Episode 6 - Into the Depths

Uncle Jake is here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Into the depths. Into the depths. Book six of the Bay Village Chronicles, or what a behind-the-back pass does to an enemy's threat assessment. For Pierce, Henry, Duane, and Bear, and for Uncle Jake, it's a real tactical asset. Chapter 1. The Flashlight. The flashlight was the size of a small fire hydrant. Duane had built it in four days using parts he found in Uncle Mike's garage. A headlamp lens from a 1994 Buick, three LED strips from a broken grow light, a battery pack originally designed for a riding lawnmower, and a length of PVC pipe that had been in the corner of the garage for so long that nobody could remember what it had been for. He had wired them together in a way that his mother had described as concerning, and Uncle Mike had described as I'm going to go lie down. He brought it to Pierce's front porch on a Saturday morning and held it out. It's a flashlight, Pierce said. It's a super bright flashlight, Duane said, with the capitals audible. How bright? Duane pointed it at the oak tree in Pierce's front yard and clicked it on. For approximately two seconds the tree was visible in a level of detail that no tree should ever have to endure. Every piece of bark, every vein of every leaf. A squirrel on the third branch froze, completely illuminated, with an expression that suggested it was reconsidering its life choices. Duane clicked it off. That's bright, Pierce said. There's a second setting, Duane said. Don't use the second setting. I won't use it unless we need it. Henry appeared in the doorway behind Pierce, holding a beef stick and his golf bag, which he had recently decided to bring everywhere on the grounds that you never knew. What did I miss? Duane built a flashlight that might be a weapon, Pierce said. Cool, Henry said. He took a bite of his beef stick. Is Bear coming? Chapter two Bear Bear was already at the mill when they got there. He was standing at the edge of the creek, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the water, which was something he did when he was thinking. Bear thought differently from other people. He processed things in a sideways, patient way, like he was letting information settle before he responded to it, and the result was that when he finally said something it was usually either very accurate or very surprising, and sometimes both. He looked at Duane's flashlight. What's the lumen output? I don't know, Duane said. I didn't measure it. I just built it until it seemed like enough. It made a squirrel have an existential crisis, Pierce said. Bear nodded slowly. Good, we might need that. They hadn't told Bear about the letter yet. Margaret had sent one to Pierce the previous night, slipped under the front door, which Pierce was beginning to understand was her preferred delivery method when the situation was urgent and she didn't feel like explaining herself over the phone. It had said the small door on the far wall, the one Evelyn marked on her map. It leads down, not further into the underground, down, beneath it. Something has been moving in the depths. I've been hearing it for six weeks. I don't know what it is yet, but I know it doesn't belong there, and I know it's been building something. Come Saturday, bring all four. Bring whatever Duane built. Also, your uncle is in town. MEPS I know you don't know which uncle. You'll figure it out. Pierce had read the last line four times. He had figured it out at about two in the morning. Chapter three. Uncle Jake Uncle Jake was sitting on the stone wall next to Margaret when they arrived, spinning a basketball on one finger. He was not tall. This was the first thing Pierce noticed, because in his head, Uncle Jake had always been tall. The way people you haven't met yet tend to be whatever you need them to be. In reality, Jake was maybe five ten, solidly built, with light hair swept back in a long, swoopy wave that moved when he moved. He was wearing a Nazreed Minnesota Timberwolves jersey number eleven, and it looked like he had packed it specifically for this. He caught the basketball when he saw them, stood up and grinned. There they are, he said. The famous Pierce and Henry. You're famous to him, Margaret said to Pierce by way of explanation. Uncle Jake, Henry said. He did not sound surprised. Henry almost never sounded surprised. It was one of his better qualities. Where did you fly in from? Pierce asked. Taiwan, Jake said. I've been doing some freestyle work there. Clinics, demonstrations, a few competitions. He spun the ball on his finger again, transferred it to the other hand, and let it drop into his palm. Margaret called me, said you might need backup. What kind of backup specifically? Duane asked. Jake looked at him. Nazreed, he said. Duane waited for more. More did not come. What kind of backup? Duane asked. Jake looked at the mill. He looked at the underground entrance. He looked at the four of them in the particular way of someone who has been briefed, and is deciding how seriously to take the briefing. The kind where someone needs to be confused, he said. Bear looked at him steadily. By basketball? You'd be surprised, Jake said, what a good behind the back pass does to an enemy's threat assessment. Chapter four The Small Door They went down through the fifth gate room past the maps, past the table with the four chairs, and to the far wall. The small door was exactly where Evelyn had marked it, low in the stone, barely four feet high, with a seam so fine you had to hold a light directly to the wall to see it. There was no mechanism this time, no iron impression, no keyhole. Just a flat iron ring, set flush, cold when Pierce touched it. He pulled. The door opened on the first try, which was unusual in which Margaret, standing behind them, seemed to take his information. First try, she said quietly to herself. Is that good? Henry asked. It means we were expected, she said. Beyond the door was a staircase, it was cut directly into the stone, steep and narrow, and it went down farther than Duane's flashlight could reach, even on the first setting. The air coming up from below was different from the underground air. The underground smelled like old stone and creek water and something faintly like a library. This air was colder and darker, and carried with it a distant sound that none of them could quite identify. A rhythmic, mechanical noise, low and steady, like something building towards something. Jake crouched down next to Pierce and looked into the darkness. The basketball was in his hands, turning slowly. I've played in a lot of bad venues, he said. Outdoor courts in the rain. A gymnasium in Taiwan with no ceiling. That one time in the parking structure, he stood up. I can work with this. What's your strategy? Pierce asked. Jake touched the number eleven on his jersey. Naz reed, he said, and stood up. You can't play basketball in a staircase, Duane said. Not in the staircase, Jake said. In whatever's at the bottom. Duane clicked the flashlight on. They went down. Chapter five. The depths The staircase took three minutes to descend. Pierce counted the steps two hundred fourteen. The walls got colder as they went and the sound got louder and by the bottom step they could hear it clearly. A grinding, mechanical rhythm with a secondary sound underneath it that was something like hammering and something like the noise a server farm makes, and something like neither. The staircase opened into a cavern. It was enormous. The ceiling was high enough that Duane's flashlight couldn't find it, and the floor stretched out in every direction, rough stone worn smooth in the middle, the way a floor gets worn smooth by long use. Stalactites came down from somewhere above, and from several of them hung what appeared to be lanterns, except the light inside them was wrong, green and steady and cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. In the center of the cavern, arranged in a rough grid were the structures. Pearce recognized them immediately. He had seen them a thousand times on a screen, but he had never seen them at this scale, in real stone and cold light, built with the patient, meticulous logic of something that had been working at it for a very long time. They were Minecraft builds, not imitations, not something that looked like Minecraft. The proportions, the materials, the geometry, it was exact. A watchtower in the far corner, thirty feet high, made of something that looked like cobblestone, but wasn't. A wall running the length of the cavern's east side, torches on top, except the torches burned green, a command center in the middle, low and square, with redstone circuitry running along its surface in patterns that pulsed with each cycle of the grinding sound. And standing at various points around the structures, facing outward, motionless, pillagers, twelve of them, tall and pale and angular, each holding a crossbow, each turning its head in a slow arc, scanning. Chapter six The Ilager Captain They pulled back into the staircase mouth and crouched. Pillagers, Henry whispered, with the calm tone of someone identifying a bird species. And something else, Bear said. He pointed. At the command center, standing in the entrance was a figure larger than the others. It wore a dark banner. Its crossbow was twice the size of the others. It was moving slowly between stations inside the command center, looking at things, making adjustments, with the focused energy of something that had a plan and was executing it. Illiger, Captain, Duane said. That's a raid captain. If you get near him, he gives you bad omen and triggers a raid. We're already near him, Pierce said. I know, Duane said. I'm just saying what he is. What are they building? Bear asked. Duane looked at the redstone circuitry running along the command center. He watched the pulse pattern for a moment. His expression went through several stages. A spawner network, he said finally. They're building something that generates more of them. If they finish it, this cavern fills up. Nobody said anything for a moment. How long do they have? Pierce asked. Duane watched another pulse cycle. Maybe an hour, maybe less. Jake was looking at the cavern floor, then at the ceiling. Then at the open space between the structures. His head was tilting slightly, the way it did when he was calculating something. The sight lines are actually decent, he said. Everyone looked at him. I have a plan, Jake said. I need the basketball, a distraction, and about forty five seconds of confused enemies. What do we do? Pierce asked. You three take the spawner, Jake said. Bear, you're with me. He looked at Bear. Can you read a defense? Bear blinked once. I caddy for myself, he said. I read everything. Jake smiled. Perfect. Chapter seven Uncle Jake vs. Everyone. Jake walked into the cavern like he owned it. Not sneaking, not running. He walked in with the ball in his hands, dribbling once the sound of it against the stone floor echoing up into the green lit dark. And every pillager head in the cavern turned. Hey, Jake said. The nearest pillager raised its crossbow. Jake crossed the ball behind his back and threw a no look pass to Bear, who was ten feet to his left and had materialized there so quietly that even the pillager seemed surprised. Bear caught it, looked at it, and handed it back. One on one, Jake said, pointing at the nearest pillager. First to five, checkball. The pillager did not respond. This was expected. Jake dribbled once more, went between his legs, and launched into a spin move that covered eight feet of cavern floor, and ended with a finger roll that bounced off a stalactite and came straight back down into his hands. The pillagers had never seen anything like this. This was the plan. Not to fight the pillagers, to confuse them at a neurological level deep enough that their threat assessment programming simply stopped functioning. A pillager is built for one thing ranged combat against a stationary or predictably moving target. Jake was neither stationary nor predictable. Jake was a five ten man doing a between the legs reverse dribble in a cavern forty feet underground. Light hair swooping, the number eleven on his Naz reed jersey bright in the green lit dark, and no enemy combatant in any dimension had ever had to prepare for that. Three pillagers moved toward him. Jake between the legs had passed the first one, gave the second one a head fake so severe it turned itself around, and found Bear again with a bounce pass that skipped perfectly under the third one's crossbow. Go, Bear said quietly, to Pierce, who was watching from the staircase entrance. Pierce went. Chapter eight. The Spawner Duane had the flashlight on the second setting. Pierce had told him not to use the second setting. Duane had agreed, but the command center's entrance was dark in a way that the first setting couldn't penetrate, and the redstone circuitry was dense and close, and they had maybe forty five seconds, and Duane made an executive decision. The second setting was, in fact, significantly brighter than the first setting. The Iller captain turned from its workstation and looked directly into the beam. For a full three seconds it did absolutely nothing. This was the second setting working as intended. Henry moved past it on the left. Pierce moved past it on the right. Duane held the light steady, which required keeping his eyes shut, which was a problem he had thought about and solved in advance by memorizing the route. Middle console, Pierce said. Red circuit, left branch. He found it, a central node pulsing in a four beat pattern, connected to the eight spawner units arranged in a ring around it. The node was the key. Without it the circuit was inert. He looked at it for two seconds, finding the right point. Duane, he said. Duane handed him the flathead screwdriver he had also thought to bring. Pierce broke the circuit. The pulse stopped. The green torches flickered. The grinding sound wound down like a clock that had finally run out of wind, slower and slower until the cavern was quiet. Behind them, the Ilager captain shook its head. The second setting stun was wearing off. Run, Henry said. They ran. Chapter nine. Retreat Jake was in the middle of a crossover into Eurostep when Pierce came out of the command center at full speed. Time to go, Pierce shouted. Jake caught the ball. Did you get it? Yes. Jake looked at the twelve pillagers, all of whom were now in various states of reconsidering what had just happened to them. The captain was emerging from the command center behind Pierce, crossbow raised, still blinking. Jake spun the ball on his finger one last time. He looked at the captain. The captain looked at Jake. Jake gave it a half court style fling that went nowhere in particular, just because it was satisfying, and then turned and ran. They made the staircase in eleven seconds. Bear went first because Bear was fast when it mattered, moving with the efficient, unhurried stride of someone who had spent years walking golf courses and knew exactly how to cover ground. Henry went next, beef stick somehow still in hand. Duane went third, flashlight bouncing, Pierce went fourth. Jake went last, bounding up the stairs three at a time, the Naz reed jersey bright in the dark. Behind them the sound of crossbow bolts hitting stone, above them the small door. Jake grabbed the iron ring and pulled it shut behind him. For a moment they all stood in the fifth gate room, breathing hard, surrounded by the old maps and the cold stone and the table with the four chairs. The green light was gone, the grinding was gone, the room was quiet and still. That, Henry said after a moment, was a lot. Yes, Bear agreed. Jake was bent over with his hands on his knees catching his breath. His hair had for the first time been genuinely disrupted, the swoopy wave gone sideways. He smoothed it back into place with one hand. The between the legs thing works every time, he said. I don't care what dimension you're in. Chapter ten What Margaret Said Margaret was sitting at the table when they came in. There was tea, there were five cups, which was one more than the usual four, and Jake sat down in the fifth one without being told, with the ease of someone who has always found a seat wherever he needed one. Did you break the circuit? Margaret asked. Yes, Pierce said. The captain? Confused, Jake said, temporarily. Margaret nodded. She wrapped her hands around her cup and looked at the far wall, at the small door, which Pierce noticed she had her walking stick pointed toward without seeming to realize it. They'll rebuild, she said. The network is broken, but the captain is still down there. It's patient, it has time. She looked at Pierce. They always rebuild, that's what they do. So we have to keep going back, Pierce said. You've always had to keep going back, she said. That was true before today. Bear had his notebook out. He was writing something. He did this sometimes, quietly documenting while everyone else talked. Pierce had never asked what he wrote down. He figured Bear would share it when it mattered. Duane was examining the flashlight. The second setting lens housing was slightly warped from sustained use. I can fix this, he said. I know you can, Margaret said. I'm going to add a cooling system. Of course you are, she said. Henry finished his tea. Are Lois and Evelyn going to know about this? Evelyn already knows, Margaret said. She's going to want to update the maps. There's a whole cavern down there, Pierce said. With structures. There are things down there that have been building for a long time, Margaret said. The maps are going to be a project. She almost smiled. Good thing we know some people who like projects. Chapter eleven After They came up at four in the afternoon. Uncle Jake walked them home, spinning the basketball as he went, the late light catching the arc of it each time it rose. He was quieter than he'd been going in, the way people get quiet after something that required real attention. At the corner of Pierce and Henry Street, he stopped. How long has that underground been there? he asked. At least sixty years, Pierce said. Probably longer. Jake looked back in the direction of the mill. And nobody else knows? A few people, Pierce said. Margaret, Lois, and Evelyn, now you. Jake was quiet for a moment. Then he said, I've played on six continents. I've done freestyle in an airport terminal in Frankfurt, and a rooftop in Seoul, and a plaza in Buenos Aires at two in the morning. He spun the ball one more time. This is the best venue I've ever worked. He pointed at Pierce. Tell me when you go back. You're leaving for Taiwan, Pierce said. I can come back, Jake said. He caught the ball and tucked it under his arm. I come back when it matters. How do you always know when it matters? Henry asked. Jake looked at him. Nazreed, he said. Henry nodded slowly, as if that made complete sense. He headed up the street. Henry watched him go. He's going to tell everyone in Taiwan, Henry said. No he's not, Pierce said. How do you know? Pierce thought about it, about the way Jake had pulled the small door shut behind them. About the quiet at the table afterward. About the way some people, when they step into something real, know without being told what it means to keep it. Because he understood what it was, Pierce said. They went inside. Upstairs in Pierce's room, the window faced west. Through it at the end of the street, the lake was doing what it always did, enormous and gray green and patient, holding the light as long as the light would let itself be held. Pierce put his hand on the window and looked at it for a moment. Then he went down to dinner. Chapter twelve What Bear Wrote Three days later, Bear stopped by Pierce's house and slid a folded paper under the door. Pierce unfolded it at the kitchen table. It was a list. Bear had written it in his precise, small handwriting, the same handwriting he used for yardage books and club selection notes. Things we now know. One. The depths are real and something has been down there long enough to build an infrastructure. Two. The Ilager captain is patient. Patient things are more dangerous than aggressive things. Duane's flashlight needs a cooling system but is otherwise better than the Than anything you could buy. 4. Uncle Jake's between the legs move causes genuine confusion at the neurological level. This is a real tactical asset. 5. The circuit is broken but not gone. Broken circuits get rebuilt. We know where the node is now. 6. We need to go back before they finish rebuilding. 7. Bring more beef sticks. At the bottom in slightly different ink as if added after. 8. Margaret knows more than she says, she always has. I think she's waiting for us to ask the right question. 9. I don't know what the right question is yet. 10. I'm working on it. Pierce read the list twice. He found a pen. At the bottom, below Bear's last line, he wrote, Me too. He folded it back up and put it in his desk drawer on top of Margaret's letters. Outside, Bay Village went about its afternoon. The lake was there at the end of the street, the same as always, patient and enormous and full of things that hadn't been found yet. Down below the mill, forty feet under the underground, in the cavern with the green lanterns and the cold stone floor, something began, slowly and methodically, to rebuild. End of book six.