Fear Itself

The box was easier to find than anticipated. We met up around noon, just as planned, on the corner of Gower and Kingsway, right in front of that red box. It was a little daunting, honestly, especially since everyone decided that I was going to be in charge of figuring out how to open the thing. I have to say, it was kind of nice to have everyone so confident in my ability to handle technology, even though I really had no idea what to make of the thing. I had no idea what the directions were really telling me to do. I got the first part: tap the center pane three times. That was easy, but after that, things were vague. What in the world did beef brisket mean?

“What’re you waiting for?” Alex asked. “It’s not gonna eat you.”

“You don’t know that!” I scoffed.

“Will you just get on with it then?” Alex retorted.

“We don’t even know what’s inside of this thing,” I contended.

“Yeah,” he huffed. “And we’ll never know unless you open it.”

“How come I have to?” I whined a little, turning my head over to face him.

“Firstly, you have the directions,” Alex chortled. “Secondly, you’re far better with technology than I am. If Dean gets frustrated, he might break something, and Sam’s ready to cry just watching you stand there.” Sam was indeed shivering in his sneakers, head snapping around like a frightened little sparrow. Maybe a chipmunk. “So get on with it, T.”

I heaved a quiet sigh and stepped carefully toward the box, and I thought saw Dean flinch a little every time I took a step. I wouldn’t point it out though. I didn’t want to embarrass him, and nobody else was brazen enough to put a dent in his rock solid masculinity. Warily, I lifted my index finger to the center pane. Tapped once. Tapped twice. Then, I tapped a third time. A small piece of wood on the left side slid up, revealing a tiny black box with a screen and a speaker.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” Dean murmured behind me.

“I’ve never seen a police box do that,” Alex mused in utter awe, inching toward the thing and running his fingers over the red-stained wood.

“Yeah, it’s awesome, but what in the world does ‘beef brisket—‘“ I began to ask, but a voice came from the little black box.

“Error: voice is not recognized,” it informed us. I jumped back with a bit of a fright.

“It speaks!” Sam gasped. “Why does it do that?!”

“I don’t know!” I snapped back, not meaning to yell, but I didn’t know how else to react. “Maybe you should ask your dad, considering he built this contraption!”

“Try it again,” Alex encouraged. “Your mum used to come in here. Maybe it’ll pick up your voice or something.”

I nodded a bit and inched back toward it. With my face closer to the box, I repeated, “Beef brisket.” The thing beeped again.

“Error: voice is not recognized,” it said again.

“Blondie, try it more Scottishly,” Dean suggested, leaning over my shoulder.

I glanced back at him with a deadpan expression. “Thank you for the input, Muscles.” Regardless of how ridiculous that advice was, I tried to think of how to make myself sound a little more Scottish. Granted, I hadn’t necessarily met a Scottish person ever, but everyone said that my accent sounded a little Scottish, so I tried my best to think of what made my voice different from theirs, and I repeated it again: “Beef brisket.”

“Error: voice is not recognized.”

Frustrated, my eyes narrowed, and a scowl wormed it’s away across my mouth. “Beef brisket,” I sneered at the machine, and it beeped again.

“Error: you have tried too many times. You are locked out for the next ten minutes,” the machine told me, and I let out a ferociously angry groan before anyone even had a chance to get a word in.

“Ten minutes, my ass!” I growled before I wedged my fingers in the small space between the wood and the box. With a tight grip, I yanked my hand back and tore the entire black box out. Torn wires hung loose behind it. My chest heaved with every angry breath I puffed out. But I heard a whirring sound, and then a click.

“Blondie,” Dean laughed. “I think you just opened the door.”

Blinking, I reached for the handle and tugged the door open. Sure enough, I found it unlocked. “I guess… we should get in then,” I muttered and stepped into the thing. Odd. There wasn’t even a phone in there. The bottom was a shiny silver. Not that I knew what the bottom of these usually looked like, I had never been in one, and most people didn’t use them anymore. Everyone followed me in, Sam last. Avery and Dean stood at my sides, pretty calm. Alex looked intrigued. Sam looked horrified, so much so that he couldn’t close the door behind us; Alex had to reach forward and do it for him.

“So, we’re in,” Alex announced.

“What do we do now?” Dean asked, arms folded over his chest.

Everyone was looking at me, so I scoffed, “I don’t know what you’re all starin’ at me for. I just got us in. I don’t know what else you want.” Clutching the black box in my hand, I glanced down at my feet. “I don’t know, maybe something will happen.”

And it did. The floor started to shake. I immediately shot to Dean’s side and grabbed him like my life depended on him. “Muscles, what is it doing?!” I shrieked. He put his arms around me, but he laughed.

“Blondie, I honestly couldn’t tell you,” Dean told me.

“Don’t laugh!” I squealed. “This isn’t funny!”

He was going to answer, at least until the thing started to move. It started go downward, making this awful mechanical sound, loud clunks and clanks, and everything got really dark. A shriek erupted from my throat, which I thought startled Sam, but it was too dark to tell. I clung steadfast to Dean, who comforting held my head and rubbed my back, silently trying to tell me that everything was okay. I didn’t know how he wasn’t freaked out by all this; I was horrified.

Eventually, a thud sounded, and it felt as though we stopped. There was a small amount of light peeking through a crack, illuminating the shiny, silver walls of the chute we just descended through. Slowly, a steel panel in front of us slid upward, gliding with ease to reveal the most magnificent thing I ever could have imagined: a technological paradise. My eyes didn’t know what to look at first.

The place was massive, made entirely of stainless steel. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, illuminating the place in a soft, yellow glow. My arms slowly fell off of Dean as the place drew me forward an in. I stepped out of the chute and into the place; everyone else seemed to follow. My head turned like it was stuck on a swivel. There was so much to take in. Lots of doors riddled the room, and I had no idea what they led to. My curiosity was overflowing out of every orifice.

In the center of the room was a massive control panel with television screens and more buttons than I could figure what to do with. “Wow,” I mused with quiet wonder as I approached it. I placed my fingers on one part of the wraparound control panel under the screens, brushing over all the buttons. A thin sheen of dust came off with each touch. Above each screen was the name of a country. Most major countries were included, I deduced after walking all the way around the thing.

“What is it?” Alex asked, approaching from over my shoulder.

“Good question,” I murmured. “Let’s turn it on.” I saw a large red button and pressed it. All the screens flickered on to black and white images, most from an elevated angle, an aerial view, perhaps from something situated on something tall, like a tower or a building.

“Are those… camera feeds?” Alex questioned in awe. I leaned forward, putting my hands on the panel gently.

“I think so,” I answered, looking around at all the screens. It seemed plausible enough. “Look, the feed for London is totally blank,” I announced, pointing up to the empty screen for London, the largest one on the machine.

“Must be feeds from the All-Seeing Eyes,” Alex said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sam, come look at this,” he called out, waving Sam over just as I walked away and continued my exploration.

Just past the security feeds, on the far side of the room, was an enormous screen embedded within the wall. There was a control panel in front of it, spanning just as wide, with three chairs in front of it. A camera situated just off to the side was wired into the panel, and there was an open disc drive on the left side. The first section of the panel, on the left was labeled ‘live television,’ the middle was labeled ‘pre-recorded,’ and the third was marked ‘radio’ and had a microphone built in. All of three of these were hooked into the television with lots of different colored wires. From the corner of my eye, I saw Dean walk up beside me, but he was quiet. I tilted my head toward him and smiled a little.

“I think this thing interrupts broadcasts,” I told him, and he just gave me a nod. Still quiet. Concerned, I furrowed my brows a little and frowned. “Are you okay?” I asked him, voice hushed so no one else had to hear. Everyone else was preoccupied, anyway. I was distracted for a moment by the sound of Alex falling over onto a table when he discovered a hidden case of military-grade weaponry.

“My dad never told me about this place,” Dean murmured, arms folded over his chest defensively, like he was trying to keep something out. Maybe he was trying to keep something in.

“I’m sure he had his reasons, Muscles,” I tried to reassure him, but he didn’t really seem to be having it. He gave a breathy, sarcastic laugh.

“Yeah, and it’s probably just as good as the reason he had for running away,” Dean quipped. Not knowing what to say, my eyes fell from him and idled back to the control panel. What could I say? How could I erase eighteen years of damage? It didn’t take much for me to see how much his father’s absence had hurt him… but I didn’t know how to make that better. I felt absolutely dreadful when he slowly walked away from me to talk to Sam, but I tried to shake the feeling off.

Instead, I looked to my right, and I saw Avery over at a table between two doors, hands inspecting a pile of little plastic, colored blocks. Beside that pile was a shiny, metal thing that looked like a lizard crossed with a dragon. It had icy, blue eyes. Beside it sat a controller. “Wow!” I laughed, running over to him. “What is that?” I took the metal creature in my hands to look it over.

“Spartacus,” Avery mumbled. “Landon was shit at namin’ things.” I giggled.

“Aw, I think it’s a nice name,” I retorted with a playful pout. “He’s really cool, just brilliant,” I mused as I sat the thing back down. I looked at the pile of blocks. “Were those yours?” I asked, and he just gave me a nod. Carefully, I set the black box I had ripped out on the table. I had to fix that, I thought. Otherwise, anyone could get in, and that was no good. I stepped past him, and as I strode by a door, it blinked red three times and opened. Avery’s head turned and looked at me, then the open door, and he followed me inside when curiosity dragged me through the doorway.

Inside, it wasn’t quite as shiny. It was still pretty shiny, and it was kind of barren. There was a bed in there, just a single bed, with a dresser and a desk. The desk had an empty mug sitting on it with a shriveled up tea bag inside of it. My eyes drifted up to the wall above the desk. It was filled with picture frames. Out of maybe ten or eleven, only four of the frames were filled. The first was a picture of my mum, Landon, and Lawrence.

T’hey were outside of the police box, and the sky behind them was dark. The only light came from the flash and the street lamps dim behind them. Landon was in the center, arms slung over his friends’ shoulders in a tweed blazer and his red bow tie and suspenders. His sandy blonde hair flopped over the left, and his mouth was fixed in a grin. My mum was on the right side, hunched over a bit, her face scrunched up in a grin. Her red hair fell past her shoulders in waves. She was wearing a blue and white striped sweater. Lawrence was on the left. He was smiling a little, and even at that, it was an open-mouth half-smile. He was in black hooded sweatshirt layered over a blue and white striped t-shirt. His hair was neatly combed back.

Beside that was a photo of my parents, my father in a suit and my mother in a stunning white gown with lace sleeves and a long veil. I had never seen that photo in the house before. The third was a closer photo of my parents gathered around a baby, probably me, judging by the blue eyes and tiny wisps of blonde hair. The last was a copy of the photo of me and Avery when he was younger. My fingers traced the glass, brushing off a cloud of dust. The rest of the frames were empty.

A pen sat out on the desk top, but there was no paper. Avery stood quietly beside me as I glanced around. “This was my mum’s,” I murmured quietly, lifting my fingers and holding them to my mouth, unsure of what to do.

“Guess that makes it yours now,” Avery quipped with a breathy, quiet laugh, and I shot him a tiny smile. I sat back on the bed gingerly. It still had sheets on it. I brushed my fingers over the comforter, feeling the soft fabric.

“Yeah, guess so,” I muttered a little, still not sure what to make of all this. “Have you been in here?” I asked, and Avery just nodded.

From outside, I could hear muffled yelling, and like any good-natured snoop, I found myself compelled to scope out what was happening. I rose from the bed and tip-toed past Avery to poke my head out the open door. I saw Dean and Sam standing in front of an open door.

“I don’t understand why you won’t even go in,” Sam huffed.

“Because it was Dad’s office, and I want nothing to do with it,” Dean retorted.

Sam merely rolled his eyes, folding his arms over his chest. “That is ridiculous, Dean. I can’t believe you don’t even want to go in.”

“Well, I don’t,” Dean barked. “So let’s just leave it.”

That conversation ended there. Dean started to march off. “Blondie?” he called out, so I stepped from the doorway into view, and I smiled at him.

“You okay, Muscles?” I asked.

“Fine,” he murmured. “I’m great. Anyway, I’m thinking I’m going to head home, so are you coming with me, or is Avery dropping you off later?”

“I, um,” I mumbled, looking down at my feet for a moment. I didn’t really want to go back, I didn’t think. Besides, I had some work to do on the control panel that broke. I also wanted to change the access format to something that didn’t require speaking, especially since Avery couldn’t speak well and didn’t like to. I couldn’t really do that from Dean’s house. “Muscles, I was kind of thinking that maybe I would stay here and poke around a little… I kind of have to fix that security system I ripped out, anyway.”

“Oh,” he said. Brilliant response. That made me feel even better about telling him no.

I licked my lips a little and lifted my eyes to him. “Sorry,” I apologized meekly.

“No, it’s okay,” he sighed, running a hand back through his hair, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking just past me, like he was going to say something dreadful and regrettable if he looked me in the eye.

“Are you sure?” I asked softly.

“Yeah, Blondie,” he murmured.

“Okay,” I told him with a nod. He rubbed a hand across his brows, eyes heavy with irritation and worry, like there was something he wasn’t saying. He just nodded back and began to turn from me, so I quickly placed my hand on his arm to stop him. “I love you,” I broke in, looking up at him with subtle worry in my eyebrows.

He did that thing again where he didn’t really look at me. He said, “You too, Blondie.” It didn’t seem the same, but he already began to leave. All I could do was watch him because I didn’t know what to say. I turned back to look at Avery, and I held my hand in a loose fist in front of my mouth.

“Mumbles, did he seem cross to you?” I worried. Avery just shrugged. “Anyway, I’m going to see um… see um what’s up with that panel,” I stammered, rubbing the nape of my neck awkwardly as I tried to shake Dean out of my head so I could get down to business.

I grabbed the panel off of the table with the legos and the shiny, silver dragon and looked around with a tiny huff. “Where am I supposed to work on this? I don’t have any tools, and I need to fix this—“ A beep came from the far left corner. A steel panel blinked red three times and slid open. “Well,” I laughed under my breath. “Wouldya look at that?”

Hurriedly, I headed for the open door and stepped into a room that was barren save for a few bulletin boards and a work bench spanning the entire right wall. The boards were full of diagrams and notes. Mechanical parts were scattered across the bench. Scrap metal and motherboards were among the clutter. I looked at the box in my hand and thought that perhaps I could make some use of the tools here.

I must have been there for almost two hours, hammering and chipping away at the thing, reconfiguring wires, changing the thing to have a functional screen as well as a speaker. If all went according to plan, we could use an old tablet computer I had found laying on the desk as a database of acceptable matches for fingerprint recognition.

I fiddled with the tablet for a bit, trying to use my knowledge of open source coding, along with what was already programmed in, to try and make it work. I don’t know how long that took. There wasn’t a clock in that room, probably for the exact purpose of not keeping track of time. After all, if one knew they had been working for six hours straight, it could easily drive them mad. If I didn’t know I had been slaving, then no harm was done.

The work seemed successful. If I pressed my thumb into a designated area on the tablet, I could input the registered print into a database. In turn, the box was supposed to recognize the print and unlock the door to Police Box. I tested it just to make sure, plugged it into a small power generator, pressing my thumb onto the screen embedded in the box. Upon contact, the tablet began to flash the word ‘SEARCHING…’ which remained for just a moment (it didn’t have much to do, what with just one print being in the database). It then flashed the word ‘LOCATED,’ and a tiny bulb I had added to the security box glowed green, and it said, “Identity confirmed. Access allowed.”

“Brilliant!” I exclaimed. “Absolutely brilliant!”

“What’d you do?” Alex asked, leaning in the door way. His voice startled me so badly, I nearly fell from the chair.

“Goodness!” I gasped. “Alex, how long have you been standin’ there for?!”

“Oh, I just got here,” he laughed. “No worries. What’re you working on?”

“Fixed the panel,” I explained, holding the box up. “It’s not voice anymore. It’s fingerprint.” Alex approached with a look of intrigue and wonder in his brown eyes. He sat down in an empty chair and wheeled it closer to inspect it. “It eliminates the need for speech. It also eliminates the possibility of someone recording any of our voices and using that for entrance. I can’t do much about fingerprint dusting, but we’ve already eluded the law this long. I don’t think anyone’ll be hot enough on our trail to get them.”

“Very nice,” he marveled.

“Wanna try?” I questioned, holding the tablet up to him. “Put your thumb in the square real fast,” I instructed. He pressed his thumb in, and the tablet beeped when it registered. I saved it to memory, and then I held up the box. “Cool, now press your thumb there.” The look on his face when it registered was priceless.

“Tali, that is fantastic,” he praised, laughing in utter awe of it. “Seriously, everyone’s going to be so excited about this.” I grinned so wide my face hurt a little.

“So, Alex, can you do me a huge favor and get everyone in the database?” I inquired with a hopeful smile, extending the tablet toward him. He nodded.

“It’d be an honor, m’lady,” he jested, bowing his head a little before he took the thing from me. “I’ll try to be prompt.” He ran off quickly, and I turned back to the desk. Now, left with nothing to do, I began rifling through drawers at the work bench. I found more tools, lots of duplicate tools. In a deep, bottom drawer, I found a lot of papers, lots of manuals and instructions. As I rifled, I came across a thick packet: “Siri.” My eyes widened with a pleasant sort of shock, the kind of shock one would experience when they saw something incredible or witnessed a miracle of some sort. Not that I thought Siri was miraculous, but I had always wanted to know more about her functions, and now I could.

As I lifted the first page, a gentle rapping sounded from the doorway. I looked up to see Sam with a smile on his face and book in his hands. “Alex showed me what you did,” Sam said softly. “Tali, that’s amazing.”

I felt my cheeks heat up a little. “Thanks, Sam. That means a lot,” I giggled under my breath.

He smiled and nodded, stepping in with a gentle stride. Soon, he held the book out, standing at an arm’s length away. “Thought you might be interested in this,” Sam told me. I looked up at him inquisitively. “It’s your mum’s journal,” he added.

“What?” I asked, genuinely confused by the book’s presence.

“Found it under my dad’s pillow,” he explained. He set the thing down on the workbench. “I’ll just leave it. I… thought maybe you’d want to read it. I didn’t open anything or… that’s not really my place.” I nodded and stared at the thing, just sitting there among the technology, looking rather old-fashioned in it’s leather binding, covered in must and tiny little specks of things from older times.

I didn’t say anything when he left. I didn’t even quite realize at first that he was gone, not until I glanced up and saw an empty door frame. No matter how hard I tried, the journal kept pulling my eyes back to it. In gold plating on the front was a plaque that read my mother’s name. The journal was probably a gift from someone. I gingerly pulled the cover open, and about a pound of dust poured out from inside. I brushed it away, fingers picking up the texture of the old paper beneath. The date was scrawled at the top: August 28, 2034.

Quickly, I felt apprehension coming on and slammed the thing closed. More dust puffed out like a cloud of smoke from a cigarette. I watched as it slowly faded in the air and vanished. That journal held the key to finally knowing who my mother was. Opening that book was the closest I would ever get to knowing her. It had the potential to ruin the beautiful, perfect image of a courageous, intelligent, and driven woman that I held so near and dear to me. Part of me, a large part of me, thought perhaps I was better off not knowing.

Turning my attention from the book, I brought my eyes back to the manual for “Siri.” I literally pushed the journal aside, letting it lay among the scrap metal as I continued to read about virtual intelligence and personal assistants. I must have been awake all night, but it was worth it because in the morning, there was “Alfred,” the base’s very own virtual intelligence unit. I retired to bed when no one else was awake. I couldn’t tell you what time it was. I just knew that I was tired.

I also knew that there were things I was desperate to avoid, and sleep was my only escape left.