Mr. Linden's Library

In a futuristic world where there is no green life left, a crazy scientist and his partner develop a way to revisit what used to be through the gifts of special children, but not all is what it seems.

“No, not now. It isn’t time.”

Green vines and strings tangled every inch of the room and entwined every piece of furniture, until nothing was left, but an overgrown jungle of ‘plants’.  It had been this way for a while. The ‘plants’ never stopped growing and there were no longer any remains of the room.

            In the center, a girl lay relaxed on what looked like her former bed. There was nothing strange about it, other than the fact that she couldn’t describe what was happening. She had never seen this exact array of colours. ‘Green’ was such a rare and fresh colour, but the things that came in ‘green’ she could hardly name. Only recently did she know it was ‘plants’ that decorated this room.

            Alisa blinked calmly, sitting up and taking in the information fed to her brain by the single function that had not been covered in any colour other than its natural dull grey. The immense cord fed from the back of her neck, as she looked up in wonder, to the floor and beyond the greenery that surrounded it.

            The poor girl could not recall what had happened before the room. Fortunately, she wasn’t required to. In fact, she was forbidden to. Her mind must be completely immaculate from such things and give true space to that of the incoming information.

            “Ivy,” Alisa whispered out loud, suddenly knowing what it was she was looking at. “Aucuba,” she said looking at a shrub at the other side of the room. “A tendril.” The thin curly vine had twisted around the―used to be―bedpost. “Bald cypress, parthenocissus, fetterbush …” Alisa continued naming off plants as she observed each of them, until there was no new species of plant unknown to her.

“There. She finished the plant process. Now―.”

            “But there is so much she can tell us,” begged another in fascination.

            “Doctor, please. Another time, perhaps,” he argued. “She is but a girl.”

            “A girl with an extraordinary talent.”

            “Awaken her.”

            “This is my library!” The head doctor squalled impatiently. He tossed his arms like an animal trying to show their place in a form of caste system, though it was true he was the head doctor.

            “Sir, we’ve already created a whole entire book from her mind in just this one session. We can do this again―.”

            “Dr.Wellingbrook, you do not command me. Know your place.”

            “But, sir…”

            The head doctor galloped over to a side panel of silver metal and flipped a heavy switch.

            “Doctor Linden! Why the proxies!? Sir, I apologize! Please! I…I…!”

            A swarm of clanging metal beasts blasted through the halls, smashing echoes resounded louder and louder as they came near. Silver arms leaped from the entrance door trying to break through all at once with swimming arms as if they were all locked behind a gate, fighting to make it inside.

            “Doctor…”

            “You forget your place, Wellingbrook.” The doctor snarled again with a strange craziness revolving behind his pale blue eyes.

            “I’ll do whatever you ask! I won’t speak to boldly or out of turn ever again! Please, sir, just call of the proxies!”  

            “Only if you can retrieve the boy,” Dr.Linden smirked slyly with a casted shadow that grew under his eyes as he leaned in.

            “The boy?” Dr.Wellingbrook was shaking, still under the pressure of possibly being torn to shreds by the proxinamates.

            “Yes, the boy,” the doctor urged.

            “B―but, sir…you know the danger of such a mind. He shan’t be―.”

            “Be tamed is what he will be! With what he could tell us…We’ll be the most―!” Before Dr.Linden could finish, the incredible machine beside his outstretched hand was beginning to whistle and coughed out spews of grey powder from the sides of its round mass. One, then two cords out of the millions, snapped and sparked; slithering like snakes as they tossed side to side on their colorless bellies.

            “Doctor!” Wellingbrook cried, turning toward the machine. The extensive blue hologram that had never been produced had dimmed and the most elaborate details and symbols of the round design vanished as did the rest. “Doctor! NT081 is―!”

            “Yes! Yes! The girl! I know!” Linden growled back, scanning the machine for the proper keys to shut it down.

            Almost instantly, the lined segments that had been carved into the machine detatched and fell like the opening bloom of a spring flower on all sides from the center that held a single metal table, which matched everything else silver and metallic in the room―blending it in just as well. On that table, however, was NT081―Alisa.

            Alisa awoke, gasping, as if from a nightmare she was finally free from. However, that wasn’t quite the case, as she noticed the frightened doctors scampering about the machine and a doorway of ravage robotics.

            An abrupt explosion drove through the air from behind the two doctors when Alisa suddenly noticed the eruption of oncoming proxinamates diving into the room. Hastily coming to her sense of reality, Alisa ducked down beside the table she had used as an equal for a bed.

            “You stupid Wellingbrook!” Dr.Linden cried as he charged for the lever.

            “Me?!” He called back, springing behind the machine for safety.

            “Why didn’t you bring me the boy?!”

            “But, sir…!”

            Alisa noted a break just as the last proxinamates made it through the entrance way with their spider-like bodies and wild clawed legs. “Now,” she told herself, just before making a run for it; crouching down to avoid the jagged tentacles.

            “It’s not working! Wellingbrook, you idiot! It’s not working!” She heard the doctor call as his voice grew dimmer with each quick step she took down the grey corridor as her torn, worn out, shoes tapped and echoed against the detailed metal floor.

            ‘The boy’, she had heard them say. Was there another here in this…facility? Another like her?

            Suddenly, Alisa felt herself slam back against the heavy wall from an aggressive strength. She smacked against the wall and almost rebounded back from such a force, where she was then clutched by another human. A boy.

            “Gomenasai―Es tut mir leid…” the boy rambled off in a hurried whisper as he tried to help her balance.

            “Pardon?”

            “Ah, Englisch,” he replied quickly with a different accent. “I apologize.” Once he was certain Alisa was alright, he continued off down the opposite corridor of which neither he nor she had come in this three-way intersection.

            “W―wait!” Alisa sprinted after him. She was curious to know if he was the boy the doctors had referred to, and if so, that was an easy find. He wasn’t at all what she had imagined: messy blonde hair and such a thin stature, beautiful though, when he ran, even under tattered dry clothing. “Are you an experiment, too?”

            “Experiment?” The boy turned to her with emerald green eyes and a more than perfect face for someone so close in age. “More like science pet,” he chuckled sarcastically, though still grave emotion underneath.

            It had been a long while since getting such a rush feeling and such exercise that made keeping up with him difficult.

            “Where are we going? You know there is no escaping…In my studies, I’ve learned that it has been more than a hundred years since outside life existed. The entire world is made of this place. There is no ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ anymore.” After a solid moment, the boy staring forward as he ran, she spoke up again. “Somehow, they’ve managed to keep me alive all this time. I’m guessing it was the same for you, no?”

            “But there is a way to get back to the cities. We’d be well hidden there. That is…” He glanced back over to Alisa, breathing much less lighter than her. “…if you’re planning on coming with me?”

Strange, she never thought about it before, assuming they―the lab rats―would escape together as a sort of given. She brushed her long light bangs from her face, bringing her appearance to her attention. She must have been wearing an awful countenance with the sweat beginning to dampen her sickly colored skin across her bony body and with her disheveled strands of hair the hue of blue silk that faded into odd white tips and framed her thin face. The doctors, she remembered, were on a schedule to cut her hair as short as the boy beside her, every month or two when it grew too long for the wires behind her neck. It just occurred to her that that time would have been soon, for she found a cord still punctured in her neck, tangled lightly in her moist hair, trailing behind like a tail as she ran.

            “Ekk,” she winced, slipping out the cord.

            “We just have to get out…of…the…radius…” the boy strained, just before he started twitching uncontrollably, and quite unusually.

            “The radius? What would that―?”Alisa was unable to finish her sentence.

            The boy flinched again and again before he thrust a powerful arm in front of Alisa, smashing it across her way, into the wall, causing Alisa to collide with his solid arm; almost choking her.

            “Why the blazes…” She coughed, staggering back and holding her neck and chest where she hit him, trying, again, for stability.

            The boy sighed deeply, leaning his head down, ashamed. “I…I am sorry, miss…”  

Alisa took a step back, afraid, worried, for the boy. His eyes blinked rapidly�"each time a green and blue light flashed from under his lashes.

"What...what is happening? Are you alright?" "I�"I..." Something started to generate and the buzzing noise grew louder from the boy's arm that was still linked to the wall. "Admission data..." The boy gasped as if snapping out of thought. "Alisa."

"How did you...?"

"No...run!" He pushed her back, turning his head from the wall with his squinted eyes, leaving his arm stretched. The buzzing had finally reached its maximum, almost in a sundry of scraps and a variety of colors that took to the corridor with such force. The sound was deafening. Alisa had sprung to the ground, rolled into a ball, but couldn't avoid the shards of scrap metal that sliced at her back, only protected by a thin layer of distressed fabric. Once the chaos had vanished and Alisa felt clear to move, she winced at the pain as she ached to come to a stand. She picked at the extra pieces still implanted in her back as she twisted back around to see the boy and just what happened. The blonde haired boy was leaning up against the opposite side of the hall now holding the arm he had smashed into the wall, though now, it ended before it reached the elbow. It had been blown apart with a mix of blood and something dark like oil, dripping from its torn end along with unusual strings or cords that sparked from underneath the flap of skin.

"Oh my gosh!" Alisa trotted as quickly as she could over to the boy trying to ignore her own selfish pain. "What just happened?" Alisa reached gently to touch the boy's soft hand where it held his severed arm. He was breathing heavily while staring at the ground with no evident expression on his face.

"Heike."

 "What?" She attempted looking into his mysterious face.

"My name."

Author's Note

Interesting? Do I need to continue, or fix anything?