MINDLYFT (COMPLETE)

CHAPTER 26

Nash wasn't easy to find. I went to the old workshop with the scrap wiring and carcasses of hardware but the workers there just shrugged and pointed to the underground. The tunnels of GutterVille were the choice places where most people lived. Those that weren't too drugged out of their mind anyway. 

Even with air-conditioning the above ground buildings never cooled. On the outside in the unshaded squares and streets, your skin could melt in under an hour, in the early afternoon. The tunnels stayed cool, five hundred feet below the surface, vented from some tunnel that went as far as the coast, but still warmed by the pressure of air in its depth. The balance made things more or less comfortable. But there were air conditioners there too.

I just kept asking. The old fashioned way to find people without a ThinkingCap was like wandering in the woods naked. Like a prehistoric human, wandering along the plain with nothing but their wits and the stone tools they might find around them, to survive. From one stranger to the next.

"Have you seen a tall man with a heavy beard and long curly hair? He has deep hazel eyes and goes by the name of Nash? Could you tell me where I might find him? He's leading something but I shouldn't say what. I need his help and I have something to offer. I'm sure he'd reward you if you helped me. Can you?" That was my shpeal.

One, then another, and another, until the blasting sun rays finally retreated below the curvature of the Earth and it got dark. Much of the underground was lit by reflective lights mirrored down below to save on energy. Once the sun went down, dim red and blue lights took over, but it was barely enough to appreciate the lines on faces and even the expressions which could be lost in shadows. Everybody looked mysterious in that light. Everybody felt dangerous.

The last guy I asked, after walking for over a mile without seeing anyone, was a toothless man with large scabs covering his face and arms. Probably scabs on the rest of him but thank goodness his torn sheets of clothing covered those. He gave me a right, then left, then right, series of directions that brought me through a series of tunnels, past heaps of garbage, a sewage processing pump, and a nest of rats. 

There, inside a mid-sized chamber, was a desk, a map on the wall behind it, some old worn out chairs, a ceiling lamp with a red light hanging down like a solitary star, and a shaggy man sitting behind the desk. His head was leaning over some ePad and his fingers were scrolling through some documents. He didn't hear me walk in. I stood by the door and waited for him to look up. He must have smelled me or maybe it was a sixth sense. A second later I saw Nash's face staring from across the chamber.

"Well, if it isn't Princess MoonBeam," he said. His voice hummed low through the vibrating ceiling fan that stirred air overhead, and drummed along the sound of water pipes that surrounded us, and pierced right into my chest, as if an electric drill. I felt my heart stop.

"Just thought I'd take a little vacation," I said. "Heard this was a great place to relax." I stepped tentatively inside. His expression still hadn't invited me anywhere.

"I'd have thought you and your crew would have figured a way to commandeer the Moon and make the Earth completely irrelevant at this point," he said. Then he stood up from the desk and walked over to a table beside it. "Can I make you a drink?"

I took that as an invitation and walked toward him. "Normally I don't drink but on this special occasion the answer is yes," I said.

"And what occasion is that?" He poured two Tumblrs full of gold liquid out of a non-nondescript bottle and handed me one of them.

"The occasion of having been fired. Banished to be precise. For once and for all," I said, holding my glass of up for a toast.

"Three cheers to that," he said, clinking my glass with his own. "And what may I ask did you do to deserve such an honor?"