconscious House Witch lying at his feet and another dead Eskimo.
He could sense that something was wrong.
These people never used to travel in twos. They avoided too many even numbers in their entourages, and as the other group consisted of two members he expected this one to be a threesome. The Lhasa people were much too entangled in superstition to go easy on these matters, so something must had happened that made them take extraordinary measures on this trip.
It just wasn’t right. They were far too dependent on both their superstitions and eachother to take risks like these.
He couldn’t help but wind himself up on the topic yet again.
All this was their own fault.
Their ways didn’t allow people any kind of privacy or individuality, and that’s probably why the climate in the Middle North had changed like it had for the last decade. People were ready for something new. They were tired of the talk of 'the old ways' and the constant reminders of how to live, how to breathe, how to fucking stand when pissing. It was all 'well-meant advice' of course. Nobody was obligated to do anything at all.
That was also part of the problem, maybe the biggest one of all.
This endless struggle for harmony.
And their eternal mantra of how fucked-up things were before the 'Age of Restoration'.
More like the Age of bloody regression, if you asked him.
Nobody did, though.
He was a simple man who had a simple job to do, and that's how he liked it. No questions asked. No headaches.
But he had to admit that now that new groups like Mr. Sykes' organization Research On Soul Evolution had started working on unraveling the past in a more thorough way, he felt that some kind of progress might once again be the steps for mankind.
It was merely the question of dealing first with the obstacles to progress that these people represented. They never seemed to give in their resistance towards the world spinning around, and what irritated him the most was that, in spite of their shortcomings, the Traditionalists always seemed to be one step ahead of the game when it came down to digging up information from the past, even quite useful information.
But when they did find something that could have been of value, it was always all about 'making it work for the common good of mankind' - if they dared to take a closer look at whatever they found. Most artifacts were just given silly names and put it on display in one of their sacred spaces in the Golden City, located far away from most of the globe’s population high up in mountains of the Far East.
What's the problem with wanting to exploit knowledge?
To advance? Get ahead?
They would probably never understand the claustrophobic boredom they evoked in any middle-northerner looking for some excitement or change.
Couldn’t they at least recognize the worth of just some technological advances R.O.S.E. and their competing organizations had come up with during the last few years?
Which reminded him:
Why the hell couldn't he pick up the missing third person on his WristSat?
He couldn't have gotten far if he had left just before Mac arrived, something that must have been the case. Could it be that they had some kind of warning anyway?
It was weird still.
They were so afraid of the weather that it was very unusual that they would dare to move anywhere in a storm like this.
He decided he would just have to wait here in the cave.
They wouldn't let a pretty young 'Sister' like this behind.
He’d best keep her breathing, but tied up. She would most certainly try to use her skills to call on her missing companions when she woke up.
The smell was killing him. Burning walrus blubber.
"What the hell is wrong with electricity?" he thought, tied up the unconscious House Witch and lay himself down to have some rest.
As he was sure the R.O.S.E hunter was sleeping, Pi came out of the dream-hole.
His body had been standing beside the Savage ever since he entered the cave. He had been warned of the attack from pictures Sha-Ton had sent from the far side of the Dreamtime. His blessed brother had also given him the message that he himself wouldn't be coming back. Not this time. Not with the broken body the Savage had left him with.
Not until it was time to struggle through another birth would they meet again.
Pi looked forward to see him, and wondered what lives they would hold on their next crossing of fates.
He had also been given the message that most probably the Savage's attack wouldn't harm Njoro more than that she would be thankful to have been so lightly hurt, but that she'd surely would become furious when she - in the close future - would wake up and eventually know that Pi had let it all happen.
Surely she would forgive him when she understood his plan.
Surely.
He would have to move fast. The third party who took the alternative route would have reached the destination by now.
The R.O.S.E. hunter would have to meet his fate, and Njoro would be scared, but would come out of this stronger than ever.
He quietly went outside. The dogs were all dead.
It was not a good situation at all, but the weather had lightened up, and he could use the moonlight once again.
He started walking.
“You’ll be fine, Sister Njoro,” he whispered to the freezing night. “Just fine.”
The Eskimo back there had given him quite a hard time, but the House Warrior had been an easy prey, once the dogs had passed out due to one of Mac's gas-tubes. The gas only meant they would sleep for a few hours, but in temperatures like these sleeping almost definitely meant never waking up again. And anyway, sleeping or dead, they were out of play. Without the dogs, the House Warrior had no waking fellow souls to connect to with his mind, and therefore no-one to alert him of the intruder.
"That's the problem with his kind", Mac thought to himself. "Too bloody dependent on others. No self-sufficiency."
He had quickly taken the Warrior out with his knife.
Effective and to the point, and once again aided by the goggles he'd been provided, together with all the other goodies from the R.O.S.E. arsenal of tech: Another hard argument in the ongoing debate among these Ancients concerning their fear of technology.
The Eskimo had been more difficult. He reacted in a split second to Mac's attack on his cave-mate and had been on him in the next moment, trying to wrestle the knife out of his hand in the darkness.
The very darkness that Mac didn’t have to worry about.
Eventually he had managed to win over the knife and swiftly slit the Eskimo’s throat, blood pouring out all over and making crazy fireworks of blue and green flash inside his infrared goggle view.
It had been kind of pretty, Mac thought.
Now he was moving in on the dogs of the second party.
The direction of the wind came straight towards him, and the canine watchers had no clue of the intruder sneaking up on them.
Same strategy, he thought as he closed in, gas-tubes armed and ready. Why change it if you keep winning?
He felt the blood rush to his head.
Njoro woke with a feeling of total terror filling her entire soul.
There was no sound of the dogs. Everything was quiet. Not even the wind was there anymore. The whole cave was still dark.
Still, and filled with the most terrifying fear.
Then she realized it.
Someone was inside the cave.
But it was far too late for a warning now. As the thought hit her, something else did, too.
Hard.
For the glimpse of a second she felt the taste of blood spreading in her mouth.
Then everything went black.
Mac double-checked every inch of the cave through his night-vision. There was no living thing in there except the unconscious House Witch lying at his feet and another dead Eskimo.
He could sense that something was wrong.
These people never used to travel in twos. They avoided too many even numbers in their entourages, and as the other group consisted of two members he expected this one to be a threesome. The Lhasa people were much too entangled in superstition to go easy on these matters, so something must had happened that made them take extraordinary measures on this trip.
It just wasn’t right. They were far too dependent on both their superstitions and eachother to take risks like these.
He couldn’t help but wind himself up on the topic yet again.
All this was their own fault.
Their ways didn’t allow people any kind of privacy or individuality, and that’s probably why the climate in the Middle North had changed like it had for the last decade. People were ready for something new. They were tired of the talk of 'the old ways' and the constant reminders of how to live, how to breathe, how to fucking stand when pissing. It was all 'well-meant advice' of course. Nobody was obligated to do anything at all.
That was also part of the problem, maybe the biggest one of all.
This endless struggle for harmony.
And their eternal mantra of how fucked-up things were before the 'Age of Restoration'.
More like the Age of bloody regression, if you asked him.
Nobody did, though.
He was a simple man who had a simple job to do, and that's how he liked it. No questions asked. No headaches.
But he had to admit that now that new groups like Mr. Sykes' organization Research On Soul Evolution had started working on unraveling the past in a more thorough way, he felt that some kind of progress might once again be the steps for mankind.
It was merely the question of dealing first with the obstacles to progress that these people represented. They never seemed to give in their resistance towards the world spinning around, and what irritated him the most was that, in spite of their shortcomings, the Traditionalists always seemed to be one step ahead of the game when it came down to digging up information from the past, even quite useful information.
But when they did find something that could have been of value, it was always all about 'making it work for the common good of mankind' - if they dared to take a closer look at whatever they found. Most artifacts were just given silly names and put it on display in one of their sacred spaces in the Golden City, located far away from most of the globe’s population high up in mountains of the Far East.
What's the problem with wanting to exploit knowledge?
To advance? Get ahead?
They would probably never understand the claustrophobic boredom they evoked in any middle-northerner looking for some excitement or change.
Couldn’t they at least recognize the worth of just some technological advances R.O.S.E. and their competing organizations had come up with during the last few years?
Which reminded him:
Why the hell couldn't he pick up the missing third person on his WristSat?
He couldn't have gotten far if he had left just before Mac arrived, something that must have been the case. Could it be that they had some kind of warning anyway?
It was weird still.
They were so afraid of the weather that it was very unusual that they would dare to move anywhere in a storm like this.
He decided he would just have to wait here in the cave.
They wouldn't let a pretty young 'Sister' like this behind.
He’d best keep her breathing, but tied up. She would most certainly try to use her skills to call on her missing companions when she woke up.
The smell was killing him. Burning walrus blubber.
"What the hell is wrong with electricity?" he thought, tied up the unconscious House Witch and lay himself down to have some rest.
As he was sure the R.O.S.E hunter was sleeping, Pi came out of the dream-hole.
His body had been standing beside the Savage ever since he entered the cave. He had been warned of the attack from pictures Sha-Ton had sent from the far side of the Dreamtime. His blessed brother had also given him the message that he himself wouldn't be coming back. Not this time. Not with the broken body the Savage had left him with.
Not until it was time to struggle through another birth would they meet again.
Pi looked forward to see him, and wondered what lives they would hold on their next crossing of fates.
He had also been given the message that most probably the Savage's attack wouldn't harm Njoro more than that she would be thankful to have been so lightly hurt, but that she'd surely would become furious when she - in the close future - would wake up and eventually know that Pi had let it all happen.
Surely she would forgive him when she understood his plan.
Surely.
He would have to move fast. The third party who took the alternative route would have reached the destination by now.
The R.O.S.E. hunter would have to meet his fate, and Njoro would be scared, but would come out of this stronger than ever.
He quietly went outside. The dogs were all dead.
It was not a good situation at all, but the weather had lightened up, and he could use the moonlight once again.
He started walking.
“You’ll be fine, Sister Njoro,” he whispered to the freezing night. “Just fine.”
Monday, June 22, 2009
Sniffing warm blood
Mac was lying flat out on his belly in the cold snow, scanning the evening landscape through his sub-spectral goggles.
The Lhasa entourage had given in to the weather, and was probably sleeping already inside the snow cave. Something radiated heat from within the snow.
Human heat, he guessed.
Fuelled by warm blood.
"Success.", he whispered to himself.
Luckily, the howling storm didn't interfere with the vision through the goggles, even if all he could see with his bare eyesight was white stripes of hurling snow. Another point added on the list to shut the mouths of the technology skeptics that seemed to fill the planet - like the ones he was hunting down on this very assignment.
For all he tried - not that hard, when he came to think of it - he couldn’t understand the resistance the House of Lhasa and all the Traditionalists had put up against all this wonderful new technology. They feared it like the plague, mostly based on their silly old tall-tales of global catastrophes in ancient times and other far-fetched myths.
It was a case of standing in the way of progress.
His progress, among others.
They simply wouldn't accept that the whole area of the Middle-North was all turning pro-tech these days, and that the new prosperity they were encountering was mostly due to the fact that people in his region were open to new thoughts. Embracing technological progress was a big part of the new thought that was about to lead them into a bright new future.
Of course, they had to get themselves into trouble like this.
Fatal trouble.
He remembered the day when he left Riga for the Northern Ice. On his way down towards the zeppelin pier he had noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Some brand new, electrically illuminated boxes had been put up next to the walkway. They were all the same size, about three by two foot, and across a shiny synthetic surface were printed a set of historical 'reminders'.
These had always been around, though always made out of natural fabrics and materials, hopelessly illuminated by smelly candles.
The new ones shone with bright electrical light.
Much more sensible, although the puzzling thing about this was that he’d never seen progressive technology applied to Traditionalist nonsense like this before. It made him wonder who put them up; Traditionalists loosening up to progress or forward-thinking people caught up in old bullshit ways of thinking.
One of them had read:
All religious nonsense and nothing the world needed in this day and age.
Maybe these people would become less backwards-thinking now that he was about to sneak up on them in the night, and that it was all down to his utilization of recently developed tools that enabled him to track them down?
Pity they wouldn't live to be able to change their ways.
The Lhasa entourage had given in to the weather, and was probably sleeping already inside the snow cave. Something radiated heat from within the snow.
Human heat, he guessed.
Fuelled by warm blood.
"Success.", he whispered to himself.
Luckily, the howling storm didn't interfere with the vision through the goggles, even if all he could see with his bare eyesight was white stripes of hurling snow. Another point added on the list to shut the mouths of the technology skeptics that seemed to fill the planet - like the ones he was hunting down on this very assignment.
For all he tried - not that hard, when he came to think of it - he couldn’t understand the resistance the House of Lhasa and all the Traditionalists had put up against all this wonderful new technology. They feared it like the plague, mostly based on their silly old tall-tales of global catastrophes in ancient times and other far-fetched myths.
It was a case of standing in the way of progress.
His progress, among others.
They simply wouldn't accept that the whole area of the Middle-North was all turning pro-tech these days, and that the new prosperity they were encountering was mostly due to the fact that people in his region were open to new thoughts. Embracing technological progress was a big part of the new thought that was about to lead them into a bright new future.
Of course, they had to get themselves into trouble like this.
Fatal trouble.
He remembered the day when he left Riga for the Northern Ice. On his way down towards the zeppelin pier he had noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Some brand new, electrically illuminated boxes had been put up next to the walkway. They were all the same size, about three by two foot, and across a shiny synthetic surface were printed a set of historical 'reminders'.
These had always been around, though always made out of natural fabrics and materials, hopelessly illuminated by smelly candles.
The new ones shone with bright electrical light.
Much more sensible, although the puzzling thing about this was that he’d never seen progressive technology applied to Traditionalist nonsense like this before. It made him wonder who put them up; Traditionalists loosening up to progress or forward-thinking people caught up in old bullshit ways of thinking.
One of them had read:
I
feel
You
feel
He feels
She feels
It feels
We
feel
You
feel
They
feel
All religious nonsense and nothing the world needed in this day and age.
Maybe these people would become less backwards-thinking now that he was about to sneak up on them in the night, and that it was all down to his utilization of recently developed tools that enabled him to track them down?
Pity they wouldn't live to be able to change their ways.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Blood In The Machine
Vix was standing in the middle of a field, next to a friend.
He didn't know who the friend was, or if they had met before.
At the edges of the open space were small houses, and something that looked like a public café, or restaurant. There were people there. All of them men.
Vix and his friend walked past the gathering of people, who stared at them with shadowy, silent eyes. They didn't much feel like joining them, or even exchanging a brief, polite moment with them as they passed. They didn't know why, it just didn’t feel quite safe.
As they walked around and towards the back of the public house, they could see the landscape opening up. Something was ending here, and something else was beginning.
It was then his friend noticed the fence, and shouted "Look!", as he pointed at it.
As they moved towards it, they could see that it was tall, maybe 6 or 7 meters high. At some stretches, it had barbed wire at the top, and at others, broken glass. And at other parts it was more of a wall than a fence.
It seemed to go on forever around them, the houses, and the open spaces between and beyond them all; but the whole place was so large that one easily failed to notice that it was completely encircled by this fence, at least until one reached the outskirts.
"What the hell is this?", his friend said.
"Looks like a fence. More a wall in some places.", Vix replied.
"I can see that. But why?"
"To keep us from entering what’s beyond, probably."
"Entering what? There's nothing out there but wilderness, as far as I can see."
Vix scratched his chin and gave it a quick thought.
"Or...", he said, "To keep us from exiting."
"Exiting what? This small village with all those rough lads back there?"
"No. To keep us from exiting our prison."
As he said these words, he felt a rush of sadness rolling up from his stomach and through his chest. It left a kind of sad taste in his mouth, and he had to swallow to get rid of it.
"A prison. Why the hell should we be in prison?", his friend said, in an angry voice.
"I don't know. Probably just stuff we've done."
"I haven't done fuck all to get on the edge with the law. Ever. Why the hell should I be here? This is bloody outrageous!"
His friend was steaming with anger now, but Vix just felt the sadness that had taken residence in the back of his throat.
"It probably is.", Vix replied. "Outrageous. But we're still in here."
"I'm getting out.", his friend said, and immediately started to climb the fence.
He instantly managed to get quite high up, but as he approached the top there was too much barbed wire to go any further without getting a nasty injury.
Vix looked at his friend struggling for a while, then he started to climb himself. But the same thing happened. As soon as he came close to the top, the wall became so dangerous that he had to back off.
Soon they both descended, and had to catch their breaths on the ground for a while.
"What do we do now?" His friend was still angry, but slightly more desperate-sounding.
"Maybe we can dig our way beneath it?"
"Of course! It can't be that deep when it is so high", his friend said enthused.
Vix though about why it couldn't, but when he took a closer look, he thought he could see a small opening at the very bottom of the fence a few meters to their right.
They ran over to the spot, and discovered that there was snow on the ground here, not sand, as they had initially thought.
"Strange.", Vix said. "I didn't notice the snow from over there."
"Neither did I, but let's start digging."
They started digging, and quickly got the light snow out of the way.
As they got deeper, they found that there was a steel wire net that seemed to stretch down from the fence and deep into the ground. They tried at different spots, but the same thing happened at every attempt. It was useless.
Totally knackered, they both eventually gave up, and sat on the cold ground in silence.
"That's it.", his friend said after a while.
"That's what?", Vix replied.
"We're stuck in here."
"Yeah. Seems so."
"I really don't wanna go back to those people. Or be locked up in here anymore."
"Me neither."
"Let's try to find another way. There must be a way of contacting someone on the outside."
"You mean like a telephone?", Vix said.
"Yeah. Or a computer. Let's look around for a bit. If this is a prison, I still can't see no guards anywhere."
His friend was right. They hadn't seen anyone who looked even slightly like prison guards. Only the men at the house, and they were far from guard-like in appearance.
"Ok. Let's have a look around."
They walked quietly past the big house with the men, and across the small field, that now seemed more like a square. Things seemed to change slightly when looked at twice in this place, something Vix found strange but still not straight-out disastrous, so he let it pass.
At the other end of the field-turned-square, they reached a small one-storey house. It looked like the command-office of a military camp in the kind of movies that had military camps in them that looked like this. Very simple and sparsely decorated, if decorated at all.
There seemed to be no-one there, but the door was left open.
They snuck inside.
The office was very simple, with a desk, a chair, a dustbin and a single coat-hook on the wall.
There were no pictures on the wall, or on the desk.
On top of the desk was a computer, but no phone.
The computer seemed old, the kind with a large tower cpu-unit standing on the floor beneath the desk, and the screen and keyboard standing on top of it connected with wires.
The computer was in sleep mode, with the kind of floating text screen-saver that used to be popular in public offices in the past, often hiding an ongoing game of solitaire - if you were to touch the mouse and wake it up from its digital dreams.
The text read: "Hello."
"Do you think it's connected to the Internet?", his friend asked in a whispery voice, as if to be sure not to wake the computer.
"I don't know.", Vix replied. "Let's try it."
He touched the mouse. Nothing happened. He pressed a key. It woke up. There was no solitaire behind the screen-saver, but a small login window on a green background. A message said "press any key to log in".
Vix pressed any key, in this case “z”, and was prompted for a password for the "guest" login.
"Shit.", Vix' friend said, still whispering, even if the computer was now awake.
Vix typed "hello" in the password field, and pressed "enter".
The hard-drive made struggling noises as it wound up to speed, and they were logged in.
"Wow!", his friend said. "How did you know?"
"I didn't.", Vix replied.
He quickly opened a web-browser and checked in on all his regular sites. Everything looked quite normal. Just like any other day sitting by his own desk checking the same websites from his own computer.
Soon he had forgotten all about the fact that he just had found himself confined in a strange prison, and that the whole reason he was standing here bent over a strange desk in a military command-office-looking office with a stranger who was now a friend was to try and get in touch with the outside world and eventually escape.
His friend had also lost himself, and was just standing next to Vix staring at the screen, reading the latest news headlines without ever clicking on them to see the whole article behind, checking the latest blog posts of new and old music, scrolling through the forums for anything that hadn't been discussed last week.
They were two imprisoned souls with the most powerful oracle of knowledge in history at their hands, but they just couldn't come up with the right question, or even remember to ask one at all.
Suddenly his friend snapped out of it, and almost shouted: "Look!".
He was pointing at the cpu-tower at the floor.
The computer's box had opened up as by itself, and inside a mix of wiring and electronics were mixed up with something that looked like transparent plastic tubes. Liquid flowed and bubbled through these clear plastic veins. It was steaming with heat, and in places the substance had started boiling.
"That doesn't look good.", his friend said.
As Vix turned around he could see that the plastic tubes of the computer had grown out of the box behind their backs and were now stretching across the room to other electronic devices they hadn't noticed when they arrived.
"This whole thing is gonna blow, we have to get out!"
At that moment Vix suddenly realized that the liquid inside the tubes were nothing but the steaming, undulating red substance that flowed through his own veins.
This machine was running on blood.
"No fucking wonder there are no guards here.", he said to his friend. "This whole bloody prison is alive!"
He didn't know who the friend was, or if they had met before.
At the edges of the open space were small houses, and something that looked like a public café, or restaurant. There were people there. All of them men.
Vix and his friend walked past the gathering of people, who stared at them with shadowy, silent eyes. They didn't much feel like joining them, or even exchanging a brief, polite moment with them as they passed. They didn't know why, it just didn’t feel quite safe.
As they walked around and towards the back of the public house, they could see the landscape opening up. Something was ending here, and something else was beginning.
It was then his friend noticed the fence, and shouted "Look!", as he pointed at it.
As they moved towards it, they could see that it was tall, maybe 6 or 7 meters high. At some stretches, it had barbed wire at the top, and at others, broken glass. And at other parts it was more of a wall than a fence.
It seemed to go on forever around them, the houses, and the open spaces between and beyond them all; but the whole place was so large that one easily failed to notice that it was completely encircled by this fence, at least until one reached the outskirts.
"What the hell is this?", his friend said.
"Looks like a fence. More a wall in some places.", Vix replied.
"I can see that. But why?"
"To keep us from entering what’s beyond, probably."
"Entering what? There's nothing out there but wilderness, as far as I can see."
Vix scratched his chin and gave it a quick thought.
"Or...", he said, "To keep us from exiting."
"Exiting what? This small village with all those rough lads back there?"
"No. To keep us from exiting our prison."
As he said these words, he felt a rush of sadness rolling up from his stomach and through his chest. It left a kind of sad taste in his mouth, and he had to swallow to get rid of it.
"A prison. Why the hell should we be in prison?", his friend said, in an angry voice.
"I don't know. Probably just stuff we've done."
"I haven't done fuck all to get on the edge with the law. Ever. Why the hell should I be here? This is bloody outrageous!"
His friend was steaming with anger now, but Vix just felt the sadness that had taken residence in the back of his throat.
"It probably is.", Vix replied. "Outrageous. But we're still in here."
"I'm getting out.", his friend said, and immediately started to climb the fence.
He instantly managed to get quite high up, but as he approached the top there was too much barbed wire to go any further without getting a nasty injury.
Vix looked at his friend struggling for a while, then he started to climb himself. But the same thing happened. As soon as he came close to the top, the wall became so dangerous that he had to back off.
Soon they both descended, and had to catch their breaths on the ground for a while.
"What do we do now?" His friend was still angry, but slightly more desperate-sounding.
"Maybe we can dig our way beneath it?"
"Of course! It can't be that deep when it is so high", his friend said enthused.
Vix though about why it couldn't, but when he took a closer look, he thought he could see a small opening at the very bottom of the fence a few meters to their right.
They ran over to the spot, and discovered that there was snow on the ground here, not sand, as they had initially thought.
"Strange.", Vix said. "I didn't notice the snow from over there."
"Neither did I, but let's start digging."
They started digging, and quickly got the light snow out of the way.
As they got deeper, they found that there was a steel wire net that seemed to stretch down from the fence and deep into the ground. They tried at different spots, but the same thing happened at every attempt. It was useless.
Totally knackered, they both eventually gave up, and sat on the cold ground in silence.
"That's it.", his friend said after a while.
"That's what?", Vix replied.
"We're stuck in here."
"Yeah. Seems so."
"I really don't wanna go back to those people. Or be locked up in here anymore."
"Me neither."
"Let's try to find another way. There must be a way of contacting someone on the outside."
"You mean like a telephone?", Vix said.
"Yeah. Or a computer. Let's look around for a bit. If this is a prison, I still can't see no guards anywhere."
His friend was right. They hadn't seen anyone who looked even slightly like prison guards. Only the men at the house, and they were far from guard-like in appearance.
"Ok. Let's have a look around."
They walked quietly past the big house with the men, and across the small field, that now seemed more like a square. Things seemed to change slightly when looked at twice in this place, something Vix found strange but still not straight-out disastrous, so he let it pass.
At the other end of the field-turned-square, they reached a small one-storey house. It looked like the command-office of a military camp in the kind of movies that had military camps in them that looked like this. Very simple and sparsely decorated, if decorated at all.
There seemed to be no-one there, but the door was left open.
They snuck inside.
The office was very simple, with a desk, a chair, a dustbin and a single coat-hook on the wall.
There were no pictures on the wall, or on the desk.
On top of the desk was a computer, but no phone.
The computer seemed old, the kind with a large tower cpu-unit standing on the floor beneath the desk, and the screen and keyboard standing on top of it connected with wires.
The computer was in sleep mode, with the kind of floating text screen-saver that used to be popular in public offices in the past, often hiding an ongoing game of solitaire - if you were to touch the mouse and wake it up from its digital dreams.
The text read: "Hello."
"Do you think it's connected to the Internet?", his friend asked in a whispery voice, as if to be sure not to wake the computer.
"I don't know.", Vix replied. "Let's try it."
He touched the mouse. Nothing happened. He pressed a key. It woke up. There was no solitaire behind the screen-saver, but a small login window on a green background. A message said "press any key to log in".
Vix pressed any key, in this case “z”, and was prompted for a password for the "guest" login.
"Shit.", Vix' friend said, still whispering, even if the computer was now awake.
Vix typed "hello" in the password field, and pressed "enter".
The hard-drive made struggling noises as it wound up to speed, and they were logged in.
"Wow!", his friend said. "How did you know?"
"I didn't.", Vix replied.
He quickly opened a web-browser and checked in on all his regular sites. Everything looked quite normal. Just like any other day sitting by his own desk checking the same websites from his own computer.
Soon he had forgotten all about the fact that he just had found himself confined in a strange prison, and that the whole reason he was standing here bent over a strange desk in a military command-office-looking office with a stranger who was now a friend was to try and get in touch with the outside world and eventually escape.
His friend had also lost himself, and was just standing next to Vix staring at the screen, reading the latest news headlines without ever clicking on them to see the whole article behind, checking the latest blog posts of new and old music, scrolling through the forums for anything that hadn't been discussed last week.
They were two imprisoned souls with the most powerful oracle of knowledge in history at their hands, but they just couldn't come up with the right question, or even remember to ask one at all.
Suddenly his friend snapped out of it, and almost shouted: "Look!".
He was pointing at the cpu-tower at the floor.
The computer's box had opened up as by itself, and inside a mix of wiring and electronics were mixed up with something that looked like transparent plastic tubes. Liquid flowed and bubbled through these clear plastic veins. It was steaming with heat, and in places the substance had started boiling.
"That doesn't look good.", his friend said.
As Vix turned around he could see that the plastic tubes of the computer had grown out of the box behind their backs and were now stretching across the room to other electronic devices they hadn't noticed when they arrived.
"This whole thing is gonna blow, we have to get out!"
At that moment Vix suddenly realized that the liquid inside the tubes were nothing but the steaming, undulating red substance that flowed through his own veins.
This machine was running on blood.
"No fucking wonder there are no guards here.", he said to his friend. "This whole bloody prison is alive!"
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