Virgil: Chapter Four
I'm not sure if anyone's actually reading these anymore, or if they are and just haven't said anything. However, I have for your enjoyment chapter four in my latest story.
Of course it's still rough and blah blah blah, but that's what I need you folks for! =D
Virgil: Chapter Four
Virgil awoke with a start, leaping up from his chair with such force that he hit his head into the ceiling. The jolt to his head did nothing to assuage his fears that some monster had been using his skull as a bowl.
“Bit jumpy, are we?” the caretaker asked. The buildings, unlike in a regular colony, were all government-funded, so there were no real property owners on the Moon. Instead, each building was designated with a caretaker who was responsible for cleaning up and taking care of things. This particular caretaker was short man with large muttonchops that met beneath his nose in a bushy moustache.
“My apologies,” Virgil said, still slightly breathless. He grimaced when he discovered that his whole body was covered in sweat.
“No worries, mate. You just got a telegraph, is all.” The man handed Virgil a slip of paper. “You may want to consider sleeping in a bed next time.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it,” he said as he unfolded the piece of paper and read it, not even bothering to further acknowledge the caretaker. His dream had upset him more than he had expected. The telegraph was written in Morse code, but Virgil read the code fluently and translated it in his head.
“Object has been excavated. Bring doctor to mine immediately,” it said.
Sighing, Virgil went and knocked on the doctor’s door. It opened immediately.
“Yes?” the doctor asked.
“The object has been excavated, doctor. You’re wanted at the mine.”
“Excellent, let’s go,” he said. As he closed the door behind him, he got a good look at Virgil. “Good god, man, you look like death itself.”
“I… didn’t sleep very well.”
“Did you have a bad dream? One in which you are being pursued by a large creature?”
Virgil looked at him sharply. “How could you possibly have known that?”
“In retrospect, I should likely have warned you in advance, but I simply was not thinking of it. The professor spoke of it in his journal. Proximity to the object results in night terrors the likes of which few men have ever experienced.”
“Did you have bad dreams, doctor? Forgive my saying so, but you look… refreshed.”
“I had what I would imagine was the same dream as yourself, but it only served to reinvigorate my desire to deal with this threat. Now take me to the mine, so that we may see this thing in all of its glory.”
Virgil found himself dreading a visit to the object, the remnants of his night terror still pervading his consciousness. However, his mother had once said that the only way to overcome your fears was to face them, and it was a lesson that he had taken to heart. So, gathering his courage, he led the doctor back through the colony to the mine.
The last time they had arrived at the mine, no one had paid them any heed. This time, however, as soon as they emerged from the railway station, all activity in the mining dome ceased. All eyes turned toward them, making Virgil extremely uncomfortable.
The doctor appeared to have no such problem. He strode forward past Virgil and walked purposefully to the mine’s airlock as if there were nothing at all amiss. Virgil had never been the most comfortable with social situations, preferring to avoid contact with others when possible, and when the miners whispered amongst themselves, staring pointedly at the pair of them, the attention made his skin crawl. Still, he donned his space suit along with the doctor, and the two men ventured back into the mine shaft.
It could have been Virgil’s imagination, but the lights seemed somehow darker, and the canaries more subdued. Each footfall rang out loudly in the tunnel, the sounds growing strange and meaningless to Virgil’s ears. The emptiness of the mine shaft filled his ears until he felt he either had to speak, or go mad.
“This must be quite exciting for you, doctor,” Virgil said lamely, his voice ringing out hollowly.
The doctor turned and gave Virgil a tremendously disparaging stare. Without a word, the doctor turned back around and resumed walking to the object.
Virgil coughed to hide his embarrassment.
Before long, even the song of the canaries died away, and the tunnel was truly silent. To Virgil’s relief, they only had to go a short distance farther and then they arrived at the location of the object.
What had yesterday been a smooth tunnel was now a wide open cavern some twenty meters in diameter. Sitting in the middle of it was the object, looking just as the doctor had described it. Each side was a perfectly regular pentagon, and it was made of a grayish material that was neither stone nor metal. It was rough and textured, and there were small cracks around the perimeter of each pentagon.
“It’s one thing to know about something for one’s entire life, and another to see it in person,” the doctor said.
“I can’t even imagine,” Virgil said.
“Count yourself lucky for that. Hmm,” the doctor said, studying the object. “It’s bigger than I expected. According to the professor, the object at Gateshead was only five meters in diameter. This one must be twice that size. I wonder what that means.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I know more about this thing than any other human on Earth. Is that not enough to satisfy you?” the doctor snapped.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect, doctor.”
“As Samuel Johnson said, Hell is paved with good intentions. That’s why I try to avoid them at all costs, a lesson which you should take to heart. Now, let’s have a good look at this thing. Unfortunately, its large size will preclude any efforts on our part to remove it from this mine, rendering my primary plan of taking it to a desolate spot before experimenting on it untenable.”
The doctor walked around the object, examining it from all sides. Virgil thought he looked somewhat like a bird circling a potential mate. The object itself was covered in the pattern of loops and whorls, and the pattern did not connect from each side to its adjoining neighbor. Each pentagon was its own unique pattern, but they were all thematically similar.
“So be it,” the doctor said loudly, startling Virgil. “There is no other option… we must erect a sturdy barrier between this object and the rest of the mine shaft, so that we can contain the blast if it detonates. It needs to be airtight, because merely the air pressure alone from an explosion of that magnitude could shatter the entire mining dome. Go tell the foreman what we need. Then let’s get lunch.”
Without a word, Virgil went topside, thankful to be away from the depths with that… thing. The foreman proved to be most accommodating, and work began immediately, using the metal from the casing that the doctor had arrived in to create a bomb shield. When the doctor was satisfied that the work was progressing in the proper direction, the two men left the mining dome to have lunch.
Virgil took the doctor to the central dome’s cafeteria, since it had the best food. While the miners may feel that they deserve sub-par food, the bureaucrats would campaign strongly for the best cuisine that could be had on the Moon.
While they ate, the doctor spoke up.
“Tell me something,” he said. “You were one of the first ones up here. What was it like?”
“I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind, doctor,” Virgil said.
“I do very much mind. I shared a story with you yesterday, now it would only be right for you to do the same.”
Virgil sighed and looked down at the table. “It’s a… sensitive subject.”
“What could you possibly be so sensitive about? I would imagine that most men would be simply aching to boast of their part in colonizing the moon, and yet here you are, more reticent than a monk with a vow of silence. You certainly seem quick enough to question my-“
“Everyone I’ve ever known is dead, doctor,” Virgil said, coldly. “That’s why it’s a sensitive subject.”
“Oh, do go on, this sounds quite interesting.”
“You haven’t got a shred of compassion in you, do you?”
“Absolutely not. I abhor the stuff.”
“If you weren’t trying to save this colony, I would say that you were a very rotten man indeed.”
“But I am trying to save the colony, aren’t I? If I were to be honest, I’d have to say that that was merely a coincidence, but I’m not above taking credit for a happy accident.”
“I can’t tell if you’re serious.”
“Please. You and I appear to have at least one thing in common, which is that we’re always serious.”
“Very well, doctor, I’ll tell you my story. I hope you… enjoy it.
On Earth, many years ago, I was a cobbler. I was apprenticed to a respected shoemaker, and I even had my own family; a wife and a young boy named Owen. Money was tight, but Peggy was a wonder at saving, and we were comfortable. I even hoped to one day open my own shop. It was a nice life. A good life, even. So of course it had to end.
One day when Peggy and Owen were coming home from the market, they were accosted by a group of robbers. I can only imagine that Peggy refused to give them what little money she had, since she knew that we could ill afford to miss any payments.
They took it anyway, and left her both dead and defiled. Owen was missing for two weeks before his body was found floating in the Thames.
I held out for those two weeks, hoping that my son was just lost and was trying to come home. The day they found his body was the day that I signed up to go to the moon. I’d heard the adverts, of course… Everyone had. It was a one-way trip, but
there was no shortage of volunteers. People down on their luck. People going to debtor’s prison. People with nowhere else to go. Like me.
Because I was a skilled worker and my employer vouched for me, they put me on the list, not that anyone really needs a cobbler’s services here. Everyone weighs so little that shoes just don’t wear out like they do on Earth. But before I knew it, I was on my way here, leaving everything behind that reminded me of Peg and Owen. Of course I found out that you can’t leave something like that behind, because those memories don’t live in London, they live in me.
Still, when I arrived the first dome had already been built. This was almost 8 years ago now, though it doesn’t feel it. In the beginning, the work was hard and dangerous. I helped with everything, really... Building the other domes, digging the underground railway, all of it. There were only a few of us here in the beginning, and we all had one thing in common. We were all willing to throw our old lives away for a chance at redemption. It’s no wonder, really, that we all became fast friends. We had to trust each other with our lives, after all. Edward White, Walter Cunningham, William Anders and many others. They were all people whose names no one will ever hear, but they were heroes for what they did. We even assembled the giant gun ourselves, something that could never have been done on Earth, but we did it here on the Moon because of the weight difference.
One day there was an accident. We were all working on the section of underground railway that connected to the science dome when the tunnel suddenly depressurized. We must have hit a small natural cave that vented to the surface. This was a few years ago, when we didn’t have the underground sealed off like it is now. It was pure luck that I was already walking back to the central dome when it happened, or I’d be dead as well. All of those men died that day, and I lived. By then, there were plenty of other people living at the colony. Not everyone was taking a one-way trip once the gun was operational.
But I just… kept to myself, after that. I couldn’t just run back to Earth… I’d already learned that running didn’t solve anything, and I had literally made my home here. So I stayed. I started fetching the new arrivals and just kept to myself the rest of the time, doing odd jobs around the colony to make sure it was in shipshape. Other people finished the railway to the science dome, and now most people here in the colony don’t even know me, except as the face they met upon their arrival.
And now… here I am,” Virgil concluded lamely. “I suppose you’ll say something suitably apathetic about my life.”
The doctor leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “You should forget the past.”
“I knew it. I don’t know why I even bothered telling you that story.”
“I’m perfectly serious, my good man! You can’t spend the rest of your life clinging to the past. It simply isn’t healthy.”
“You have absolutely no idea what it’s like, and I wish you would kindly refrain from ever speaking of the matter again,” Virgil said, coldly.
“That suits me perfectly well,” the doctor said, glibly. “If you want to be unhappy, so be it. But ponder this: you said that you are not particularly religious, so do you want to spend what little time you have left in this life pining for a past that will never return, or building a future that you can actually enjoy?”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“No, of course not. It never is. Shall we go check on the workers? Perhaps they’ve actually managed to achieve something, unlike us.”
The doctor stood up and left the table, leaving Virgil to put away the remnants of their food and then to catch up, not that he particularly wanted to spend another minute in the doctor’s company.
The pair traveled in silence back to the mine, and when they arrived, they found that the wall was almost done being erected. It was six inches thick and was anchored into the rock using metal pitons. A door was cut into the metal to allow ingress and egress, and it was fitted with a massive metal bar so that it could be locked from the outside only.
When the work crew was finished, the doctor inspected all around it. Apparently satisfied, he straightened up and uncharacteristically complimented them on a job well done. They took that as their dismissal and practically ran out of the mine shaft.
“I wonder why they’re so on edge,” the doctor said.
“If they’re anything like me, every single one of them had a horrible, horrible dream last night, and possibly even for the last several nights. And you haven’t even had the courtesy to explain the situation to them,” Virgil said.
“I should point out that I told you about it this morning, and despite having ample opportunity, you’ve said nothing.”
“I- I didn’t feel that it was my place,” Virgil stammered.
“I believe I’m noticing a trend,” the doctor said. “But enough about that. I’m going in to study the object. I need you to lock the door after me, and stay here to let me out when I so desire. Your job is of the utmost importance, so do not leave your post for even an instant. Do you understand?”
Virgil sighed. “Yes, doctor.”
Without another word, the doctor pulled open the heavy metal door and waited until Virgil pulled it closed and barred it. Presumably, he continued down toward the object and then studied it using whatever means were at his disposal.
Virgil stood for some time, and then sat. He thought about the things that the doctor had said about his life, and then wondered what he was supposed to do if he needed to relieve himself. The darkness of the cave was disquieting, so he retreated into his mind, playing back the earlier conversation. The doctor was maddeningly right… He could hardly spend the rest of his life in mourning. Yet simply acting as though all of those people had never existed felt… wrong. Peg and Owen had been gone a long time, but he still felt their loss as keenly as ever, if not more so because he was haunted by the possibility of what his life could have been like.
Virgil was lost in thought when there was a sudden pounding at the door. Muffled shouts were coming from behind it, so he leapt up and unbarred the door. The doctor, out of breath and disheveled, jumped through the open door and pulled it closed, then barred it.
The doctor’s face was a haggard mask of horror, and his breathing came in ragged gasps. Virgil simply stared in amazement.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” the doctor said, looking at Virgil with wide eyes, then staring back at the wall. “I-I’ve woken it up.”
Of course it's still rough and blah blah blah, but that's what I need you folks for! =D
Virgil: Chapter Four
Virgil awoke with a start, leaping up from his chair with such force that he hit his head into the ceiling. The jolt to his head did nothing to assuage his fears that some monster had been using his skull as a bowl.
“Bit jumpy, are we?” the caretaker asked. The buildings, unlike in a regular colony, were all government-funded, so there were no real property owners on the Moon. Instead, each building was designated with a caretaker who was responsible for cleaning up and taking care of things. This particular caretaker was short man with large muttonchops that met beneath his nose in a bushy moustache.
“My apologies,” Virgil said, still slightly breathless. He grimaced when he discovered that his whole body was covered in sweat.
“No worries, mate. You just got a telegraph, is all.” The man handed Virgil a slip of paper. “You may want to consider sleeping in a bed next time.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it,” he said as he unfolded the piece of paper and read it, not even bothering to further acknowledge the caretaker. His dream had upset him more than he had expected. The telegraph was written in Morse code, but Virgil read the code fluently and translated it in his head.
“Object has been excavated. Bring doctor to mine immediately,” it said.
Sighing, Virgil went and knocked on the doctor’s door. It opened immediately.
“Yes?” the doctor asked.
“The object has been excavated, doctor. You’re wanted at the mine.”
“Excellent, let’s go,” he said. As he closed the door behind him, he got a good look at Virgil. “Good god, man, you look like death itself.”
“I… didn’t sleep very well.”
“Did you have a bad dream? One in which you are being pursued by a large creature?”
Virgil looked at him sharply. “How could you possibly have known that?”
“In retrospect, I should likely have warned you in advance, but I simply was not thinking of it. The professor spoke of it in his journal. Proximity to the object results in night terrors the likes of which few men have ever experienced.”
“Did you have bad dreams, doctor? Forgive my saying so, but you look… refreshed.”
“I had what I would imagine was the same dream as yourself, but it only served to reinvigorate my desire to deal with this threat. Now take me to the mine, so that we may see this thing in all of its glory.”
Virgil found himself dreading a visit to the object, the remnants of his night terror still pervading his consciousness. However, his mother had once said that the only way to overcome your fears was to face them, and it was a lesson that he had taken to heart. So, gathering his courage, he led the doctor back through the colony to the mine.
The last time they had arrived at the mine, no one had paid them any heed. This time, however, as soon as they emerged from the railway station, all activity in the mining dome ceased. All eyes turned toward them, making Virgil extremely uncomfortable.
The doctor appeared to have no such problem. He strode forward past Virgil and walked purposefully to the mine’s airlock as if there were nothing at all amiss. Virgil had never been the most comfortable with social situations, preferring to avoid contact with others when possible, and when the miners whispered amongst themselves, staring pointedly at the pair of them, the attention made his skin crawl. Still, he donned his space suit along with the doctor, and the two men ventured back into the mine shaft.
It could have been Virgil’s imagination, but the lights seemed somehow darker, and the canaries more subdued. Each footfall rang out loudly in the tunnel, the sounds growing strange and meaningless to Virgil’s ears. The emptiness of the mine shaft filled his ears until he felt he either had to speak, or go mad.
“This must be quite exciting for you, doctor,” Virgil said lamely, his voice ringing out hollowly.
The doctor turned and gave Virgil a tremendously disparaging stare. Without a word, the doctor turned back around and resumed walking to the object.
Virgil coughed to hide his embarrassment.
Before long, even the song of the canaries died away, and the tunnel was truly silent. To Virgil’s relief, they only had to go a short distance farther and then they arrived at the location of the object.
What had yesterday been a smooth tunnel was now a wide open cavern some twenty meters in diameter. Sitting in the middle of it was the object, looking just as the doctor had described it. Each side was a perfectly regular pentagon, and it was made of a grayish material that was neither stone nor metal. It was rough and textured, and there were small cracks around the perimeter of each pentagon.
“It’s one thing to know about something for one’s entire life, and another to see it in person,” the doctor said.
“I can’t even imagine,” Virgil said.
“Count yourself lucky for that. Hmm,” the doctor said, studying the object. “It’s bigger than I expected. According to the professor, the object at Gateshead was only five meters in diameter. This one must be twice that size. I wonder what that means.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I know more about this thing than any other human on Earth. Is that not enough to satisfy you?” the doctor snapped.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect, doctor.”
“As Samuel Johnson said, Hell is paved with good intentions. That’s why I try to avoid them at all costs, a lesson which you should take to heart. Now, let’s have a good look at this thing. Unfortunately, its large size will preclude any efforts on our part to remove it from this mine, rendering my primary plan of taking it to a desolate spot before experimenting on it untenable.”
The doctor walked around the object, examining it from all sides. Virgil thought he looked somewhat like a bird circling a potential mate. The object itself was covered in the pattern of loops and whorls, and the pattern did not connect from each side to its adjoining neighbor. Each pentagon was its own unique pattern, but they were all thematically similar.
“So be it,” the doctor said loudly, startling Virgil. “There is no other option… we must erect a sturdy barrier between this object and the rest of the mine shaft, so that we can contain the blast if it detonates. It needs to be airtight, because merely the air pressure alone from an explosion of that magnitude could shatter the entire mining dome. Go tell the foreman what we need. Then let’s get lunch.”
Without a word, Virgil went topside, thankful to be away from the depths with that… thing. The foreman proved to be most accommodating, and work began immediately, using the metal from the casing that the doctor had arrived in to create a bomb shield. When the doctor was satisfied that the work was progressing in the proper direction, the two men left the mining dome to have lunch.
Virgil took the doctor to the central dome’s cafeteria, since it had the best food. While the miners may feel that they deserve sub-par food, the bureaucrats would campaign strongly for the best cuisine that could be had on the Moon.
While they ate, the doctor spoke up.
“Tell me something,” he said. “You were one of the first ones up here. What was it like?”
“I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind, doctor,” Virgil said.
“I do very much mind. I shared a story with you yesterday, now it would only be right for you to do the same.”
Virgil sighed and looked down at the table. “It’s a… sensitive subject.”
“What could you possibly be so sensitive about? I would imagine that most men would be simply aching to boast of their part in colonizing the moon, and yet here you are, more reticent than a monk with a vow of silence. You certainly seem quick enough to question my-“
“Everyone I’ve ever known is dead, doctor,” Virgil said, coldly. “That’s why it’s a sensitive subject.”
“Oh, do go on, this sounds quite interesting.”
“You haven’t got a shred of compassion in you, do you?”
“Absolutely not. I abhor the stuff.”
“If you weren’t trying to save this colony, I would say that you were a very rotten man indeed.”
“But I am trying to save the colony, aren’t I? If I were to be honest, I’d have to say that that was merely a coincidence, but I’m not above taking credit for a happy accident.”
“I can’t tell if you’re serious.”
“Please. You and I appear to have at least one thing in common, which is that we’re always serious.”
“Very well, doctor, I’ll tell you my story. I hope you… enjoy it.
On Earth, many years ago, I was a cobbler. I was apprenticed to a respected shoemaker, and I even had my own family; a wife and a young boy named Owen. Money was tight, but Peggy was a wonder at saving, and we were comfortable. I even hoped to one day open my own shop. It was a nice life. A good life, even. So of course it had to end.
One day when Peggy and Owen were coming home from the market, they were accosted by a group of robbers. I can only imagine that Peggy refused to give them what little money she had, since she knew that we could ill afford to miss any payments.
They took it anyway, and left her both dead and defiled. Owen was missing for two weeks before his body was found floating in the Thames.
I held out for those two weeks, hoping that my son was just lost and was trying to come home. The day they found his body was the day that I signed up to go to the moon. I’d heard the adverts, of course… Everyone had. It was a one-way trip, but
there was no shortage of volunteers. People down on their luck. People going to debtor’s prison. People with nowhere else to go. Like me.
Because I was a skilled worker and my employer vouched for me, they put me on the list, not that anyone really needs a cobbler’s services here. Everyone weighs so little that shoes just don’t wear out like they do on Earth. But before I knew it, I was on my way here, leaving everything behind that reminded me of Peg and Owen. Of course I found out that you can’t leave something like that behind, because those memories don’t live in London, they live in me.
Still, when I arrived the first dome had already been built. This was almost 8 years ago now, though it doesn’t feel it. In the beginning, the work was hard and dangerous. I helped with everything, really... Building the other domes, digging the underground railway, all of it. There were only a few of us here in the beginning, and we all had one thing in common. We were all willing to throw our old lives away for a chance at redemption. It’s no wonder, really, that we all became fast friends. We had to trust each other with our lives, after all. Edward White, Walter Cunningham, William Anders and many others. They were all people whose names no one will ever hear, but they were heroes for what they did. We even assembled the giant gun ourselves, something that could never have been done on Earth, but we did it here on the Moon because of the weight difference.
One day there was an accident. We were all working on the section of underground railway that connected to the science dome when the tunnel suddenly depressurized. We must have hit a small natural cave that vented to the surface. This was a few years ago, when we didn’t have the underground sealed off like it is now. It was pure luck that I was already walking back to the central dome when it happened, or I’d be dead as well. All of those men died that day, and I lived. By then, there were plenty of other people living at the colony. Not everyone was taking a one-way trip once the gun was operational.
But I just… kept to myself, after that. I couldn’t just run back to Earth… I’d already learned that running didn’t solve anything, and I had literally made my home here. So I stayed. I started fetching the new arrivals and just kept to myself the rest of the time, doing odd jobs around the colony to make sure it was in shipshape. Other people finished the railway to the science dome, and now most people here in the colony don’t even know me, except as the face they met upon their arrival.
And now… here I am,” Virgil concluded lamely. “I suppose you’ll say something suitably apathetic about my life.”
The doctor leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “You should forget the past.”
“I knew it. I don’t know why I even bothered telling you that story.”
“I’m perfectly serious, my good man! You can’t spend the rest of your life clinging to the past. It simply isn’t healthy.”
“You have absolutely no idea what it’s like, and I wish you would kindly refrain from ever speaking of the matter again,” Virgil said, coldly.
“That suits me perfectly well,” the doctor said, glibly. “If you want to be unhappy, so be it. But ponder this: you said that you are not particularly religious, so do you want to spend what little time you have left in this life pining for a past that will never return, or building a future that you can actually enjoy?”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“No, of course not. It never is. Shall we go check on the workers? Perhaps they’ve actually managed to achieve something, unlike us.”
The doctor stood up and left the table, leaving Virgil to put away the remnants of their food and then to catch up, not that he particularly wanted to spend another minute in the doctor’s company.
The pair traveled in silence back to the mine, and when they arrived, they found that the wall was almost done being erected. It was six inches thick and was anchored into the rock using metal pitons. A door was cut into the metal to allow ingress and egress, and it was fitted with a massive metal bar so that it could be locked from the outside only.
When the work crew was finished, the doctor inspected all around it. Apparently satisfied, he straightened up and uncharacteristically complimented them on a job well done. They took that as their dismissal and practically ran out of the mine shaft.
“I wonder why they’re so on edge,” the doctor said.
“If they’re anything like me, every single one of them had a horrible, horrible dream last night, and possibly even for the last several nights. And you haven’t even had the courtesy to explain the situation to them,” Virgil said.
“I should point out that I told you about it this morning, and despite having ample opportunity, you’ve said nothing.”
“I- I didn’t feel that it was my place,” Virgil stammered.
“I believe I’m noticing a trend,” the doctor said. “But enough about that. I’m going in to study the object. I need you to lock the door after me, and stay here to let me out when I so desire. Your job is of the utmost importance, so do not leave your post for even an instant. Do you understand?”
Virgil sighed. “Yes, doctor.”
Without another word, the doctor pulled open the heavy metal door and waited until Virgil pulled it closed and barred it. Presumably, he continued down toward the object and then studied it using whatever means were at his disposal.
Virgil stood for some time, and then sat. He thought about the things that the doctor had said about his life, and then wondered what he was supposed to do if he needed to relieve himself. The darkness of the cave was disquieting, so he retreated into his mind, playing back the earlier conversation. The doctor was maddeningly right… He could hardly spend the rest of his life in mourning. Yet simply acting as though all of those people had never existed felt… wrong. Peg and Owen had been gone a long time, but he still felt their loss as keenly as ever, if not more so because he was haunted by the possibility of what his life could have been like.
Virgil was lost in thought when there was a sudden pounding at the door. Muffled shouts were coming from behind it, so he leapt up and unbarred the door. The doctor, out of breath and disheveled, jumped through the open door and pulled it closed, then barred it.
The doctor’s face was a haggard mask of horror, and his breathing came in ragged gasps. Virgil simply stared in amazement.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” the doctor said, looking at Virgil with wide eyes, then staring back at the wall. “I-I’ve woken it up.”