[Original Novella] Not Long Now, part 8

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I found myself wishing for some means to prolong it. I would find one quite soon, in fact. After finishing the last of the dishes and completing trivial evening patch jobs, I returned to my room for some much needed slumber. But once again, though my body was willing, my mind was not.

Well after I should’ve been fast asleep, I was instead hunched over Grandfather’s journal. This time because of the queer metal slide rule I pried from between two gears the night before. I’d retrieved it from the top drawer of my dresser to inspect it more closely, whereupon I discovered its purpose wasn’t performing mathematical operations after all.

Instead of numbers, there were letters engraved along either side of the rule itself. The slider, when fixed upon a particular letter on one side, framed a corresponding letter on the other. For what purpose I could not fathom until, on a whim, I applied it to the encoded journal entries.

At first it yielded only gobbledygook, which nearly compelled me to give up on the endeavor. But then I tried it in reverse. After decoding a few characters, I gasped. This time it was outputting comprehensible words! Not a slide rule then, but a decoding device. Rather a clever way to disguise it too.

I turned the cold steel device over in my hands and sure enough, Grandpa’s familiar monogram was etched along the back. If only I’d found this sooner! The effective length of the journal doubled, if not more than that, as a result of this development. I wondered how many more years it would take to absorb and understand the rest.

I worked into the night painstakingly decoding a single passage, character by character. Nothing obviously meaningful yet. Some mundane explanation of how eukaryotes at some point in their evolutionary history trapped another species of single celled organism within, which became what scientists now call mitochondria.

An unexpected foray into biology for a man principally concerned with machines, I thought. I briefly wondered at the reason for it, hoping it would become clear once I finished decoding that entry. A few more sentences in, weary from the mentally tedious nature of the translation process (which in truth I have never had much tolerance for) I decided to take a break.

More precisely, I decided to walk about the darkened corridors of the structure. To explore more of it, ideally without being accosted by Frederick this time. To that end, electric lantern in hand, I once again sought out the monogrammed vent cover from the other night.

I found it still unscrewed, and still leaning up against the opening. I cursed myself for not remembering to properly replace it. Lucky for me that it wasn’t noticed, which also saved me the trouble of unscrewing it again.

This time I crawled down the cramped service passage in the other direction. Eager for fresh insight into what goes on in this place after hours, and away from prying eyes. Save for my own of course. If I’m honest, I got something of an illicit thrill from spying on the inner workings of the orphanage.

All this time I felt very much a stranger in a strange land, a newcomer welcomed only by Agnes and then only because of my relation to Grandpa. These covert explorations and observations supplied a feeling of control which had been lacking in my life since the accident.

Even though I remained subject to the rhythm, order and strictures of the orphanage, I could at least know more of its inner workings and of the lives of its inhabitants than I was meant to. While I enjoyed the feeling of belonging, of simplicity, I also found myself yearning for some wiggle room ever since Frederick dragged me off to tighten that nut the other night.

As a result, the idea of doing something mildly subversive brought me some unexpected satisfaction as I pressed on through the narrow, sooty tunnel. I wondered what ol’ Freddy boy would say. Or what Agnes would say, for that matter! She’d throw a fit most likely, then who knows what sort of punishment she might subject me to?

It struck me as I thought about the day we met, that she was worlds more put together than anyone else in this place. Sharp as a tack! Not so much as a hint of the dopey, slow witted stupor I’d seen in Frederick and the others. Better breeding, perhaps? Grandpa must’ve seen the same qualities in her, to assign her a position of power within this orphanage.

I was hoping for another machine room. The last held a clue to Grandfather’s plans, with any luck there were more I’d not found yet. Instead, the first grating I came upon looked out into a nursery. Babies? Here? I suppose many of the workers I’ve seen were old enough to conceive. Provisions for the care of their offspring would be necessary.

It’s truly self sufficient, I quietly realized. Even if the steady stream of unwanted orphans from the city were to one day cease, I could see here a means of maintaining their numbers indefinitely. Girls, aged ten to twenty, walked up and down the rows of cribs to check on the gurgling infants within.

Here and there, diapers were being changed. A tangled mess of clear rubber tubing suspended from the ceiling carried milk or some other pale nutritional fluid to each of the cribs, each terminating in a rubber nipple similar to those found on baby bottles.

But for some curious reason, about a quarter of the cribs were segregated from the rest. A glass divider wall and a door separated them from the larger nursery, though the quality of their care appeared identical. Another door in the far wall led me to suspect I might spy some answers through the next grating, so I continued down the duct.

What I saw through it only confused me more than what I’d seen through the last. A recurring theme in this place, though so far I’d found nothing so strange about it that I couldn’t adapt. Babies from the smaller, separated section of the prior room were being washed and otherwise pampered.

One of the caretakers sprinkled the baby on the table before her with what I took for hygienic powder. When some of it reached my nostrils, I noticed it smelled strongly of cinnamon. Just then a team pushing a wheeled dolly came through double doors in the rear of the room. On the dolly was a familiar decorative jug.

As resplendent as ever. Not yet sealed though. I wonder if they meant to feed some of the broth to the little ones, though I should hardly think they could appreciate such a sophisticated flavor. Instead, something queer followed. The top half of the jug was unscrewed and set aside.

One by one, the naked little bundles of whimpering flesh were gently deposited into the jug until it was filled. I could just see little hands and feet flailing feebly over the rip of the jug’s lower half as the top half was replaced and screwed tightly to the bottom.

The team of youths operating the dolly then wheeled it abruptly out of the room for parts unknown. I just couldn’t make sense of it. Surely there are simpler, safer ways to transport young children. But then, is it for me to question how things are done here? It’s bad enough that I’m peeping.

I shuffled along until I reached the next grate. This room looked more like what I came in search of! Rusty pipes snaked to and fro across the ceiling, as well as up and down the walls. Valves protruded from the pipes at various junctures, a veritable crow’s nest of rusty, tangled iron.

I kicked out the grating with modest effort, again cringing at the thought it would be discovered. But the more I saw, the more questions arose. I could hardly make myself stop now, as I felt closer than ever to uncovering the mysteries of this place. It proved to be a bit of a trick to navigate the convoluted mess of pipes on my way across the room.

It didn’t look as though anybody was ever meant to come in here, except for rare maintenance. It simply wasn’t designed to be traversed by people. I ducked under a great ponderous pipe at waist level, listening to water rush through it as I did so.

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.

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^{Stay tuned for Part 9!}