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Stories from the Verse
Re Verse All
Chapter 85: Takano 40
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Beam 84
Tommy opened her eyes.
She closed her eyes, and opened them again, just to be sure, but there was no difference between having them open and having them closed.
Her first thought was whether she had gone blind. After all, even in the middle of the night there was always a hint of light to tell you that your eyes were open. The stars were rather bright overnight, and she should be able to see that. In fact, as she gathered her thoughts, it was already nearing dawn. It should be daylight.
Why was she lying on top of her pack? That had to be what this was. Right. She had crawled through the snow in the forest and flopped on top of it. Where, then, was the snow?
It was starting to make sense. She was in another world now, again, having left the snow-filled wood behind. She was going to need some light.
Her phone should be fully charged, and right here somewhere. She had left it in her bedroom, as there wasn’t anything she could do with it that wouldn’t have raised questions, and without the network it couldn’t even really tell her the time. But she could feel the sensation of a few of her possessions around her, and one of them must be the phone.
She rolled off the backpack to a sitting position, and a dim light appeared, sufficient to see that this was a hallway of some sort with doors along it. There were also small pads near the doors which might be monitors but she thought more likely were touch screens.
That would be the next thing to investigate. First she should gather and pack her possessions, so she could move as necessary. She quickly found her phone and her pad and their chargers, her pajamas and slippers, and the few other things she had loose in her room, and got them into the top of the backpack. She checked it to make sure everything was secure, and then relaxed to see if she’d missed something. The purse with her fancy footwear was a few feet down the hall, where apparently she had dropped it in her last push to reach the pack, so she recovered that.
There was also someone else here, another verser, and in fact two of them in different directions. It was too much to hope that one would be Johnny Angel, but he had told her there were other versers out there who could be trusted, although he didn’t want to say that all of them could. Well, finding the other versers could help, but first she wanted to look at these pads.
Donning her heavier than expected backpack, she walked up the hall to the nearest pad. It was next to a door, and that suggested a connection. It was about head height, but she was short, and taller people would have to stoop a bit to see it. It was dark and blank, but she figured it would have to be activated, so tentatively she touched it.
A menu appeared, listing resident, visitor, maintenance, realtor, and a few other words. She picked visitor, and the door slid open to reveal a large well-lit chamber with furniture. Hesitating only a moment, she glanced around the hall and then walked in. She heard the door slide shut behind her.
She took in her surroundings as thoroughly as she could from where she was standing. The room appeared to be carved from stone, but the furniture was made mostly of metal and plastic. It was placed to allow small groups to sit together, something like pit groups. Ramps went up opposite walls with doors at intervals on the way up.
What most interested her, though, was that there was another larger touch screen on the wall not far from the door. This, she thought, was where she would find her answers.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with five other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #385: Characters Ascend. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
