Friday, February 12, 2016

Hiatus

Due to a surprising workload this semester, along with some other things happening that are all taking up parts of my attention, I will have to be putting Juncture on hold for about 2-3 months.

I know that some of the more recent chapters haven't been up to snuff, and I hope to fix that, as well as work up a fairly sizeable backlog so I can be more timely.

See you guys in a while!

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Juncture 5.8


On the walk back, I kept trying to think of people I had met recently. The same odd sensation, the weird feeling of memories getting written as I thought them persisted. When I made it back to my loft, I made sure to avoid the kitchen and make a beeline to my office. Although I was hungry since having puked up the food I had eaten earlier, I had to attend to more important business.

I flicked on the lights and closed the door behind me. The room was as boring as I had been able to make it. There was a chestnut desk covered with brown accordion folders. Most of them were filled with generic paperwork that could be applicable for any number of different careers. In front of the desk was a large leather office chair, which was the most comfortable thing I’d ever sat in.

I sat down and pulled open one of the desk drawers. Inside was another nondescript brown folder. I pulled it out of the drawer and slipped my hand inside. There was a sheet of paper, slightly thicker than a normal one. In reality, it was one of the coolest pieces of technology that the OST had available.

The sheet looked like a conversation from a screenplay. Lines began with a name, followed by a bunch of text. I read through the last couple of lines.

“Marc: Still no results. She won’t talk.

Seph: Well you have nothing but time, don’t worry about it. If you need anything else, I’ll be on call.”


I put the paper down on the middle of the desk, and unfolded the bottom half. It was what looked like a printed image of a computer keyboard.

Yeah, laptops had gotten a lot more portable.

I began typing. The words showed up on the top ‘screen’ as I typed them.

“Marc: It’s been a week for me. I think I found an anomaly.

Seph: What is it?

Marc: Try and remember something about someone you met recently. Think about the small details.

Seph: …Huh. That’s weird. And you’ve been experiencing this?

Marc: Yeah. Do you know if there are any previously recorded anomalies like this? I have a hunch that it may be caused with intent, but I have no idea who would do something like this.

Seph: Well we don’t even know if this is a natural occurrence yet. I’ll get the research department to look into it, but meanwhile, you need to get this info on King. We’re going to have to keep that as our biggest priority.

Marc: Okay. Any tips? I don’t want to have to torture her.

Seph: Sorry, Marc. That’s not really my area of expertise, you know that.

Marc: Right, right. I guess I’ll have to get back to you when I get some information.

Seph: Yup. I’ll still be here.


I folded the piece of paper back up, slid it into the folder, and put the folder back into the drawer. I had gotten used to the weird mode of communication. I had been here for over two years, and yet it was still the same day that I had left for Seph.

See, travel and information interaction to and from the OST headquarters had some weird, apparently arbitrary, probably necessary rules. For one, you could never come back to the base before you had left. You also couldn’t send information back to before you had left.

This kept the information flow to and from the OST strictly linear. There were disadvantages, but I was told that it made the paperwork a hell of a lot easier.

I left the office and went to the kitchen. There was a large analog clock just above the gas oven range, and I noticed that it was late. A quick glance out the window corroborated this evidence. The light was fading quickly, and the sky was a deep pink, with scattered clouds blocking out much of the light which remained.

I decided that I would start cooking dinner, since the workday was almost over. I pulled out a pot, cutting board, and a sharp knife. Then I grabbed a bunch of aromatic vegetables; carrots, celery, and onions.

I began chopping. Two years was a whole lot of time to practice new skills, especially since I didn’t have a traditional job taking up eight hours of each day. Because of that, I had gotten pretty good at cooking. I had to eat every day, so it had made sense to learn.

Within minutes, the vegetables were chopped into tiny wedges. I tossed them into the heating pan, followed by a spray of vegetable oil. The contents began to hiss as soon as they hit the bottom of the pan, and fairly soon the delicious smell of cooking vegetables filled the apartment.

I pulled a small package that was wrapped in oiled paper out of the fridge. Inside was some deboned chicken breast that I had gotten prepared at a nearby butcher’s shop. I quickly cut it into small strips, and prepared to throw them into the pot once the vegetables had finished.

I began to hum – it was just a habit that I had picked up whenever I was doing work with my hands. There was no tune really; I had never quite gotten the hang of it. I couldn’t really sing, either. It was just an odd drone, long held notes. It was calming.

The humming was probably why I didn’t notice that the door opened until several minutes later. I was stirring the pot, to which I had added a large quantity of water, a packet of bones, and a bunch of spices.

I covered the pot and was about to turn around when a pair of arms gripped me around my stomach. My back straightened instinctively and I turned, trying to pry the hands off. When I saw who it was, I managed to relax myself before I could hurt them.

It was Derry.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Juncture 5.7


Three weeks had passed. Three weeks, and I was no closer to finding out anything about King and his crew than I was before I had captured his agent. Although I wasn’t torturing her in any real way, I was strictly limiting her food and liquid intake. My hope was that at a certain threshold, she would become delirious and details would pour out like water.

If that didn’t end up happening? I could resort to other, more extreme forms of questioning. During the years that I had been working for the OST I had been in a large number of sticky situations, in which I would have to simply endure whatever was being dealt to me in order to escape.

Unconsciously, I straightened and bent my arm, the joint clicking as I did. It was still difficult to think about many of the things that I had gone through. They all felt fresh, as if the memories had been imprinted yesterday. But that tends to happen with physical trauma; the memories don’t lessen over time.

I unlocked the door to the warehouse. She was sitting in the chair, her head leaning forward; her hair greasy and matted. I walked over to her, and picked up the plastic bucket that was next to the chair – I had to be careful to breathe through my mouth. It was disgusting. I carried it over to a plumbing unit on the far side of the building and slopped it into the open, waiting pipe.

“So, have anything to tell me?” I asked as I walked back over to my prisoner. “If you do, I might even be persuaded to give you a little extra water this week.” I kneeled in front of her, putting my hand on her chin and pulling her face up so she was looking at me.

Her eyes were dull – as they had been after the first two weeks. She smelled terrible; almost as bad as the bucket.

She refused to meet my gaze. I gripper the lower half of her face, pinching her cheeks in, dragging her eyes to mine. She finally acceded, and a layer of steel that hadn’t been there enveloped her. Her eyebrows knit together in a look of defiance.

“Fuck… you,” I heard in an undertone. Her voice was dry and scratchy. Anger bubbled up, and I gripped her jaw harder. When I released her, she grunted and her head fell – she didn’t have the energy to hold it up. There were small marks where my fingernails had dug into her skin.

All of a sudden bile bubbled up in my throat.

This is wrong.

I felt it almost too late. Revulsion for what I was doing washed over me, and I ran outside, trying to look casual. As soon as I had closed the door to the warehouse all of the food that I had eaten in the past day escaped through my mouth.

I stayed there for the better part of ten minutes; kneeling on the floor waiting for the next round of bitter nausea to gut-punch me. I couldn’t explain just what had overcame me, but the entire situation felt immensely, abstractly wrong.

It was as if I was still that dumb, impressionable teenager. As if I hadn’t gone through all hell since I joined the OST. All at once I was certain that something weird had happened.

My immediate thought was that some wonky stuff was happening with time travel. I’d experienced time travel though, it was nothing like this. There was no sudden realization, it was just – travel, only you ended up in a different when instead of a different where.

No, this was something entirely different. I would have to contact someone at OST to ask them if they had any information on this type of thing.

Maybe Seph, she was – there was a momentary hitch in my thoughts. For a second, all I had was a name. Then, information and memories flooded in, and I remembered who she was.

That clinched it – something was up. It was like my current existence was a bad computer simulation, and it was taking some time to retrieve the information.

In the meantime, I had to finish. I still needed the information from this woman; she was a danger to her current society. I steeled myself and re-entered the dark room.

Her head twitched a little as the door squealed shut. I didn’t exchange any words with her, just walked over to the side of the room where the storage was. I grabbed a bottle of water and turned to walk back over to the prisoner. I had another thought, and turned back around, grabbing a second bottle and a can of beans.

I put the water bottles down in front of her, then opened the can and poured it into a clean, curved, plastic bowl. I didn’t want her to be able to slice my face open with the metal can.

I gently placed the bowl down in front of her. She managed to lift her head up to lock eyes with me.

I saw hatred – but deep in the back, in the darkest recesses of her pupils, I could see that she was just as scared as I was. I felt her see the same fear in my eyes. I broke off the contact.

As I began walking out, I heard a noise behind me. I turned. She had said something, but I hadn’t heard it. She was looking down again.

I walked out of the building, breathing in deep gulps of the fresh air. I would come back tomorrow, instead of waiting multiple days. As much as it pained me to do this, I would go back. I would get the information that we needed.

In the meantime, I had a lot to discuss with Seph, and quite possibly a whole host of other people at the OST. This sudden phenomena needed to be explained, and it needed to be explained fast.