Siren Song | Prologue
A story of the allure of getting lost in your own mind.
Drifting away in an endless stream of vague shadows of great ideas.
Swimming, diving, wildly spinning, losing all bearings, drowning, almost fainting… But that beautiful hypnotic voice keeps on calling for you.
So sweet, so demanding, so terrifying, so clear.
It’s a promise, to find the most valuable treasure, at its source…
One | Prologue
Excited and full of juvenile recklessness, Maro turned the handle of the large, sturdy looking Metal-Door at the end of the extensive corridor in the basement of the Pandorum Company.
Ignoring the huge door-mounted sign, that unmistakably prohibited access for any trespassers, which fully applied to Maro.
The door unwillingly cleared the way with an unpleasant creaking noise, granting sight to …well – nothing.
The room was pitch-black, almost supernaturally dark. As if any light emitted from the flickering strip lights in the corridor was completely absorbed by it.
Maro slowly took one step into the room and groped around for a lightswitch on the left and right side of the entrance – without luck.
Maro took his cellphone to use the display or the built-in flashlight to shed some light into darkness. But apparently the battery (had) died.
“Pull yourself together! You can’t turn back now!” Maro reproved himself.
“This must be the room, the weird old man was talking about. Here I will find all the answers and information about that…that incident” Maro encouraged himself.
He tried to somehow accustom his eyes to darkness – but without success.
Driven by curiosity, Maro braced up and carefully proceeded further into the room.
Suddenly, a familiar, harsh creaking sound from behind cut through the dead silence, immediately followed by the deafening sound of the door slamming shut.
Now, the only reference point had submerged into darkness, as well.
Maro stood there scared stiff, his heart in his mouth.
At that same moment a vibrant purple light flooded the whole room, repelling the ominous gloom and revealing the interior of a somehow generic archive room. As it seemed the salvaging shine was emitted from a computer screen in the corner to the right.
Maro approached the computer desk with caution and took a seat on the worn office chair in front of it.
After his eyes had compensated the brightness, he looked at the dusty CRT-monitor that showed a huge purple Delta symbol on a black backdrop and below it read:
“Do you want to know, Maro?” with a flashing underscore next to it.
After a moment’s hesitation, Maro slowly typed Y-E-S with his index finger and pressed Enter…
Birthiversary | Prologue
With the last of his strength, Maro unlocked the bulky front door to his small but cozy apartment on the beach. He tumbled through the hallway, while clumsily sloughing off his worn leather jacket, funny-patterned knit jersey and his beloved white mid-top sneakers that would have fallen apart already if he hadn’t carefully duct-taped them several times.
“Damn, that was one goddam bone-grinding day today at the factory…like an abstract nightmare”, Maro thought, “…with an unnecessary traumatic/sad ending. Why had this childish fuck Lester to make fun of my daily safety instructions rotine instead of simply following them like everybody else?!
Poor Sally and their two kids. Getting them all sated with a disability pension is nearly impossible”. Maro sighed. Meanwhile he had also added his grungy work pants and one of his socks to the trail of carelessness that marked his way to the kitchen, where he had just popped open a bottle of beer using the top edge of the fridge door.
He took a pull from his bottle, failed to suppress a burp and scuffed into the living room, where he skillfully slumped down onto the couch, while grabbing the remote from the table and turning on the TV.
“Channel 12 Local News – Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This afternoon a terrible incident in the local steelworks suddenly interrupted our rural idyll. When Lester Barnaby got a straight answer on the question, to what disastrous consequences it could possibly lead, if you ignore the safety instructions from your shift supervisor.
While performing a silly mimicry of the foreman’s instructions, his fire proximity suit got caught between the enormous gears of the newly installed, fully-automated heavy-duty metal forging machine. It’s only thanks to the lightning-fast reaction of his supervisor Maro ESK, who instantly jumped for the Panic Button, so the machine stopped right before Lester Barnaby’s shoulder.
Only a few minutes later, two men of the local fire department arrived at the accident scene, closely followed by an ambulance.
After relieving Mr. Barnaby from his pain with a shot of morphium, they cut him free from the machine’s fangs and treated the severe flesh wound with pressure dressings and liquid bandages, to stop the heavy bleeding.
He was instantly brought to the Saint Christopher hospital, where he was put into an artificial coma.
“Poor Lester! Today of all days, on his Birthiversary” Maro mumbled to himself, as he dozed off with exhaustion.
In the deep of night Maro woke up all baffled and dripping with sweat. Only fragmentary memories of a weird and confusing dream rushed through his head. Starring Lester with an impressive cybernetic arm prosthesis and his personal, very sarcastic AI named M4R0, celebrating his 40th birthday.
Maro smiled to himself, swiped the drool off his left cheek and lurched to his bedroom.