Clyve's Important Mission (Part 2)

Read Part 1 first, or else you will be very confused (you will probably end up being confused anyway even if you did read part1)

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Clyve choked on musty air as he stepped over shards of broken glass inside the decaying interior of the building. Something slithered around the corner in the back of the room, but it moved too fast and it was too dark to see exactly what.

Logically, the easiest way to travel to floor 178 was going to be by taking the elevator. He was not in any shape to be climbing up 178 flights of stairs; his legs would prbab ly snap in half by the third flight. He looked around the room to see if he could spot any obvious signs of an elevator. Towards the back of the room, next to a large round wooden desk, he spotted the golden sliding doors with many floors embroidered on the wall above them.

As he confidently strode over towards the elevator doors, he noticed a strange looking figure sitting behind the large round desk. He was wearing a strange red suit with gold embroidery all over it, and he looked to be in very excellent physical shape. In fact, he didn’t appear to have any fat or skin whatsoever covering his bony white face.

“Greetings, you are looking excellent today I must say!” Clyve said happily as he walked by. The man did not respond.

There was another man waiting in front of the elevator, dressed in similar attire. Clyve could tell he was not a very motivated man, as he couldn’t even stand without the assistance of a rusted chain hanging from the ceiling. It looked very uncomfortable, as the man’s feet dangled above the ground. It must be a very tiring job, standing in front of the elevator of a dead building for so many centuries.

“Floor 178, please” Clyve said as he approached the elevator. The man did not move. However, to Clyve’s surprise, the golden doors of the elevator began to screech open automatically. He watched with an impressed grin on his face as the doors slowly, very slowly, slid open. Several minutes later, he still stood in the same position with the same stupid grin on his face as the doors were almost halfway open. Sparks scattered everywhere under the tremendous friction of the squealing doors that hadn’t been serviced for probably hundreds of years. Several large beetles with deformed human hands growing off of their shells scurried out of the elevator and past his feet.

He squeezed into the elevator through the partially open doors.

“Floor 178!” he shouted, hoping that would do something.

“Please repeat your request” said a monotone female voice. Clyve jumped in surprise.

“I, uh, floor 178!” he said again.

“What?” came the voice.

“178!” he said, losing enthusiasm.

“Ok” said the elevator. “Going down”

“Wait, what? No!” but it was too late. The elevator started to plunge downwards rapidly as he was lifted off of the velvet floor and banged his head on the ceiling.

“Enjoy your ride” the elevator chimed in over the noise of the screeching elevator, as if this was supposed to make him feel more at peace with the concept of hurtling downwards to an unknown destination at lightning speed. He noticed thick black smoke venting in through the walls of the elevator as he cowered in the back corner, waiting for this terrifying experience to be over with.

Finally, the elevator started to screech to a halt. Clyve sighed with relief. However, right before it came to a complete stop the elevator started right back up again, this time plummeting even faster than before.

“Going down. Going down.” the elevator voice was saying repeatedly, the voice growing more and more distorted. Clyve tried to scream but no sounds came out because he was moving too fast. For some reason flashing red sirens had been activated and lit up the dim interior of the elevator car with a hellish glow. He slowly faded out of consciousness.

He woke up with a start to loud pounding coming from the outside of the elevator door. The metal of the door was vibrating and denting in with each furious blow. After a careful moment of calculation, Clyve decided that his only option was to open the door of the elevator. He pressed the “door open” button.

The doors of the elevator dramatically slid open. It took about 3 minutes for the unserviced doors to grind their way completely open. Clyve stood there patiently until a loud beep signaled his arrival.

“Arrived at destination: Floor 178” chimed the elevator. Floor 178 smelled like a combination of wet socks and dirty oven. The pounding of the elevator door had ceased, mostly because the door was now open, but also because the source of the pounding had disappeared for the moment. Clyve stepped out of the elevator into the darkness of floor 178.

Floor 178

As he took his first step into the room, an electrical hum kicked to life and several hundred futuristic blue lights switched on, temporarily blinding Clyve and sending him crashing to the floor.

“What the smokin’ hell is this sorcery!” Clyve yelled to nobody in particular.

“Inbad argitor glubular ish” said a very strange muffled voice. Clyve looked up but didn't see anybody else in the room.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Up.” the voice came. Clyve looked up.

There, suspended from the ceiling by chain wrapped around its neck, was  some sort of human, but without any skin; a skeleton of sorts. It wore a strange helmet made of reflective material, and nothing else.

A strange figure suspended from the roof, resembling some sort of skeleton

“Klorkle mcliffin triket” the skeleton muttered. It lifted one arm as it said this, then dropped it limply back to its side.

“Now hold on. You knew how to say the word ‘up’, so why are you still talking in that jibberish?” asked Clyve. The skeleton man stared ahead blankly.

Clyve looked around floor 178. On the far side of the room, there were monitors covering the wall above desks with complex looking computers flashing with red numbers and data. He had no idea what any of it meant.

“What do all these strange symbols and lights mean?” Clyve said aloud.

“Yugbad ish gringle traxon, lopush ish triggle” came the strange ancient voice of the skeleton. Clyve looked towards it, and saw that it was pointing a bony yellow finger towards a spot on the far side of the room.

Clyve walked over towards where the skeleton was pointing. There were lots of buttons and levers, beyond the comprehension of Clyve’s simple mind. He observed all the various switches and controls for a moment. None of them were labeled in any obvious pattern, so he started pressing a bunch of random buttons and pulling various levers. The monitors on the walls scrolled through lines of red text and numbers that had no meaning to Clyve whatsoever. He soon became bored and directed his attention to a hole in the wall.

The hole was covered by thin strips of plastic hanging down in front of it. It looked like an adventure waiting to happen, so Clyve excitedly climbed in without hesitation.

He found himself sliding down a metallic ramp headfirst. It was a deceivingly slow journey, as the ramp had not been properly lubricated in a very long time. He pushed himself along whenever he got stuck. The dark passage grew more confined as he traveled down further, to the point where he began to panic.

He tried to climb back up the way he came, but he was in too deep. He had no choice but to continue downwards.

At last, he saw a light at the end of the tunnel. He squeezed through the last of the passage and fell through the hole, landing on the floor 3 feet below the exit. He looked around from his position on the floor, and laughed softly. Somehow, he had ended up in the same place he was in before, on the opposite side of the room.

He walked back towards the wall with all the computers and gadgets. As he did so, he noticed with a start that there was another man standing with his back turned to him in front of the controls pressing various buttons and pulling levers. He was about to say something, but as he opened his mouth he noticed that the man was wearing his pants.  

His pants.

The pants that he had spent many weeks assembling from patches of fabric scavenged from various decaying corpses found in boarded up houses. Those pants were one of a kind, and there was only one explanation as to why this stranger was wearing them.

The man was Clyve.

Clyve pondered this conclusion for a moment. How could Clyve be standing in front of himself in the same room? He squinted his eyebrows and rubbed his eyes in deep concentration, but was unable to come to any sort of logical conclusion. As he pondered, the man that was apparently him wandered over to a hole in the wall covered in strips of plastic and slid in head first.

The other version of himself was copying his former actions, meaning that in a moment he woukd slide out of the same hole he had just come out of. Clyve knew he had to move so as to avoid encountering this man that was him. What would he say to himself? He would wait until he had a valid explanation for this mess to talk to himself.

He searched frantically for a place to hide on floor 178. On the other side of the complicated computers that made no sense, he spotted a large metal door. The handle turned surprisingly smoothly as he stepped into the next room.

To Clyve’s disbelief, he stepped right back into the same room. He was now standing at the far side of floor 178 looking at two men that strangely resembled himself. One of the men was about to plunge headfirst into a hole in the wall, while the other was staring in bewilderment at the man who was about to plunge headfirst into a hole in the wall.

He searched around frantically for another hiding option. He searched all around the room, then checked the floor, then looked up to the ceiling. He saw no viable options and was about to give up and face the horror of meeting several alternate versions of himself.

He suddenly gave up standing and crashed to the floor painfully. He let out a pathetic sob. Then, he opened his eyes and noticed a strange door next to the one he had just come out of. He stood cheerfully like nothing had happened and opened the new door just as the door he had already come out of opened simultaneously.

Clyve found himself in a dark space. The heavy door slammed shut behind him, leaving him shrouded in a heavy veil of never ending darkness. He could hear the sound of a man sobbing gently.

“Who is it?” asked Clyve. He noticed a painful ringing in his ears as he said this that spread throughout his head.

“The envelope..” said whoever it was that was inhabitation the dark space with him. Clyve suddenly remembered the reason he had gone through all this madness in the first place. The important message! The contents must provide some sort of explanation to this state of disorder.

He reached into his pants pocket where he had left the envelope. His fingers found themselves awkwardly grasping at empty space as they slipped through the hole in his pocket. The hole. How could he be so foolish!

Clyve slammed his fist to his own forehead, which sort of hurt. As he did so, a single fluorescent light flickered on inside the room, illuminating the dark dusty space with peeling gray walls. Sharing the room with him, was himself. Clyve rubbed his eyes to make sure what he was seeing was correct. He saw at least three living versions of himself sitting among a mass of shriveled up manikins.

No, those weren’t manikins. The floor was littered with corpses in various shriveled states of stinking decay. The Clyves that were still living looked up at him with desperate gazes on thinning faces. One of them reached his bony hands towards him and fell over on top of the rotting skeletons.

A speaker suddenly crackled to life in the room, startling Clyve.

“Trial 455, failure.” spoke a monotone robotic female voice, followed by a loud buzzing alarm. The door clicked behind Clyve, and he spun around to try and escape. It was too late, the door was locked. The flickering fluorescent light fixture blinked out, leaving Clyve shrouded in a fatal darkness.

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Boozok the Mystical took a sip of his juice, then spit it out immediately because it was nearly boiling and tasted disgustingly fermented. He looked inside the cup and saw at least 3 maggots squirming around and a fly floating in the bubbly liquid.

He glanced at his wrist to check his watch, which was shattered beyond repair and hadn’t worked for at least 50 years. With a flick of his right hand, a projection of the watch appeared above the physical version of it, which accurately informed him of the time. It had been exactly 12 hours and 7 minutes since the last trial began.

Boozok walked down the creaking wooden steps to his basement. A large beetle with a human face growing on its back scurried out from beneath one of the steps and squealed miserably as he crunched it beneath his hard leather boot.  

The automatic lights flickered on as he entered his lair. On the opposite wall, a station of complex computer terminals with green data flashing across the screens buzzed to life. On the far right monitor, a video monitor of floor 178 played on repeat.

Boozok's lair, with many complex technologies

Trial 455 was playing. Not that it was any different from the previous trials. Boozok leaned over the desk and smashed his fists on the surface. He would have to adjust the variables once again and start the process over from the beginning. The message must get delivered.