AL Clark, Jonathan G. Meyer [the little red hen ebook .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jonathan G. Meyer
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Book online «AL Clark, Jonathan G. Meyer [the little red hen ebook .TXT] 📗». Author Jonathan G. Meyer
He made his way down the passageway, tripping the lighting into other rooms and found similar quarters; each tinted a different soft color. Some had three rooms, but all were empty and forgotten. Eventually, he found himself at a large hatch blocking any further travel down the corridor.
Beside the door, a large sign declared: ACCESS TO BLUE SECTION and SPOKE 4 LIFT. Directly below the sign was a small control panel with a card reader slot and two indicator lights; a green light labeled OK TO OPEN was lit, and a red one with text that read DO NOT OPEN, was not.
In the center of the hatch was a small round window with thick plastic or glass that he wiped with his sleeve, allowing him to see into a round room about twenty feet across, with a faded ten-foot red circle painted in the center. On the far side of this transition space was an identical door and window; leading to another corridor.
The card slot told him a key card was needed to open the hatch and gain access to the space beyond. After thinking for a moment, he turned around and hurried back to end up at the other end of the corridor. This one section of the passageway, from large exit door to large exit door, was easily a thousand feet long, so it took him a few minutes to get to the opening at the other end. When he arrived, he found a key card was needed to gain access to this door also. He was trapped in this section of the passageway and had traded his small man-sized prison for a larger one; with rooms.
Now...Where in this place can I get a key card?
Thinking back, he could remember only one location where he might find an item as important as a key card. The locked cabinet in ‘Al Clark’s’ room. He needed to return to the place where he started and attempt to access the storage compartment. It was the best option available.
Back in the room he woke up in, he stood before the keypad next to the cabinet and considered the code required to unlock the cabinet doors. It was probably four or five digits; something memorable for the owner. Depending on what it secured, and the person that programmed it, the code could be devilishly complicated or as simple as 1234. He tapped in 1-2-3-4. That wasn’t it. He tried 1-1-1-1. Not it either. He attempted several different combinations, and none of them worked.
The only thing he knew for certain about this place was the lettering on the door: Al—Clark-25. If A = 1, and C = 3, if you added twenty-five to the end, the combination would be 1-3-2-5. To his amazement, when he tried this solution there was a faint ‘click,' and the two cabinet doors popped open. A small smile crept onto his face as he opened the doors, and he thought, I would never have bet on that to work.
Inside, there was the key card he needed; complete with a cord to hang around his neck, a small set of old-fashioned looking keys, and a handgun in a holster. He reached up and took down the weapon. When he wrapped his hand around the grip, it felt comfortable and familiar in his hand.
Slowly, pieces began to come back to him. A puzzle of fragmented thoughts pulled themselves together, and he realized that he knew what this weapon was. It was a modulated laser pistol, commonly referred to as an MLP.
With this, someone could blow tiny holes in anything that wasn’t hardened metal. Mostly for security, it was the weapon of choice for air-tight facilities—and he knew how to use it.
Still smiling, he hung the card around his neck and put the keys in his pants pocket. The pistol’s power pack was depleted and needed recharging, but he clipped it to his belt thinking there must be somewhere around here where it could be charged, or the power packed replaced.
He had no idea who he was, or where he was, and believed the card would help lead him to some understanding. The small plastic rectangle could very well be his ticket to the answers he so deeply needed.
Chapter Two
He exited the room, turned left, and walked back down the corridor to the hatch that required a key card. Along the way, he pulled the little plastic rectangle from his pocket and took a closer look at it. On one side was emblazoned a single word Excalibur. On the back was a place for a name. However, it was not filled in. Seemingly random letters and numbers filled out the bottom. The card was a generic card that could be programmed to allow the recipient access to specific areas, except this recipient had not bothered to fill in the name. Efficient and nonproprietary, this access card provided few clues.
The card worked, though, and it opened the hatch into the room at the end of the corridor separating the two passageways. Once inside, he noticed a similar control panel on the inside of each hatch and another in-between the two doors. The openings had faded signs stating: ACCESS TO ORANGE SECTION, and ACCESS TO BLUE SECTION. The central control panel sign was labeled: SPOKE 4 LIFT. The doors leading to the passageway had the accompanying safety lights, indicating if the door was safe to open.
He passed on through what he was beginning to believe was an airlock, into the other passageway and found it very similar to the one he just left; except the stripe above the doors was a soft blue. Most doors were labeled LQ...something, with the numbers increasing as he went down the corridor. A few doors were labeled UTILITY, which usually contained cleaning supplies and assorted equipment. When he came to a door marked MESS HALL, he grinned. Almost everyone knew what a MESS Hall was—food! He walked in, and the door closed silently behind him.
It was a fairly large room, and designed for food consumption, with room for seventy-five to a hundred people to eat at the same time. All along one side was a counter with recesses to display a variety of foods. In a back storage area, he found sealed boxes full of various packaged meals, and a user-friendly device for heating the pre-made packets. He warmed one at random, and quickly opened it; squeezing the food labeled Meatloaf and Potatoes into his mouth. The taste was bland. Still, it helped him to feel better.
The water from the tap behind the counter ran a little grayish for a minute or so until it turned relatively clear. He stuck his head under the faucet and sipped from the bottom of the tap. The tepid drink tasted a little like metal but quenched his thirst.
The water must be a closed system and continually recycled.
With his need for food and water satisfied, the man moved out of the mess hall and headed towards the door at the end of the corridor. He would remember this place: Blue Section = Food.
He continued his explorations until he reached the end of the blue section. Again, there was the transition room between the corridors. The inside of this chamber was identical to the one between the orange and blue sections. In this case, it was an airlock for access to the blue section, the green section, and spoke lift three.
The hatch to the green corridor did not display a green light. On the control panel was a bright glowing red light that warned—DO NOT OPEN. Through the round window of the hatch leading to the green corridor, the reason for the ominous crimson light became apparent. Beyond the sealed barrier a large section of the passageway was missing, leaving the passage beyond open to space. The corridor had a hole passing through it; where stars were visible.
The stars told him he was in space, possibly in the centrifugal gravity ring of a space station, or a large ship. It did not matter that the passageway lights were out beyond the window, the starlight told him all he needed to know. Thirty feet past the door was a large ragged hole through the center of the corridor. There was no going beyond this point without a space suit. Now he wondered just how many sections were damaged.
Was this place abandoned for a reason?
He returned to the orange corridor, back to where his day started and contemplated what he knew. He had awakened in a box in a room labeled Al...something...Clark. His clothing consisted of a uniform, and somehow he knew how to use an MLP handgun. The station seemed empty of people, appeared old, but at the same time unused. The ring must still be rotating, or he wouldn’t have gravity. There was food and water in the mess hall for a large number of people, and in the areas he had been through, there was living space for at least two-hundred people. To add to the mystery, he had not found a single working computer.
It took him almost an hour to get to the end of the orange corridor. He took his time and investigated areas he had run by before and noticed several places he’d missed in his rush to get information. There were several doors marked UTILITY, and some keyed doors marked MAINTENANCE. His card worked on these doors also, and inside he found electrical equipment, HVAC equipment. A few had workstations with tools neatly displayed and secured.
In the orange section, he found a security office, with several interconnected rooms and even a holding cell; waiting for its first jailbird. On a long table in a back room, he discovered a place to charge the power pack for his pistol.
From a line of fully charged cells, he swapped the dead battery pack in the weapon for a charged pack and watched as the power indicator went from red to green, indicating a full charge. He checked the safety and pushed the switch from red to green, placing it in the safe mode. Being armed, for some reason, was reassuring.
His card had not failed to open any doors except the one that would put him in a corridor open to space. He did not even try his card on that door.
When he finally reached the airlock at the other end of the orange section, he went through to the passage marked YELLOW SECTION. Nearly identical to the other passageways, he followed it to the next airlock and found that insistent red light on the panel leading into the green part of the ring.
Okay, there are four parts to the ring: orange, blue, green, and yellow. Only the green section was open to space. That would mean there must be four ‘spokes.' It was time to see where the spoke lifts would take him.
****HIS EXPLORATIONS WERE
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