Act 1, Scene 2
[Enter Dr. Bracket]
[Enter Dr. Ascher]
A small room full of complicated machinery, papers, and two computers. One wall is taken up almost entirely by a glass barrier, behind which is a containment cell holding a floating white orb.
A woman in a white lab coat, slightly too long for her, pounds on a desk with her fists. She has just flipped a sizable lever in the hopes that it would do something, anything, to the orb. As signaled by her shriek of despair and agony, things are not going so well.
Dr. Bracket
Devon, I just don't see the point of this whole thing? I mean, the whisp isn't responding to any of our tests, and it doesn't even seem to follow the basic laws of physics. Why are we performing such stupid experiments on it if they never goddamn work?
Devon
Dr. Bracket, we must study the whisp in order to find anything we can about it. If this thing turns out to be what we think it is, it could mean huge advances in science as we know it!
A tanned, short, and scraggly bearded man sitting in a chair is the one responding to Dr. Sandra Bracket about the so called 'whisp'. He won't admit it, but he shares Dr. Bracket's skepticism towards the whole project. However, he knows there are security cameras in the room, and wouldn't want his boss seeing him give up in the face of a challenge.
Devon
And, on a side note, is it possible you could start addressing me by my title, Dr. Ascher? I give you the courtesy of professionalism and-
With tightly shut eyes, Dr. Bracket is pinching the bridge of her nose in what can only be described as pure and absolute anguish.
Devon
I… alright, maybe it’s not important right now. In any case, we should at least get back to procedural examination.
Dr. Bracket
Look, Devon, I would try to perform some more tests on the damn thing, but it fried our controls. We can’t even use the machines unless we want to tear down that wall.
Devon
When… when did that happen, if you don’t mind me asking? I don’t recall such a setback taking place, so I must have been on break or in the bathroom, perhaps.
Devon confidently walks over to the manual controls, which Dr. Bracket has foolishly forgotten to lock up. She attempts to shove him away from the panel, but, even in her inhibited state, realizes how stupid and pointless that would be. To no one’s surprise, the machinery in the room functions normally and with no delay. Dr. Bracket, thwarted in her attempt to do nothing, speaks through gritted teeth.
Dr. Bracket
Must have been remembering a different room.
Devon
That’s fine, Dr. Bracket. I appreciate the concern. Now that we’ve confirmed we have a functioning room, though, it might be a good idea to see what else we can find about this thing. At the very least, we should review evidence.
Dr. Bracket
Okay, you know what Devon? Fine. Fiiiiine. You wanna review some evidence? You wanna go through all those PAPERS, DEVON? FINE. LET’S REVIEW SOME EVIDENCE, SHALL WE?
She angrily grabs a stack of papers and begins flipping through them madly. They will not be easy to rearrange.
Dr. Bracket
Check for signs of consciousness… Not Recognized
Check for signs of intelligence… Not Recognized
Check for central nervous system… Not Recognized
It's not fucking ALIVE, DEVON!!!
Devon
I-
Dr. Bracket
LETS SEE WHAT ELSE!!! OH I KNOW, LET'S READ THE LIST WE MADE AFTER WE DISCOVERED THAT, GEE I DON’T KNOW, IT'S NOT ALIVE
Check for solid… Not Recognized
Check for liquid… Not Recognized
Check for gas… Not Recognized
Check for plasma… Not Recognized
Check for superfluid… Not Recognized
Check for Bose-Einstein Condensate… Not Recognized
Object Not Recognized
I MEAN JESUS CHRIST DEVON THIS THING ISN’T A THING!!!!!
During the course of Dr. Bracket's spiel, Devon has looked up at the camera on the ceiling and given a sorry look, as if to apologize for his partner’s behavior. In an attempt to calm down, Dr. Bracket recalls a simpler time when she didn’t have to deal with incompetent scientists, floaty space orbs, or worst of all, the hangover she has, which is amplifying how annoying everything is by three, maybe even four times.
Devon
Look, I don’t know what we’re going to do. We only have four hours before the conference and our asses are on the line. If we haven’t made some breakthrough discovery by then, I don’t think either of us will have a job tomorrow. Can you just work with me here?
Dr. Bracket
Ohh, oh big man, huh? ‘Work with me here, Dr. Bracket, work with me’ I have been for six days and what have we found? Jack shit! I mean, one of us might as well get in the room with the damn thing and touch it.
As Dr. Bracket vents about the futility of the situation speed walking circles around the small room the two are stuck in, Devon gets an intrigued look on his face. Though her statement was not intended to be more than skeptical nonsense, Devon’s grin says otherwise.
Dr. Bracket stops her pacing abruptly and turns to Devon with an incredulous look on her face.
Dr. Bracket
You can’t be serious. I was only joking and-
Devon
And we’re running out of time doct… Sandra. We need to take control of this situation and just go in there and make some up close and personal assessments!
Dr. Bracket
But what if it’s dangerous? We have literally no idea what the damn thing could do to us!
Devon
This is the real world, Sandra, not the make believe land you seem to still be recovering from. Nothing crazy or magical is going to happen! So an experiment went wrong and caused this weird white light to appear in the middle of a lab room! Okay, great! It’s not a portal to hell or anything. It’s not shape shifting or changing color. It’s just a white light! And honestly, if you won’t go in there, I am happy to.
That was a lie. He is frightened at the mere thought of entering that room. However, what seems to terrify him more at this moment is the room full of board members that will be meeting him and his partner in the conference room in under 200 minutes.
Dr. Bracket
Alright, go on then. Save our jobs or whatever.
Devon, donning a thick, white safety suit, enters the whisp’s room. He slowly approaches it, trying his best to hide the nervous shaking in his arms. He begins to hear a very faint sound emanating from the middle of the room, just where the whisp is.
Devon
Sandra, was this thing always making noises?
Dr. Bracket
I don't hear anything, what does it sound like?
Devon
Almost like… like whispering. It sounds like a lot of tiny voices whispering to me, but I can't make out what they're saying.
Dr. Bracket
Dude, you are losing it in there. Quit making up excuses and just go, I don’t know, experiment on the thing.
Devon reaches into his box and grabs a pair of tongs and a cotton ball. He holds the ball in the tongs just over the whisp. As he drops it in, he and Dr. Bracket prepare for the worst. However, to both of their surprise, the cotton ball falls through and remains unchanged.
Dr. Bracket
Man, who would have thought objects that don't physically exist can't interact with ones that do?
Despite feeling particularly proud of her mediocre burn, Dr. Bracket sees no reaction or response from Devon, who is staring at the whisp with an uneasy intensity.
Dr. Bracket
Yo, Devon… you good in there?
Devon turns towards Dr. Bracket. His pupils are white and his face is expressionless.
Dr. Bracket
Whoa, what the fuck? Devon? Devon are you okay?
Devon turns back towards the whisp. Slowly and mechanically, he begins removing his safety suit.
Dr. Bracket
Devon what the hell are you doing?
Dr. Bracket runs to the door and attempts to open it, but it doesn't budge. Devon approaches the whisp once more.
Dr. Bracket
Devon stop! Please! It could be dangerous!
Devon slowly reaches towards the whisp. Just as his hand enters the area it resides in, he hears the rustling of leaves, a soft and gentle breeze, and the word “come”. He immediately vanishes from the room.
Dr. Bracket
Holy shit, Devon? Oh god, oh god, Dr. Ascher?
Dr. Bracket frantically scrambles around the room, searching for anything that can help her figure out what to do, though she knows quite well that there is basically nothing she can do, considering that she has no new information other than the fact that the whisp apparently eats humans or something.
Voice from Outside the Room
Dr. Bracket, what on Earth are you doing?
[Enter Dr. Raymond]
A round man in a lab coat that's a bit too slim for him enters the room. His pointed beard and thick, round glasses are a sight to behold. Dr. Bracket stops throwing papers around and looks at him, confused.
Dr. Bracket
Oh! Dr. Raymond! I… I was looking for… umm… I need to save Dr… I mean, uhh, Devon!
Dr. Raymond
Who the hell is Devon?
Dr. Bracket
He's… my… intern? No, that's not right.
Dr. Raymond
Dr. Bracket, I can assure you, no one named Devon has ever worked here
Dr. Bracket
Of course not, I must have been day dreaming again
Dr. Raymond
Please try to be sensible, alright Doctor?
Dr. Bracket
Of course sir, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
Dr. Raymond
Oh and by the way, they cancelled the conference. You’re off the hook… for now.
Dr. Bracket sits down and tries to forget the fact that she got into a panic about nothing. Dr. Raymond shakes his head and leaves the room, knowing full well that he is correct about this whole Devon nonsense. And of course, he is. In fact, no one named Devon has ever even entered the facility. It's unclear as to why the name Devon has even been mentioned in this narration, as there are no characters named Devon and never were.
Dr. Bracket
I must be going crazy
Dr. Bracket begins to organize the many papers lying on the ground, and staples them together, so as to keep them from getting out of order. Satisfied with a day well spent, she turns off the lights, and with a final sigh, exits the room.
Again, I found myself slowly drift out of a peaceful night of sleep— that is to say, I woke up and struggled to silence the deafening screech coming from my phone. I had stopped taking care of myself like brushing my teeth or washing my face, at least just in the morning. My breath smelled worse than a sweaty tuna, but it didn’t really matter to me, because I knew taking care of Bryan was my top priority. I just put my clothes on lazily, and stumbled down the hall to his room.
When I flung open the door, I was greeted to the familiar sight of Bryan, laying in a position I would have thought to be excruciatingly painful, and snoring like something out of a horror film. I checked my pockets and pulled out a SnifRTM capsule, shaking it to make sure it was ready when he woke up. Holding it near his face, I quickly turned on the light next to his bed, and before he started panicking, I allowed him to inhale the fumes from the capsule. His look of sudden rage turned quickly to calm as he stretched out his arms and looked around. His eyes slowly focused on me and he smiled.
“Hello, Tace! Lovely to see you again, dearest.” He always called me Tace — I assume his mind hadn’t come to terms with the death of his wife, Tacey, and I just went along with it, because I think it made him more comfortable around me.
“So, what’s on the agenda, pumpkin?” His eyes gleamed with a certain innocence. “Shall we take a stroll to Theresa and Aaron’s house this morning? I heard from Robin and Ophelia that Ursula just got a brand new stereo!” These were, of course, all names that I had never heard him so much as mention. I quickly helped him into his wheelchair, and, taking the handles, started rolling him out the door. He whistled a choppy tune that sounded like something out of an old Donald Duck cartoon as we entered the kitchen. The smell of coffee got him excited, and, turning to me, he exclaimed with a start, “Oh my, this is just what I need to get some inspiration,” downing the whole cup in about ten seconds. As I took the cup from the table, he reached underneath and grabbed a medium-sized plaster canvas.
“Remember, Tace,” he began to say, “The kitchen is the emotional center of the house. It’s where all the most important stuff happens.” He had said this to me almost every day of the week, and I still wasn’t sure what it meant.
As Bryan sifted through his belongings, I re-read the paper hung up across the room, just under the clock. It was a newspaper clipping from about 40 years ago, with a black and white picture of a large fishing boat, and a headline that read “Something fishy in the water”. The article, or at least what was left of it, was about some kind of spy operations that had been happening on this ship. I couldn’t entirely understand the story, because the page was torn, but there had been sabotage happening and…
Suddenly, I heard a whimpering noise coming from the table. I looked over, and saw tears welling up in Bryan’s eyes. He was still semi-smiling, but his lips were quivering, and it looked as if he was trying his hardest to keep it together.
“Bryan? Are you alright?” I asked. He started crying, but still doing that weird, sort-of-smiling thing.
“This will never work. Not without my palette,” he said, sighing through a small stream of tears. I quickly reached over to the kitchen counter and grabbed it from under some magazines. It was a circular marble palette, probably the most stereotypical design you could find. I squeezed as many colors as I could onto it and handed it to him. He wiped his tears from his eyes and said shakily, “Yes. Yes, thank you, Tacey. How silly of me to have forgotten.” He quickly grabbed a handful of brushes and got to work. I popped my earbuds in and listened to lofi hip hop radio beats to pass the time.
Glancing over at his work was like watching something out of a movie. Never have I seen someone so unable to do most things work so diligently, so quickly, and especially so intensely. He became a different person when he painted, throwing colors onto the canvas as his hands darted back and forth with alarming speed. However, it didn’t look like he was… really making anything. Each stroke he added was just a random line of color, and together, they didn’t actually form a shape or seem to mean anything. In the two hours he spent making the piece, all I saw were lines being piled on top of each other, layer by layer. The end result was a greenish blob amidst a multitude of other colors. There was some yellow and purple on the edges of the page, and streaks of blue lined the bottom. The color red, however, was strewn unboundedly across the page, with a certain intensity to the brush strokes. The more I looked at the abstract piece, the more I tried to discern some kind of meaning from it. With all the blue at the bottom, and the green in the middle, it almost looked like that boat from the photograph, but I was probably just looking too far into it.
I realized I was getting wrapped up in the painting, and didn’t hear the notification go off on my phone that it was time for Bryan to take his SnifRTM. I checked my pockets, but found none. Bryan was starting to look a bit upset. “Tacey?” he asked me, “When did you dye your hair? I… Oh gosh, Tace, I really wish you would have asked me first. It means so much to me how much we communicate. This is where Emilia gets all those strange ideas, you know?” He had begun to tear up again, and his face had grown bright red. I couldn’t leave him on his own, so I had to grab his chair and quickly run to my room with him. He began hyperventilating, and started getting agitated that I had removed him from his painting.
“No, stop now Tacey! I wasn’t done yet! They’ll never know if you don’t let me finish!” I opened my door and ran inside, searching my cabinets for more of Bryan’s SnifRTM medication.
“Oh fuck! Oh god, did I not get more from the store?” I thought out loud. Bryan became angrier, and started yelling at me. I rummaged through my bag once more, and was relieved to find one unopened capsule at the bottom. I quickly shook it, and was holding it towards his face when he slapped it out of my hand. The capsule flew across the room and cracked against my window, leaving a sticky pink residue. “Oh nononononononono!” I began panicking. I didn’t have Bryan’s meds, and he had just destroyed my last resort. Not knowing what else to do, I quickly ran with the wheelchair to Bryan’s room, and forced him into his bed. He was thrashing under the covers, but something sudden made him stop. With a face of awe and uncertainty, he looked right at me, and began talking.
“Elan.”
I audibly gasped. I had been taking care of Bryan for seven years, and about two years ago, his dementia took a really bad turn. He hadn’t called me by my name since then.
“Elan,” he said, maintaining eye contact with me, “I don’t have much time left. But… they have to know what I meant. They have to know what it all means. I want to tell you, Elan, so you can tell them.” I was very confused, but continued listening very carefully to everything that followed.
“The colors are alive. Except Green, which is death, and… something I can’t quite say. But aside from that, colors have personality. Red is sneaky. No, Red is Purple. Purple is sneaky. Red is loud. Boom! Rah! Red is pure anger, hatred, blood. How cliche. Red isn’t cliche, Red is different. Red is nonconformity, the opposite of Blue, conformity. But I thought the opposite of Red was Green! Hah! Nonsense! Poppycock! Red is whatever it wants to be! Blue is only one thing. Blue is one thing, and maybe all the other things. But Red can fly! Red soars. It is a phoenix, flying above the lowly Blue and its sheepish ways. But what of Purple or Yellow? Well, we already know that Purple is sneaky, but so is Yellow. They are the twins… twin rats, sneaking. Do they steal cheese? No! Because cheese isn’t purple.” He had begun trailing off, but as he was laying his head down, he turned to me one final time, and spoke.
“Red flies, Elan. I want them to know that I flew as well. I flew. I flew. I flew…”
He repeated the phrase as he slowly closed his eyes, and drifted to sleep. Later that night, he stopped breathing.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I lost control of my legs. I stumbled, catching myself on what appeared to be a large metal cylinder… probably a pipe. It stretched up toward the ceiling and disappeared. There was a thick green steam hissing from a small tear in the side, and it was making me feel gross, like there was a bug crawling on my brain, and I just couldn’t shake it off. I checked myself to see if I was hurt. My pants were ripped just under the knee, and a steady stream of blood was issuing forth from my leg. I didn’t know how it had gotten there, or, for that matter, how I had gotten down here, but I knew I had to keep walking forward. As I inched down the murky passage, I saw a warm light emanating from a door etched into the side of the wall. Using the last of my strength, I flung it open, barely able to keep myself standing. I peered inside and saw a machine with a round panel in the side, where the light, now bright red, was seeping out.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I realized I wasn’t familiar with my surroundings. I was in a cloudy tunnel, lined with blueish-gray metal pipes. I was walking in some unknown direction, but when I looked over, I realized I wasn’t walking alone. Next to me was a girl, couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old, with blonde hair tied in a short ponytail, and blue streaks of dye running through to the tip. She had puffy cheeks and small, glossy lips, though she didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup. Her eyes were a reddish brown color, like cacao, or mud, and one was ever so slightly bigger than the other. She seemed to notice that I was staring at her, because she made a noise of disapproval, and turned away from me. We moved forward in silence, until some time later, she kneeled on the ground and stopped moving. Her eyes had glazed over and she looked incredibly tired. I shrugged, and went ahead alone.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I was stepping over something. I looked down, and discovered the body of a young girl, on her knees, with her eyes facing forward into nothing. I knelt down and took a closer look. She was quite young, couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old, and her cheeks were puffed out like her mouth was full of water. I could barely tell what color her eyes were, as they had glossed over and appeared a blurry white. She was completely still, and showed no sign of breathing. I sighed, peeking down the pathway in the direction she was facing. She must have failed to reach… whatever it was we were walking to. Suddenly, I blinked, and she was gone. As I stood to continue forwards, I lost my balance, and fell against a jagged piece of metal sticking out from one of the hundreds of pipes lining the wall. The pipe cut through my brown work pants and punctured my leg. Almost immediately, blood began streaming forth. I gripped a different pipe, and tried to pull myself up. Looking into it, I saw a strange figure standing in front of me. The image was distorted from the curvature of the pipe, and the strange green smog that was filling the room, but it appeared to be a white male with shaggy brown hair and a very uneven beard. He had a baggy jean-jacket on, with a name tag that read…Br… Byran? It was hard to make out. I turned around, but found no one standing there. It must have been my imagination, I thought to myself, as I once again tried to pull myself up using the pipe as a support. Wincing, I continued down the corridor.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the sun shining brightly in my face. I faced away and shut my eyes to block out the sudden rush of light. I heard laughing, and turned to see my daughter, Emilia, pointing at me. You shouldn’t stare at the sun you know, she would tell me. If it saw you looking at it like that, it would slap you so hard, you’d go blind. She had always been sarcastic, which she had gotten from her mother. I ruffled her blonde and blue hair, and we kept walking across the deck. She had finally convinced me to let her dye her hair for a group costume with a friend of hers. In return, she had to help me do some repairs in the lockup. But that place is so gross and dark, she said. I know, I always replied, but if you don’t get used to places like the lockup, how are you going to become better than I am? She was set on rising in the ranks and becoming my boss just so she could finally boss me around. I told her if she was able to before I died, she deserved to boss me around. We finally got to the ladder down into the lockup. There was more steam than usual coming out of the duct, but I shrugged it off and began my descent.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a pair of misty maroon eyes staring at me, curved down with a worried look. I backed up, and saw a girl… Emilia… my daughter Emilia, looking at me. She said she was really not feeling comfortable and wanted to go back out. I shook my head and regained focus. Looking back at her, I smiled, and said that there was nothing to worry about. We were surrounded now by the strange green smoke from earlier, and it was making it difficult to see, but I knew the area well enough. I led Emilia through the metal tunnel, our footsteps ringing against the scaffolding that was holding us up. With all the smoke in the air, you could barely see the nearly forty foot drop from us to the mechanical floor below. Emilia coughed, and reached into her pocket. Dad, I think I don’t have my inhaler, she said to me, hyperventilating. I laughed, telling her that she shouldn’t forget things as important as that, and grabbed my emergency pack from my large brown pair of cargo pants. As she puffed three times from the small plastic tube, I leaned against one of the pipes running from the floor to the ceiling, and whistled a tune that I couldn’t remember the origin of.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I saw my hands, slowly grasping rung after rung while I crawled down the ladder to the lockup. Suddenly, everything got dark, and I looked up to see Emilia climbing down into the chute. She was wearing tough sandals made of some cork substance that I didn’t bother asking where she found the money to buy, because I didn’t think I was going to like her answer. She had on a sort of work skirt, made of the same material they made aprons out of, and a small tool belt above it. I knew she wasn’t looking forward to the lockup, but she also wasn’t the kind of person to back down from a challenge, and I knew once she began working with me, she wouldn’t give up until she had finished the task at hand. A loud clang rang out as I came in contact with the metal scaffolding below. I squeezed out of the duct and waited for Emilia to finish climbing as well. The usual mechanic sounds from the millions of tiny gears in the walls were dead silent, and there was a strange greenish smog lining the walls. Emilia reached the bottom of the chute, and instantly knew something was wrong. Is that normal? she blurted. She then looked around at the walls, and her face fell. No wait, seriously, is this normal? I let her know that no, it wasn’t, but that it wasn’t that big of a deal and that weirder things had happened to me in my time. I patted her on the back, and we together, stepped through the chamber door, into the rest of the lockup.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, they began to sting with a terrible heat. I was unsure of what I was looking at… everything had gone blurry. All I could see was red and green. My vision slowly came into focus, and I realized I was in a lackluster metal room with a strange machine in the center. There was an enormous amount of green smoke billowing forth from the pipes that were protruding from the machine, and a bright red glow from within. I fell to the ground, hard, and sprained my leg, wincing in pain. I could barely move anymore, but I managed to crawl to the side of the machine and prop myself up so I could peer inside. The heat on my face was almost unbearable now, but I saw a fire raging inside. I cocked my head to the left, and looked at the hatch which was swung open. Something was written along it. It looked like it said something like Trout or Tar, but it was too hard to make out fully. I scrambled for any meaning behind the words, but found nothing. My vision became blurry again, and any attempt to change this resulted in frustration. I slowly curled myself into a ball on the floor, and after a few minutes, everything went dark.
The following is taken from the cranial log of a 14 year old boy identified as Teddie Bloom, whose body was discovered in a large pit among countless others, many of which had fully or partially decomposed. It has been translated directly from the Tarou Dialect.
[BEGIN LOG]
We’re gathered around the ceremonial pit as the Cantator begins to recite poetry. Looking around, I’m greeted with an array of familiar sights and senses. The walls of the cavern are a purplish black that glints against the roaring fire in front of us. The ceiling sparkles with gemstones embedded in brown and black vines that cover everything above. Every so often, a seed will float down, carrying with it a blessing of hope. At least, that’s what my best friend Peter used to tell me. He would jump up and catch one of the seeds in mid air and pop it in his mouth, or tuck it behind his ear to save for later. They were good luck. I inhale deeply as the Cantator reads “Experience the Sanctum”, which is my favorite poem. The hairs in my nose tickle as the musty air wafts through. It smells earthy and I cough, but quickly cover my mouth for fear of disrupting the recitation, like when Peter whispered a joke in my ear one time during “Eternal Gratitude” and I laughed out loud and everyone looked at me and I was thrashed twelve times in response.
Tonight is really exciting, especially for me. I’m a priest, and today is the finale of our seventh cycle. I learned in my classes that a cycle is seven hundred and thirty days, which is a very long time. Back when I was taking classes, which was in my third through sixth cycles, I never thought I would need to remember everything, like that the laborers spend their third through tenth cycles working, or that the outsiders are built differently from us, because they eat something called “meat” and have more complicated genitals. I can remember one lesson where Peter and I were sitting in a quad classroom, and our counselor was teaching us all the I before E rule, and I had spelled the word “ceiling ” like "cieling" which didn’t follow the rule, and Peter thought it was very funny even though I got a thrashing for it, which wasn’t that bad, but still wasn’t funny. Peter always knew how to look at the bright side of things, even though there wasn’t always a bright side and it was sometimes very annoying to me. I look around the circle to check once more if anyone’s face is peeking out of their hood. I know I would feel better if I knew the people I was standing with were people I know, and some probably are. I wonder if Peter is in the circle right now, and is he wondering the same thing? This would be so much better with Peter here. He can make anything funny, like one time we were cleaning the leaves on one of the Great Stalks. I think it was the Time Stalk, which was yellow and bumpy, but it could also have been the Nourishment Stalk, which is orange and bumpy and very similar in thickness. I had just been poked by a spine, which now that I think about it means it must have been the Time Stalk, which has sharp bristles on its leaves, and Peter tried to pull the spine out of my finger and he just made it bleed more, so he sucked the blood out so it wouldn’t get everywhere and said that it was like he was drinking rose syrup and that made me laugh so hard I basically couldn’t breathe anymore, and I could hear the laughter echoing off the stone caves surrounding us.
The Cantator finished “Experience the Sanctum”, which I hadn’t even realized he was reciting, because I was too busy remembering, and he told us to close our eyes for “Stroll” and “Conquer” which were my least favorites because they came after my favorite poem and also because you had to walk around blind and touch strangers’ hands and it was weird and very hard to do, and one time I was holding Peter’s hand, which I knew because he scratched my hand with our secret code scratch, and I tripped over a rock embedded in the cavern floor and fell and bloodied my knees under my robe, and it looked like I had wet myself and I was very embarrassed and plus I had messed up the poem so we had to start over and I got two thrashings but Peter got four because they thought he pulled me to the ground.
I grab the hands of the people next to me, and I realize that the person in front of me is Fern Pillions, who always has sweaty hands, and he was in my quad-room with Peter and Marl Young and has very bad breath and doesn’t know how to pronounce “A” which is very easy to say for me and Peter. Once Peter tried to trick him by telling him to say “Apple” and he kept saying “Opple” and it was so funny and then Peter and I played tag and he pushed me down into one of the tunnels and I fell and couldn’t get up so he sat next to me and we joked a lot for a long time and he made up a word joke about Fern, but I forgot it because we were having so much fun. I remember one of the seeds got in my mouth while I was lying in a dusty rockpile and Peter told me it was good luck and now here I am doing “Conquer” without any help and I haven’t fallen once so he was probably right.
I’m very excited because it’s finally time to perform my Cycle rites. As a seventh Cycler, I can now progress into my eighth Cycle, which takes place in a totally new place,called the Forest of Creation, which is where Tarou and his Nymphs live and create new life for us to worship and survive on. I don’t know where Counselors and Outsiders go after their seventh Cycles, but it’s probably not as cool as the Forest of Creation. The way to the forest is through a large portal at the bottom of the Progress cavern, even though I don’t like this area a lot because the Progress Stalk is the smelliest Great Stalk and even though its leaves are a pretty blueish green, it smells like musty water and that isn’t very good. As I step up onto the rites table, nobody else steps up with me, which means I am the only seventh Cycler today, which means Peter isn’t here, so I’m a bit sad but that’s ok because I know he’s only a few days younger than me, so when I get to the Forest, I’ll meet him there shortly. I am alongside our Cantator, who points out the large pit where the portal is. I just have to recite “Hope” which is our shortest poem, and I can walk into the portal and go to the forest. I say “Hope” and I step forwards.
As I begin falling, my robe starts spiralling out into a fan and I can’t see anything anymore, but I can hear the air rushing up by my face. The feeling is very fun and I wish it lasts for a long time, but I also want to go to the Forest and see Peter again, so I close my eyes, which doesn’t change much because of how dark it is, but that’s okay beca–
[END OF LOG]
It should be noted for further study that a body was also found in the Pit, directly on top of Teddie’s, and whose cranial chip indicated the name Peter Foster, age 14.