Chương 387: Book Eight, Chapter 54: Logging Off

"It makes sense," Antoine said.

"The Arbiter wanted this mission to go forward for so long. It was never clear why he couldn't get it done before. Turns out, it was because he had. He'd been sending people out secretly for years, I bet." We were all trying to get our appropriate reactions in.

"Think about all those times we veered off the road, like we were circling around. Are there dead people there, too?" Anna asked.

"Have we been walking past dead people this whole time?" I shrugged my shoulders.

"Well, it is an apocalyptic wasteland, you couldn't really expect anything else. I just thought the bodies would be a bit older. I wonder who this guy was." I knelt down beside the skeletal remains of our fellow traveler and then grabbed at his ArGIS unit. It wasn't like he was using it. The ringing sound was still going off after Anna used the call function. I gently pulled the device off the skeletonized arm, silenced it, and began flicking through the screen.

It was an older model, but like all technology in Carousel, it basically did whatever I wanted as long as it was plot-appropriate. I had to look between it and my ArGIS several times before I noticed several differences. The first was under the pathing tab. The map he was given was far larger than the one we had.

"Look at this," I said.

"This guy was given a lot more information; his map shows half a mile in every direction, maybe more."

"They learned their lesson there," Antoine said angrily.

"Can't really lead people into the middle of nowhere if you give them too big a map. They might start thinking for themselves."

"And look at this," I added.

"He has a log feature." I clicked on the button.

"It's an audio log." Our devices didn't have that ability. Maybe the top brass had decided to substitute the audio logs for strapping a camera to one of the surveyors. We all knew what audio logs meant. Carousel loved them because they were great for spooky exposition, and since we had decided to cut back this way, we had technically earned it. So I expected to learn a lot. Cassie grabbed my arm and started flicking through the audio logs. She was, after all, the communications expert.

"Here, just take it," I said, releasing the device to her.

"A lot of this has been corrupted," she said.

"I don't know what could have caused that." She wasn't exactly being a genius when she said that. The file names were literally replaced with the word corrupted. It was Carousel's way of only delivering the relevant information. Instead of listening to some guy talk about a tree or a squirrel he saw, it would only be the stuff relevant to the story.

"Well, let's hear it," Antoine said.

"But before we do, maybe we should set up camp. I don't like to stand around outside." One quick tent later, and we were all gathered around the tiny ArGIS device, listening like children at a campfire to find out what we were up against. To find out anything, really. The logs began with a readout of the number, the date, and the time. Simple stuff. [LOG 18 2311. 08. 14 07: 42]"This is Cole Maddox again. Survey Team Bravo. Day nine. Or ten, maybe. We've left the outpost and are heading toward the signal source.

I was glad to leave those military types behind. There's a reason they were sent to live on the edge of the known world. They're wackos. The ArGIS is taking us on some weird routes, but I guess that's the calibration thing they told us about." He sounded out of breath as he walked and talked. I could hear his footsteps crunching on gravel. If he was just leaving the outpost, we had probably tread on the same ground recently. He sounded like a confident, fairly intelligent man. Maybe he was even cocky.

"Excited to see what's out here. First time beyond the outpost. First time for anybody, in hundreds of years. I just wish I could have told my dad. He would have been proud. Not sure why this had to be a secret. Anyway, time for breakfast." [LOG 19 2311. 08. 15 19: 47]"Day eleven. Lena keeps saying she hears something. Like a woman talking, just out of earshot. The rest of us don't hear it. Probably the wind. It does things out here. I asked her to try responding to the voice, and now she is.

She's talking to the wind. Who did they send me out on this trip with?" [LOG 22 2311. 08. 18 04: 51]"Didn't sleep. Kept hearing Lena outside the tent, asking to be let in. Lena was inside the tent. She heard it too. Either I am on the receiving end of the worst practical joke imaginable, or my imagination really is getting out of sorts." [LOG 23 2311. 08. 18 12: 38]"Lena's gone. She went to get water and didn't come back. We searched for two hours. Found her canteen by the stream. Nothing else."

The silence afterward lasted about thirty seconds, during which all that could be heard was the wind and the rustling of leaves, and maybe, if I was being imaginative, the briefest sound of someone, a woman, talking.

"Her voice is still out there. I can hear her calling. The others say I've lost it. I'm just going to ignore it now." [LOG 25 2311. 08. 19 06: 14]"Gregor won't stop talking about his grandmother. He says she's been visiting him in his dreams. Telling him he's almost home." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. He sounded scared and confused. The tough guy who had begun these messages was beginning to deteriorate.

"Gregor's grandmother died when he was six. He sees no contradiction. I wonder if he was a natural birth. Maybe he's talking about his other grandmother. Who knows." [LOG 26 2311. 08. 19 22: 07]"I need to put this down while I'm still thinking straight." There was a long pause. The bravado was gone from his voice. I heard only frustration. Frustration that he would not be able to explain what he wanted so desperately to explain, even to himself.

"At first, it could have been anything out here. Then it was her. Does that make sense?" [LOG 27 2311. 08. 20 15: 33]"Found signs today. Old wood. Old paint.

'Turn back. If you hear the call, don't answer.' Who made these signs? Was someone out here before us? We were supposed to be first." [LOG 33 2311. 08. 24 05: 22]"Gregor walked into the forest last night. He said his grandmother was making soup. We tried to follow, but our lights wouldn't reach him. It was like the dark just swallowed him. Something smells good." [LOG 35 2311. 08. 26 09: 00]"Just me now." [LOG 36 2311. 08. 26 14: 17]"I've been thinking about how we got here. Not the path. The bigger picture.

We mapped the whole world once. Every mountain. Every forest. Every hole in the ground. We named everything. Charted everything. And when we did, we pushed them out. The things that lived in the unmapped places. There was nowhere left for them. We filled in all the blanks." A short pause occurred before he continued.

"Then we got clever. We burned our own records. Poisoned our own knowledge. Lied to our children about where they were and what was real. We made the maps wrong on purpose, so no one could leak them to our enemies. It worked. Our enemies never found us." Maddox laughed. The laughter was loud, uncontrolled, and continued several seconds longer than expected before stopping abruptly.

"We made the world unknown again." [LOG 37 2311. 08. 27 03: 44]"I'm so close. Almost back. Couldn't get my ArGIS to show me the way home, but I figured out the logs were geotagged. A little math and I managed to figure out the path. We hadn't even gone that far. I dreamed about my mother last night. When the okra harvest came in, she would spend all night cutting it up for stew. Harvest should be in soon. I can almost smell her cooking."

After several minutes, which Cassie fast-forwarded through, a second voice became audible on the recording. The voice belonged to an adult woman.

"Cole, come outside, sweetie. The council told us where you went. We've come to get you, to take you home. Just come outside. It's not that much longer, dear." End of Log. - All we could do for a moment was stare at each other. The audio logs reminded me of a movie I had seen before, The Blair Witch Project, and when I thought about it like that, everything started to align.

We got a few moments Off-Screen where I told the others that we needed to take a stand and take ownership of our plot instead of being led around. It wasn't a perfect idea, but anything was better than being the sheep led to the butcher's block. On-Screen.

"Would headquarters have heard those logs?" Anna asked. No one answered for a few moments.

"They would have known the moment it happened," Cassie said.

"Our devices are constantly sending out signals. Not strong ones, but the information would have gotten back to them."

"So why would they send us out here?" Anna asked.

"Why would they send us out here if they knew there was something causing people to go mad?"

"They tried to fix it," I said.

"They taught us that people who go out into the wild hear voices and that it's perfectly normal and you shouldn't listen to them. They gave us smaller maps and even less information about what we were doing. Heck, right now, can you say for sure that you know what we're out here for? Are we really trying to find another terradome?"

"I doubt it," Cassie said.

"You could never tell with those people." We paced back and forth, posing like band members on early-2000s album art.

"None of this makes sense," Antoine said.

"I talked with a lot of the people in that command tower. There is no way they knew about this. It would be impossible to keep a secret that big. If anybody knows, it's only the people at the very top, maybe just the Arbiter and his assistants." Suddenly, all of our ArGIS units started going off again, reminding us that we were off course and that we needed to march forward.

"Daddy's calling," Cassie said.

"He wonders why we're not where we're supposed to be."

"We may be able to get back home," I said.

"This guy's unit has bigger maps on it, and it seems like he figured out how to retrace his steps. We could probably go back to Culver's Bay if we wanted to." It was important that we established we had a choice now, that we weren't just blindly following orders or stupidly following the lure of whatever creature was beckoning us.

"No," Antoine said.

"No?" Cassie asked.

"Are you not convinced that this is all some sort of trap yet? That we're just the next batch of bodies being thrown at a problem that we don't even get to know about?" Antoine paused for a moment and thought about his words.

"I understand all of that," he said, "but I still think we should go forward. We are being sent in the direction that Camden was being taken. I don't think it's a coincidence. And if I understood things right, I'd have to imagine that my brother was taken in this direction too, or called. I have to find out what happened to them. To all of them." Antoine's character's brother was one of the missing soldiers.

"You know," I said, "we may find out what happened to them, and it may be the last thing we ever learn." Antoine nodded.

"I don't care," he said.

"My job is to lead Echo Squad, and one of our members was kidnapped. Until I know that he's either safe or dead, I'm not going back. You guys can, but I won't." The wind blew, sending a stream of dust over the road.

"I told you I was having visions, messages that there were people who needed our help. That's why I signed up for this," Cassie said.

"I intend to see it through. It can't be a trap if we know it's a trap." I chuckled.

"That's not true," I said, "but I'm in too. The higher-ups didn't trick me into coming. I came because I had to get out of that dome. Even if they told me how dangerous it was, I still would have come." That left Anna.

"The woman who calls to me in my head, she says that my parents somehow ended up in this other place and that I'm supposed to go there too," she said.

"The truth was, I didn't think it was real. I thought they were just false memories from childhood. I just figured I got one life. I could either stay back at Culver's Bay, pop out a few kids, and then die in the laundry rooms or the kitchens or wherever I was assigned, or I could come see if my memories were true. Maybe they were.

If there's a chance people might need us, I say we take it, because it seems like this thing has been imitating my dead grandmother, and it was doing a really good job, but it missed one important detail."

"What's that?" I asked. She brandished one of the guns that we had taken off the soldiers' bodies back at the outpost.

"The dead part," she said. The rest of us laughed. We were stuck in a very confusing storyline, but we were rapidly closing in on the truth. If there was one thing that could counter confusion in a movie, one thing that could cut right through it and keep things interesting even when it wasn't clear what was happening or why, it was sentiment. It was emotion. We didn't fully know what we were up against.

We didn't know what forces were at work in this world where the unknown, unmapped places seemed to be alive and powerful, like some sort of wasteland god. But as long as we had our own purpose and we were trying to save people, I figured we could get at least some members of the audience to give a damn. We finally did as our ArGIS units demanded and headed back out into uncharted territory.