Episode 3 - The Keeper of the Second Gate

HANK THE TANK

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Chapter one. The Compass Points Downstream. It had been eleven days since the break-in, and Henry Jaderson had a new problem. It had started two Tuesdays ago for reasons nobody could fully explain. Maybe it was the extra beef sticks, maybe it was the queso, maybe it was just the mysterious interior workings of an eight-year-old boy. But Henry had developed a gift. A loud gift. A gift that arrived without warning, at full volume, and lingered. He was, in the clinical terminology of his older brother Pierce, absolutely nuclear. Henry, Pierce said at breakfast, pushing his chair back from the table. I can't control it. Henry said serenely, reaching for another beef stick. You didn't even flinch. I've made peace with it. Pierce opened the kitchen window. Then the one above the sink. Then the back door. He stood in the cross breeze and looked at his younger brother with the expression of a man much older than ten. We're going to the creek today, Pierce said. Henry perked up. The second gate. Pierce pulled the iron key from his pocket and set it on the table. Next to it he placed the stone map, still perfect in its detail, every bend of the creek carved in miniature, the second door marked clearly downstream. He'd looked at it every single day for eleven days. Duane's been prepping all week, Pierce said. Bear's been training. Training for what? He won't say exactly, he called it speed optimization. Henry considered this. He picked up the key and turned it in his hand. Small and iron and warm from Pierce's pocket, with teeth that didn't match any lock they'd ever seen. Until the next door. Okay, Henry said, standing up, let me get my beef sticks. Henry, you cannot bring beef sticks into an underground dungeon. Henry looked at him with quiet, absolute certainty. Watch me. Chapter 2. More prepared. Duane showed up at 11 with a backpack so full it barely zipped. He set it on the kitchen table and unloaded it methodically while the others watched. Two proper flashlights with fresh batteries, a coil of paracord, a small first aid kit, a folding multi-tool, a bag of zip ties, a water resistant notebook, upgraded from his regular notebook after the Creek incident of last summer, three granola bars, a pen that also worked as a screwdriver, a small folding ruler, and at the very bottom, wrapped carefully in a cloth, the glass potion bottle from the first gate, still a quarter full of purple shimmer. What's that last one for? Bear asked. No idea, Duane said. But it worked once. Bear nodded. This was acceptable reasoning. Bear himself had come prepared in a different way. He was wearing his fastest shoes. He had tested them against three other pairs over the last week, and these were definitively fastest, by zero point three seconds over twenty yards, which he had documented. And he had a small notebook of his own, which he called his field record. Every achievement in the underground would be noted. Times, distances, obstacles cleared. Pierce had the key and the compass and the stone map in a Ziploc bag in his front pocket. He'd spent the week rereading the letter from the first gate until he had it memorized. The second gate asks for patience. He didn't know exactly what that meant, but he planned to find out without anyone getting hurt. Henry had four beef sticks in a Ziploc bag and no notes whatsoever. What's your preparation? Duane asked him, genuinely curious. Henry pointed to himself. I'm already prepared. I am who I am. Duane wrote something in his notebook. What did you just write? Henry asked. Henry's preparation, existential confidence. Yeah, Henry said exactly that. Chapter three, the second door. The compass led them forty minutes downstream, past places they recognized and places they didn't, past where the creek widened into a shallow stony flat, past an old concrete drainage pipe with a tree growing through it, and finally around a long slow bend, where the bank rose steeply on the right side, and the roots of enormous oaks reached down through the soil, like the fingers of buried giants. The compass needle held firm the whole way, pointing ahead with the patience of something that had been waiting for them. The door was set into the bank itself, framed by oak roots, its dark wood barely visible behind a curtain of hanging moss. Same iron hinges, same old settled look, like it had been here before the trees. But this door was taller than the first one, wide enough to walk through without ducking. And it had a lock. Pierce pulled out the iron key. He looked at the lock, he looked at the key. Well, Bear said, Go ahead. I'm building the moment, Pierce said. You're stalling. I'm building the moment. He put the key in the lock. It fit perfectly, turned smoothly, and the door swung open with the same oil quiet ease as the first one. Beyond it a tunnel, wider than the first, lit by the same faint torch glow. But the walls here were different. Instead of plain stone, they were carved, covered in bas relief shapes that Pierce's brain took a second to process. Creepers, zombies, spiders, endermen, all of them facing inward toward the center of the tunnel toward whoever walked through. And carved above the entrance in letters larger than the ones from the first sign, he is already here, he is waiting for you. Along quiet. Henry unwrapped a beef stick. The sound of the wrapper in the silence was very loud. Sorry, he whispered. Let's go, Pierce said. Chapter four The Second Gate's Rules. The first room they found was empty. Not empty like the first gate's rooms had been empty with chests and torches and signs of purpose, but properly empty. A large square chamber of carved stone with nothing in it except a single pedestal in the center. On the pedestal was a wooden plaque. Duane read it aloud. Welcome to the second gate. The first gate asked for courage, you had it. The second gate asked for patience. Read carefully. There are five rooms ahead. In each room there is a challenge. The challenge will end when it is ready to end, not before. If you rush you will fail. If you push, you will fail. If you wait and watch and think, you will find the way through. The enemy here is not the creatures. The enemy here is your own hurry. One more thing. The keeper is watching. He has been watching since you entered. He finds you interesting. This is not necessarily good news. Silence. Who's the keeper? Bear asked. I think we're about to find out, Duane said. The enemy is our own hurry, Pierce repeated, thinking out loud. Patience, we don't fight our way through. We wait and figure it out. Henry, who had been quiet for approximately two minutes, which was a personal record in this context, raised his hand. Does patience apply to beef sticks? Henry. I'm just asking if there's a patience rule for snacks specifically. There's not a patience rule for snacks. Great. He unwrapped one. The sound ricocheted around the stone chamber. From somewhere deeper in the tunnel, something laughed. It was not a nice laugh. It was a wheeze, a high raspy cackle, the laugh of someone who had been waiting a long time and was very pleased with himself. Then silence again. Then faintly, what sounded like a roll of something bouncing across stone. Pierce looked at Duane. Duane looked at Pierce. We go slow, Pierce said. We watch everything. Nobody runs until I say. Bear looked physically pained by this instruction, but nodded. They moved forward. Chapter 5. They found him in the third room. The first two rooms had been patience puzzles. One involved a stone door that only opened after you stopped pushing it and simply waited while it slowly swung on its own mechanism. And one involved a floor of pressure plates that only deactivated if you stood completely still for sixty consecutive seconds, which nearly broke bare into pieces, but which he achieved through what he later described as the greatest act of athletic discipline of his life. The third room was large and round with a domed ceiling, and in the center of it stood the keeper. He was not what any of them expected. He was roughly four feet tall. He wore a long white robe covered in what appeared to be a pattern of tiny rolls which on closer inspection were literally tiny rolls of toilet paper printed on the fabric. He had a pointed white hat, also toilet paper themed. He had a wild white beard that stuck out sideways. He had bright, sharp eyes behind tiny round spectacles. And mounted on each forearm strapped in place with leather and buckles was a cannon, a toilet paper cannon, each one was loaded. You could see the end of a roll sticking out of the barrel, and as they entered the little man raised both arms, pointed the cannons at them, and said in a voice far too large for his body, Halt. I am Toilotron, keeper of the second gate, master of the rolling chambers, Lord of the Unspooled, and you will come no further. A pause. Henry said very quietly. He did. Duane confirmed. Like Toiletron. Correct. Toiletron's eyes narrowed behind his spectacles. You may find the name amusing. Many have. They all lost. Pierce stepped forward carefully. We don't want to fight you. We're looking for the way through. Toilotron lowered his cannon slightly. Of course you are. They all are. And to pass through, you must defeat me. And nobody, he said with enormous satisfaction, has ever defeated me. He raised the cannons again. Nobody. He fired. The roll of toilet paper shot across the room at tremendous speed, unspooling as it went, and hit Pierce square in the chest with enough force to knock him back a step and wrap around him twice before running out. Pierce looked down at himself. He was mummified from chest to hip in toilet paper. Toiletron wheezed with laughter. Again, he shouted, taking aim at Duane. This never gets old. Chapter 6. How do you beat a toilet paper cannon? They retreated to the second room, the pressure plate room, to regroup. Pierce unwound himself from the toilet paper with as much dignity as he could manage, which was not very much. Henry was trying extremely hard not to laugh. His face had gone red with the effort, his shoulders were shaking. Say it, Pierce said, and I'm not going to say it. Henry, I'm just going to say that of all the enemies we could have faced in a secret underground dungeon, I did not have toilet paper man on my list. He lost it. He laughed until he folded in half. Even Bear cracked. Then Duane. Then Pierce, who tried not to but couldn't hold it either. When they recovered, Duane opened his notebook. Okay. The rolls travel fast and they unwind. They're not dangerous, just disabling. You get wrapped up and then you're stuck. He tapped his pen on the page. He has two cannons. One on each arm. He can fire them independently or together. The rolls are large, maybe 200 sheets each. There's a crate behind him, which means he has more. How many more? Pierce asked. I counted twelve rolls in the crate. So he doesn't run out. Not quickly. Bear was pacing, which was how Bear thought. He said, Nobody's ever defeated him. What does defeat mean? Do we have to physically beat him? Or do we just have to get past him to the next room? Duane looked up. The plaque said, Find the way through, not defeat the keeper. Find the way through. Everyone looked at each other. There's a door behind him, Pierce said slowly, reconstructing the room in his memory. Back wall slightly left. He's standing in front of it. So we need to get around him, Bear said, or through him. Or distract him long enough to get to the door. He's fast with those cannons, Pierce said. The second I moved toward him, he fired. Duane was writing. He has two cannons, two arms. He can only aim in two directions at once. He looked up. Four of us. A slow smile worked its way across Pierce's face. Two of us go left, two go right. He can only cover two directions. Someone gets through. Who? Bear asked. And the competitive fire in his eyes was already answering the question. Fastest person we've got, Pierce said. Bear straightened up, obviously. Chapter seven. The Plan and the Problem with the Plan. The plan was good. Duane had drawn it in the notebook, with arrows indicating movement and X marks for positions. It was, by any objective measure, a solid tactical approach. It lasted approximately eight seconds. They reentered the round room in formation. Pierce and Henry spreading left, Duane and Bear spreading right. Toiletron tracked them with his cannons rotating back and forth, his bright eyes moving from pair to pair behind his spectacles. Oh, a strategy, he said delighted. How fun. Most people just run straight at me. This is much more entertaining. Now, Pearce said. Bear took off right. Pierce and Henry surged left. Duane moved toward the center as a decoy. Toiletron fired left, caught Henry across the shoulders in a spiral of paper, fired right, got Bear around the knees before he'd taken five steps, swiveled to center and hit Duane in the face with a roll that unwound over his glasses. And then calmly raised both empty cannons, reached into his crate with the speed of someone who had done this many, many times, reloaded both in about four seconds, and pointed them at Pierce, who had almost made it. Almost. The roll wrapped around Pierce from shoulder to ankle. He tipped over slowly and landed on the stone floor with a muffled thud. Toilotron wheezed. All four of them were on the floor, wrapped to varying degrees in toilet paper, looking up at the domed ceiling. I told you, Toilotron said cheerfully, walking between them. Nobody passes. It's not personal. I'm just very good at this. He peered down at Duane, who was trying to push toilet paper off his glasses with his one free hand. Nice notebook, by the way. I saw you drawing. Very professional. Thank you, Duane said from under the toilet paper. You're the planner, Toiletron said. I can always tell the planners. He crouched down, bringing his spectacled eyes level with Duane's. You haven't thought of everything, planner. You never think of everything. Nobody does. He tapped his own temple. The thing you haven't thought of is always the thing that gets you. He straightened up and walked back to his position in front of the door. Take your time unwrapping, there's no rush, I'll be here. Pierce, staring at the ceiling, exhaled slowly. Next to him, Henry was very quiet, which, as Pierce had learned, could mean either Henry was deflated or Henry was thinking. This time it was the second one. Chapter eight Henry has an idea. It took four minutes to fully unwrap everyone. Duane took the longest because of the glasses situation. Baer set a personal record for fastest self-unwrapping, which he logged. They sat in a circle on the floor of the round room. Toilotron stood at his post, patient and satisfied, not watching them particularly closely. He had the confidence of someone who knew the exit was behind him and that getting to it was impossible. Henry had been quiet for the entire unwrapping process. He was chewing on a beef stick and staring at Toilotron with a look that Pierce recognized from family game nights. The look Henry got right before he made an unexpected move that won the whole game. He said The thing you don't think of is always the thing that gets you, Henry said. Yep, Pierce said. We've been thinking about his cannons, his speed, his range, his reloading. All of those things, yes. We haven't thought about his nose. Pierce turned to look at his brother. His nose. Or more specifically, Henry said with tremendous calm. What happens to his nose and his eyes and his aim and his concentration if the air in this room becomes temporarily uninhabitable? A very long pause. Bear slowly turned to look at Henry. Duane lowered his notebook. Henry, Pierce said carefully, are you suggesting I've been building toward this for eleven days? Henry said. I didn't know what it was for. Now I do. That's Pierce started. Disgusting. Duane said. Absolutely disgusting, Bear said. Possibly brilliant, Pierce said. Henry finished the beef stick. He stood up. He rolled his shoulders. He looked at Toiletron across the room. Give me thirty seconds, he said, and then run for the door. He reached into his bag for his fourth beef stick. Henry, Duane said. Yeah. I need you to know that whatever happens next, I have respected you as a person this whole time. And I want that on the record before you do this. Henry pointed at him. Noted, appreciated. He turned back toward the room. Get ready. Chapter 9. The Weapon Nobody Saw Coming. What happened next was, depending on your perspective, either the grossest or the most strategically brilliant thing that had ever occurred in the second gate of the Bay Village Underground. It was, objectively, both. Henry Jaderson walked to the center of the room, approximately ten feet from Toiletron, stood with his feet shoulder width apart, and deployed. There is no other word for it. Deploy. What Henry produced in that moment was not a sound. Sound so much as an event. It was loud enough to echo off the dome, it was sustained. It filled the round chamber the way a concert fills a stadium, completely from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with absolutely nowhere to hide. And then the smell arrived. Toiletron's eyes behind his spectacles went very wide. His hands moved to his face, both of them cannon arms and all. What? he said. And then he couldn't say anything else because he needed both hands over his nose. Now Pierce shouted. They moved. All three of them, in three different directions, converging on the door behind Toiletron like arrows. Bear hit top speed in two steps. Duane tucked his notebook under his arm and ran with the focused efficiency of someone who had planned his route. Pierce went straight up the middle. Toilotron spun, tried to aim, fired one cannon blindly. The roll went wide left, hit the wall, and unspooled across the floor uselessly, tried to reload with watering eyes, missed the cannon, fumbled, got his arm stuck in the crate. Pierce hit the door at full speed. It swung open. Bear was through first, then Duane, then Pierce, then Henry, who turned back at the last second, pointed finger guns at Toiletron and said, That's from Hank the Tank. Before disappearing through the door. Pierce pulled it shut behind them. They stood in a dim corridor, breathing hard, all four of them. And then from the other side of the door came the muffled, furious voice of Toilotron. No one has ever in twenty years, not once. Henry looked at his crew. His crew looked at Henry. Bear opened his field record notebook and wrote very carefully, Henry's weapon, effective range, entire room. Result, total victory. Classification, legendary. I want that red at my graduation, Henry said. Chapter ten. What Patience Looks Like. The quarter beyond Toiletron's room was narrow and long and very quiet. They walked in a line, catching their breath, the torches here burning a cooler blue than anywhere else in the underground. Duane was already analyzing. He said nobody has ever passed. That means either he's lying, or the letter writer who set all this up has never personally made it past the second gate. Or a friend set it up knowing it could be beaten, Pierce said, and just hasn't had anyone try the right way yet. The right way being Henry, Bear said. In fairness, Duane said, flipping to a fresh page, the plan worked because all of our previous attempts failed and gave us information about his weaknesses. The plan required the failures to be useful. He looked up. That's patience. That's what the gate was testing. Not just waiting still. Failing and not giving up. Trying again with what you learned. The four of them walked in silence for a moment. That's actually kind of deep, Henry said. I have my moments. The corridor opened into a room with two more chests, gold edged like the ones from the first gate. They opened them together, the first held a new map, same carved stone, same perfect creek detail, showing the path to the third gate, farther downstream, past a landmark labeled simply the mill. It also showed something new, a small symbol, like an eye drawn next to the third gate entrance. The second chest held a folded letter in the same handwriting as before. Pierce read it aloud. Well done. I didn't think anyone would make it through Toiletron with patience alone. I should have specified. Patience isn't just stillness. It's learning. You failed and you adapted. That's better than patience. That's wisdom. There are two more gates. The third gate asks for trust. You'll understand when you get there. The fourth gate. I'll tell you about the fourth gate when you've reached the third. Be careful going home. The keeper may be upset. Also tell the one who solved Toilotron that the underground thanks him. He knows what he did. Henry stood up straighter. The underground thanks me. It also implies Toilotron might follow us, Duane noted. It implied both things equally, Bear said. Pierce folded the letter. Then we moved fast. Out the way we came through the first tunnel, back to the door. He looked at Bear. You know what that means. Bear put his field record away and shook out his fastest legs. Finally, he said. Chapter 11. The Chase. Toiletron did not follow them. What he did instead was shout from behind his door a series of increasingly theatrical threats that echoed through the stone corridors and provided a surprisingly motivating soundtrack to their exit. They could hear him for almost five minutes as they moved back through the tunnel, his voice bouncing off the walls. You haven't seen the last of me. I have 740 rolls, and I know where you live relatively. I know the general watershed. He knows the general watershed, Henry repeated at full run. Definitely, Duane said, not slowing down. Bear was ahead of all of them because Bear was always ahead, and he kept glancing back with the expression of someone who wanted to be chased a little more than was actually happening. They came out through the second door, back into the open air in the Ohio summer, the afternoon sun much lower than it had been when they'd gone in. The creek ran past them, brown and cold and ordinary. The door settled shut behind them. They stood on the bank catching their breath. Duane cleaned his glasses, Bear logged his exit speed. Henry ate his last beef stick. Pierce held the new stone map and looked downstream. The mill was farther, maybe an hour's walk. The third gate asked for trust. He didn't know what that meant yet. But he turned it over in his mind the way he turned over situations in Fortnite, from different angles, looking for the structure of it. Trust who? Trust each other. They already did that. Trust the underground Trust a friend whoever that was or maybe trust yourself. He didn't know. He put the map in his pocket. Same crew, Bear asked, already restless. Same crew, Pierce said. Next weekend, we go to the mill. Duane clicked his pen. I'll have new traps designed by Thursday. Traps for what? Henry asked. We're going into the underground, not defending a house. Duane looked at him. After everything we've seen down there, you want to go in without preparation? Henry thought about this for exactly one second. Fair point. Build the traps. Chapter twelve Home for Dinner. They made it home by six, which was dinner time. Which was the one rule Pierce had made at the start of the summer. Whatever happened, wherever they went, they were home for dinner. It was a good rule. It turned out adventure was more sustainable with regular meals. Pierce's mom made pasta. Everyone ate a lot of it. Henry ate an amount that suggested he had not eaten in some time, despite documented evidence of multiple beef sticks. Bear finished first, and immediately started his postmeal stretches, which was a thing he had apparently started doing. Duane sat at the far end of the table with his notebook, adding to his debrief in the blue pen color he reserved for major events. Good day? Pierce's dad asked. Good day, Pierce said. His dad looked at the four of them, quiet, slightly dirt stained, with the particular look of people who had done something significant, and were not going to be specific about it. He had the expression again. The one from after the break in, the one that said he suspected things and was choosing not to press. Creek? Yeah. Find anything interesting? Pearce thought about the carved walls, the patient's rooms, Toiletron and his toilet paper robe, reloading his cannons with watering eyes, the second letter and its promises about the third and fourth gates, the mill downstream. The eye symbol on the new map. A few things, he said. After dinner they sat on the back porch while the sky turned orange and pink over the rooftops of Bay Village. Duane was still writing. Bear was doing something with a golf club and a cup he'd set up in the grass, recreating a Rory McElroy shot from memory. Henry was miraculously just sitting, quiet and content and present. Pierce looked at the three of them. This was the crew. Duane with his plans, Bear with his speed and his scorekeeping, Henry with his beef sticks and his weapon and his complete, absolute, unshakable certainty that the world was interesting and worth exploring. The third gate was waiting, the trust gate, the one he didn't fully understand yet, and somewhere below Bay Village, in the blue torched corridors of the second gate, a small man in a toilet paper robe was reloading 740 rolls and muttering about watersheds. Pierce smiled. Summer was still far from over. End of Book Three. Coming in. Book four. The Mill, the Third Gate, The Trust That Costs Something, and the Answer to who a friend really is.