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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Others sounded as if they carried steam, but the sound of rushing water was dominant overall. It seemed as if it must be something like a center for the distribution of the water we use to drink, to bathe and so forth. When I reached the end of the room, I was confronted with wall mounted machinery unfamiliar to me.
One of the pipes was labeled “To administration”. It looked normal enough. The pipes below it were labeled according to the floors they supplied water to…also unremarkable. What threw me off was the mechanism for adding some sort of dull grey concoction to every pipe other than the one headed for administrative rooms. My own and Agnes’, I assumed.
By watching the rate of flow in the array of delicate glass tubes which injected the grey solution into the various water pipes, I found that each pipe received a different amount. The lowest floors received the most. The higher floors received progressively less. The administrative rooms, uniquely, received none.
Could it possibly be something for dental hygiene? Or something to suppress fertility? That seemed unlikely, given that I’d just passed a nursery. I closely studied the great glass chamber of grey solution, noticing that it was water itself...just saturated with almost invisibly small metallic particulate.
It caught the light from the nearby bulb, appearing to me as grey, glittering sand. I followed the movement of the solution through a long, looping series of glass tubes very close to what I’ve seen in the employ of a chemist. The particulate faded and vanished along the way as if dissolving into the water, before being injected into the appropriate pipe.
I wondered if I could taste the difference. So far I’d only had water from my own room, the nearby bathroom or at meals. Although Frederick sure didn’t seem to mind what came out of the water fountain on the bike level the other day, so at the very least it couldn’t be foul tasting or poisonous.
I searched the area around the machinery for clues. All I could find was a brief set of instructions for the operation and maintenance of the “Limiter, version 1”. These instructions were divided into bullet points with crude adjacent illustrations of how to replace various parts, which I imagine someone like Freddy would find very helpful.
No slide rules, though. No notebooks or other writings aside from the instructions mounted next to the device. I sighed. I suppose my hopes were unreasonably high when I entered. It really looked like someplace I might expect to find more of Grandpa’s residual clues. Some gadget or pamphlet that would at last unravel the mysteries of this structure.
But however I searched, banging my shins, knees and elbows more than once on the multitude of inconveniently placed pipes throughout the room, I could find nothing of that sort. So, feeling defeated, I crawled back into the vent and proceeded down the next length of it until I arrived at the final grating.
Jackpot! Very promising anyway, a dusty room filled with all manner of half completed gadgets, tools and blueprints. I took it for the room in which Grandfather must have lived while working on this place, and was vindicated when I found a bed, chair and desk upon emerging from the duct.
It looked unexpectedly clean, given how long he’s been dead. I wondered if Agnes came through here now and again with a duster or something. I fiddled for a while with the various intriguing prototypes sitting on shelves above the desk. There was no telling what they were originally meant to do, as most were in some state of partial assembly.
What really captivated me however was the motion picture projector, set up opposite a matte white projection screen hanging from the wall. I’ve seen a film or two in the theater or on public kinetoscopes, but never known anybody who owned a portable home projector before.
I suppose it makes sense Grandpa would’ve had the latest and greatest gadgetry, long before anyone else. Though for all I knew, he may have built this thing himself! I dug a film container out from beneath a pile of books and papers, cracked it open, then went to work threading the film into the sophisticated contraption.
Possibilities swirled about in my mind as it warmed up and the reels began to spin. Would I see his visage, speaking to me from beyond the grave? Some technical film only of interest to the mechanically inclined? Or, God forbid, pornography. Though given what I know of the man, I doubt he had any interest in prurient materials.
I recalled a journal entry about my father, in which Grandpa lamented that after “all the trouble” he’d gone through to secure a wife with whom to produce an heir to carry on his work, “the blasted boy simply hasn’t got the brains for it.”
I never brought that bit up with Dad, assuming that if he’d read this journal before me, it would be a sore point. But Grandpa wrote about everyone in his life that way, when he wrote of them at all. Always about how useful or useless they were to him. How adequate, or inadequate. Never of his feelings towards anyone, though he must’ve surely had at least some.
The entry about my parents’ death was chilling. Made me wonder, not for the first time, how I could be from the same lineage as such a cold and calculating man. It simply read “My son and his wife perished recently in automobile accident. What trouble! My grandson is said to be staying with sympathetic friends of the family.
That won’t do. I provided lavishly for my wife upon our divorce, I provided for my son and his wife to live comfortably despite his disappointing performance. So of course, I will prepare someplace for the lad to stay within my orphanage. Perhaps he’ll prove more suited to its continuation than his father?”
Not an ounce of feeling. It read like a grocery list, or an opera schedule. Here and there I’ve known boys of a similar mindset, but none so far gone as this colorless, single minded old man. At last the projector cast a discernible image on the screen.
In fuzzy monochrome, there appeared children seated in a circle within some sort of clinical environment. At first I took it for a waiting room as it was lined with comfortable chairs. Only, the film in some places cut away to a view within a room that must have been just behind a one way mirror, with grim looking researchers jotting down notes as they spectated.
A woman in plain looking shoes and a dress down to her shins, her upper half out of frame, pointed urgently to an empty chair positioned nearby. The children looked upon it with confusion, but eventually their countenance was more one of fear and awe. I studied the chair closely but could see nothing about it to account for their reaction.
Stay Tuned for Part 15!
Our main character seems to be very curious. At least he keeps himself busy.
BTW: I’m a bit confused by previous parts. Is our main character boy or a girl? If I’m not mistaken it’s a girl, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyway there is still a lot to be discovered.
A boy. One who reviles the personality of his cold, calculating engineer of a grandfather but also is similar to him in ways he cannot escape, like his relentless curiosity.
Generally grandparents are unique and when they count on them they are unconditional, but I notice that this grandfather has no feeling whatsoever with anyone because of his way of expressing himself it would be serious that he also had to live part of his life in an orphanage, that of some way he changed his way of being and feeling some feeling or remorse for someone, but if he had to have feeling since he had a wife and a son some caress of appreciation he would have to express his wife and love to his son, then he would totally change. I have the doubt that it will be that gray liquid that was mixed with the water, which by the way for the administrative area was not going. Why is it?
Read just 3 parts but stunned by writing style. It's gonna great reading for sure. Younger generation like me love this story and writing style.
I like that we are doing this tour with the protagonist and with the tour, every day a discovery. The part where he remembers the grandfather's writings about the father, not only talks about the kind of grandfather he had, which we already knew was brilliant, but not without feeling; but we have clues about the father, apparently he did not meet expectations. Now what truth will the video bring us? We'll wait until tomorrow. Greetings
Ok.... Will revert you after reading but for now it seems interesting
Back on track with the story where I stopped. I've lost touch with ashera, am so sorry for that, I just can't where I stopped again to continue it, though maybe because I find this very easy to comprehend and exciting that Ashera, trust me, I'll still go back to it again. Promise.
The idea of a mechanical minded grandpa is exciting to me, I can relate on how he felt at the loss of his son and how he sees everyone as useful or useless, I think he's just blunt about it.
I have this feeling that this orphaned poor boy is going to unravel some mystery concerning the orphanage home and his grandpa and then bring corections to it.