Going Up

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on the dim and dank-smelling interior of a house that hasn’t been properly lived in for a very long time. "This is the nearest door to where the ship's beacon landed," says Ellen. "I figured there was no need to make anybody walk except me. If you see anything brown and fast moving that's about the size of a human baby, it's probably a radroach. It's about a quarter of a mile to the beacon from here."

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"More than anything anyone ever managed to build on Earth, that's for sure," says Elliott. "This place keeps the light, air, heat, artificial gravity, energy shields, death ray, cryo tubes of thousands of people, and I don't know how many other things running. I tried working it out mathematically once and I ran out of numbers."

He indicates a number of side doors and teleport disks. "The door behind us goes into cryo storage," he says, "but that one over there leads to just outside the cargo hold, and that other one goes to robot maintenance. That area's inactive at the moment, since the robots are all pretty hostile."

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible walks over to the cargo hold door. "This is the one that isn't opening?" he asks. He finds what seems to be the controls, and pokes at them experimentally. If the door tries to open, he might have a fingerhold to get a grip on it, and that would make things easier.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door's six pointy parts jerk apart by perhaps a centimeter, then sag shut again. "That's the most we get out of it," says Elliott. "Hang on-"

He moves over to hold down the button himself, to give Invincible a chance to use both hands.

[1nv1nc1ble]

"Hmm. That's going to be tricky." He steps towards the door, and as the wedges slide open, he sticks his hands in.

Contrary to what some comic books show, super-strength does not negate the need for leverage. Invincible is phenomenally strong, even if he is an adolescent and only half-Viltrumite, but if he doesn't have a good grip, he can't use all of his strength to good effect. Fortunately, he doesn't need to use all of his strength here.

He braces, with his legs spread, and pushes on the parts of the door, one hand pressing up and the other down. There is a grinding of machinery, and two of the wedges shift, opening the hole in the middle by a few centimeters. "I think," he says, "that the wedges are all linked." Sure enough, as he pushes on two of them, the other four slowly move as well.

Invincible slowly widens the gap for a few minutes, getting a feel of how the pieces are supposed to slide. Then, when the hole has reached about seven or eight centimeters wide, he shifts his grip and shoves. The grinding noise increases, but the door opens. When it's about a third of the way open, he shifts both hands to the top wedges, and puts his right foot on the lower opening and gives a final shove. There is a correspondingly loud screech of metal on metal, but when he steps back, the door stays open.

"There," he says. "I doubt it will close again without some repairs, but that at least gives you access to the non-tentacular food."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Elliott lets out a long, low whistle. "Okay, that was officially amazing," he says. "You must be a pretty popular guy to have around if you're strong enough to pull off a stunt like that... or do people just show up at your door trying to start fights to test your strength? And can I get you anything from inside there before we go on? If I remember right there's a lot of Dandy Boy candied apples and Yum Yum deviled eggs not too far past the door."

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible grins. "I have my fans," he says. There are several bank presidents in California who are thankful that Invincible picked up getaway cars and put them somewhere else. Like the parking lot of the local police station. "And I wear the mask to keep people from doing just that. The benefits of a secret identity."

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm not hungry."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Okay," says Elliott readily. "Ellen?"

"I'm good."

"All right. I can show you the cryo storage area now if you want," says Elliott. "I might not be thawing people out any more, but I make a point of visiting every day. Just... you know. In case."

The air is cold and foggy from the instant they step into the corridor approaching cryo storage, and only grows more so as they get closer. It's like a smack in the face when Elliott opens the door to the rooms proper; Ellen is grateful to be wearing that overcoat, that's for certain. "In here," Elliott says quietly. "Those ovals on the walls? Each one of those is a stasis pod."

And it is a very, very big room.

[1nv1nc1ble]

"Jesus," says Invincible. "They've been at this for a long time." He walks along the row, reaching out to touch several of the pods.

"How many are there?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"There's an audio recording in one of the labs," says Ellen quietly. "The man on the holotape says they took him from Salem Village in 1697. And there was some kind of Japanese samurai or something-"

"Toshiro," says Elliott. "His name's Toshiro. I'm sorry, I should've said- he's still here. He's learned a little English, and I've picked up a little Japanese from him, but I don't see him much. He tends to prowl through the corridors most of the day, or practice with his swords in the observation room."

Ellen nods. "Do you know enough Japanese to ask him if he wants to stay here?" she says.

"Possibly," says Elliott. Then he looks over to Invincible. "About fifteen hundred, more or less. Most of them have very low vital signs, but they're steady."

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible nods. The room feels almost like he imagines a morgue would feel like, except that he knows that every face he sees in those pods is alive. "There must be a way to get them out of here," he says, quietly.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We'll find a way," Ellen says. "Someone will."

She doesn't know how they're going to feed or house them all, or whether they'll be grateful to be awakened into a world like the Wasteland's become, but... they can't just leave them like this.

"I hope so," says Elliott. "I really do. I'll do my part as far as I can, for whatever that's worth."

[1nv1nc1ble]

"I keep coming back to 'why,'" says Invincible after a few minutes. "Why do this? Why keep doing it? What good did kidnapping all these people, yourselves included, and then putting them on ice, do for these aliens?"

He shakes his head, and adds, "I guess if we knew that, they wouldn't be so 'alien,' would they?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"There's an audio recording from one of the other victims," Ellen says suddenly. "I heard it when I was up here the first time... the aliens had been turning a lot of their captives into some kind of weird mish-mash hybrid abomination thing. We fought a few of those. They still show up in my nightmares sometimes. Toshiro killed a bunch of them. I can't imagine that's their only reason, though..."

She looks up at the frozen containers, and shakes her head.

"I've got a couple of theories myself," says Elliott. "But I guess we'll never know."

"Probably not," murmurs Ellen. "Let's get out of here. I'd like to check the cargo hold for some stuff before we go back."

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible nods. "Yeah. It gets a bit creepy in here." He turns and follows the others out of the room.