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wyrmswears · 1 month

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"Generator"; 1569 words.

The Administrator has something to show Agent Walker.

...

Sure, he knew it wasn’t the first time he had been called to a one-on-one meeting with The Administrator, but it may as well have been. It wasn’t like he remembered any of their previous interactions; he was going in blind all the same.

When his fax machine first spat out the offending paper, he believed it had been sent to the wrong agent. But there was his name at the top, ‘Agent Walker’. There was the possibility that someone else shared his surname, but as far as he was aware he was the only agent without a first name.

The listed meeting room wasn’t her office, nor was it one of the Administration’s more conventional meeting rooms, complete with tables 30 people long but only one person wide and more fake potted plants than you could ever imagine. No, today he had been called down to the lowest floor of the Administration: the server room. The part of his brain that understood technology bristled at that; it would be much more effective to place the server room on a higher floor. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t say anything about that to The Administrator when he faced her - he would stick to his department, as all good employees did. The networks and communications department could handle that one.

The elevator down required two separate keycards: one was his standard agent ID, and the other digitally recognised him as a department manager. The former granted him permission to move between floors, yes, but only the latter allowed him access to the basement.

The ride down took 2 minutes and 43 seconds. He counted. No one else entered the elevator the entire journey.

When the elevator reached the basement and the doors slid open, The Administrator was standing on the other side of them. He hoped he would forget this meeting like the others, if just so he could become ignorant to the way he jumped at her sudden appearance.

“Agent Walker.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Administrator, ma’am.”

She smiled. This did nothing to soothe his racing heart. “Come, let’s talk.” She beckoned and he followed her into the dark room.

It was large, but so were most rooms in the Administration. The realm reassignment department was tiny relative to the office rooms that the majority of their employees were stationed in. This room was about half the size of block 8E sub-block 185A A3/11√5. He could see three of the walls, dark stretches of concrete, sealing them in. The fourth that should’ve sat opposite to the elevator was obscured by rows upon rows upon rows of computer servers. A blue glow emanated from them and he grimaced at the thought of the voltage it would take to create a light that strong.

As he struggled to keep pace, The Administrator barely spared him a glance. “This may seem beyond your department, but trust me, your role will become clear soon.” She forewarned. She would never have him leave his department, he knew. That was the first rule of the Administration: Stay in your place. “What do you know of Lord Ras of the Wyldness?”

Lord Ras. He had heard that name. Some of the employees that hailed from Imperium had mentioned it in conversations coated with nothing short of hatred. The ‘outlander’ who had gained a position of such power in their otherwise closed society. That sort of talk only ever continued for a couple days before their new job turned their interest towards paperwork and mild office drama.

“Isn’t he the one trying to awaken ancient evils without a permit?”

The Administrator shot him a look, slow and venomous. “He is”, she nodded, “but that’s not important to us right now.” She walked towards him. He averted his gaze to the floor with stiffened shoulders but found that she only continued past him, down the alley of servers. She didn’t need to beckon him this time, he knew what he was meant to do. He followed.

There was little light between the pillars of computers. They were only between two rows of the many, but what he could see was endless. The towers sparked a theory in his mind about why she was mentioning the rogue lord. “We use a lot of power.” He started, testing the waters. The Administrator stopped walking and turned to face him, her silence commanding him to finish his speculation. “Lord Ras allied with Imperium by promising them power; do we need to ally with him too? To have enough power?”

The Administrator smiled and shook her head. Count two for smiles, and a contradiction - she must have expected him to guess wrong. “You’re right that we do plan to ally with him, but it is not out of need for power. We have all the power we could need.” She turned again and continued to weave her way through the computerised nest which was now composed of more than just server towers. Thick cables ran both overhead and underfoot, LEDs glowed from no visible circuitry, and the drone of electric humming and cooling fans only ever got louder the further they went.

Finally, they breached the sea of servers.

Now that he could see the wall they had been trekking towards all this time, he realised that it wasn’t made out of concrete the same as the other three walls. No, this one was glass. Despite this, nothing was visible from the other side. There was no depth at all, only pure light glowing an almost-white with its brightness (though when Walker inspected the way it lit up its surroundings, he realised it to be tinted pale blue).

In front of the glass wall, the cables reached their largest size before slipping underneath panels in the floor. The servers did not get within 10 metres of the wall. Instead, they stood guard in their rows, watching the tiny humans approach the divine light.

The Administrator hummed, snapping Walker’s attention back to her. She gestured towards the glass. “This is our power source. You can look, if you would like.”

He didn’t know if that was a good idea. Just looking at the glass from this distance was already beginning to hurt his eyes. Nonetheless, unsure if it was because The Administrator had told him to or because he chose to, he stepped forwards.

As he approached, he could feel the electricity in the air. It combed through his hair and bounced around a pit in his chest, dangerously close to the one that ached whenever he thought about the family he might’ve once had, before he forgot everything. He didn’t realise he was shaking with a strange sense of excitement until he was close enough to touch the glass and found himself unable to hold his hand still. He almost did touch the glass, but held back just before his fingers made contact. He still couldn’t see anything on the other side. Pale blue swallowed his vision.

He looked over his shoulder to The Administrator. She raised an eyebrow and jerked her head towards the glass again. He turned back. A bright light stared back at him.

He didn’t scream. This was unusual - Walker knew he was cowardly and anxious and that in any other scenario he would’ve jumped or fallen back or swung a punch - but something was different this time.

If anything, he stood closer than he did originally, watching the sparking lights with complete fascination. His breath fogged the glass.

“What is it?” He asked after what could’ve been anything between a second and a day, even though he couldn’t hear what he was saying over the pounding of his own heart.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The Administrator was at his side now. When had she moved? “It’s lightning.”

Like realising one’s hunger upon taking a bite of food, the word sparked an ache in the back of his head. “Lightning…” He knew what that was, of course, as well as where it came from. They must have captured it live from a storm. He had never seen a storm before, but he had heard anecdotes of them from newly recruited employees and field agents alike. He was jealous. Did all lightning look like this? Freckles and curls?

She watched as he pressed a hand to the glass. The lightning responded in kind, pressing the palm of its hand opposite to his. “We could let it go of course, but it would run away. Far from here.”

Far from here… No. They couldn’t let it free. Now that he had seen it, felt it, he knew he couldn’t bear to part with it. They had to keep it contained. He told The Administrator such.

She nodded and smiled again. “I knew you’d understand.”

He dropped his gaze to study the hand that would’ve held his if it could.

It was almost the same pale blue that shone through the rest of the glass, but somehow brighter. The similarity in colours made it hard to tell the form of the figure apart from its glow, but blue and yellow markings fanned out across its form like the branches of a pine tree. Lichtenberg figures, his mind supplied.

He looked up at its face, admiring its curls and running a hand through his own. He wondered if he’d at all resemble the figure before him if he looked in a mirror.

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