The Enthusiasts

41

Emerson tried to hold his breath for the one-hundred-and-fourteen-story elevator ride up to the observation deck. He couldn't tell where Maxim stood beyond the projection field. Emerson dreaded the thought of Maxim stepping backwards, revealing his hiding place whilst he planked himself against the back of the mirrored interior wall of the ascending carriage. An orchestra of friction-induced humming reverberated above a whisper in the tiny space as the cables moved rapidly in time up the tall elevator shaft. The ride couldn't end soon enough for Emerson. He silently and purposefully yawned as his ears popped under the changing atmospheric pressure.

"Welcome," a pleasant-sounding female voice chirped as the doors parted once arriving at the top floor. Maxim's suit pants swished away rapidly as he exited the carriage in haste. He took an immediate right down a small darkened corridor that led to a vast floor full of connected, networked supercomputers (a term revived by Spectra in a post-transcendence era vision of global dominance in the heightening CPU arms race) which operated as Spectra's top-secret, impenetrable server, the likes of which hadn't been seen in a hundred years or more. Emerson waited for the sound of Maxim's stylish loafers to dissipate. He stepped out of his cover for a moment, held the door open, and stuck his head out into the short entranceway that branched off in three directions. He observed his options: move forward, turn left, or turn right. Each path trailed through a sea of blinking, black towers connected by countless conduits and conductive wiring. The lights seemed to flicker throughout the entire floor as Emerson gingerly stepped off the halted elevator. The overhead lights were on, but it was still dark inside the cold steel lair. Most of the overhead bulb space was taken up with CPUs. In some ways, the modern technical marvel mirrored a hoarder's residence: overcrowded, cramped, and stuffy to the point of being unsuitable for human life to thrive. Emerson caught sight of Maxim's back down the right branching hall. He watched him take a sharp left at the end into a clearing. Emerson chose to lurch forward, keeping his body bent down as he sought cover amongst the giant black boxes of circuitry that were restlessly emitting signals back and forth to infinities traveling through the non-resistant emptiness of the cosmos. As Emerson moved down the hallway, he couldn't help but think that he too was being watched.

A constant hum was everywhere, coming from another mechanical choir of cooling fans and liquid-injected tubes flowing in and out of each unit placed in the staggering plethora of giant processors. Emerson took note that he was literally standing inside Spectra's brain. He got a jolt of excitement suddenly as he realized I did it! He was finally here. The plan became more lucid to him then as he thought of all the metaphoric and occasionally tangible rivers and valleys he had crossed to get to this place. Emerson lightly pressed his fingertips against the back of one of the humming, black-plated monoliths and teetered forward quietly to catch a glimpse of any possible activity through a thin, uniform crack he discovered running between the long row of machines that shone down through the corridor where Maxim had turned earlier.

He felt like Spiderman, crawling across the side of a wall as he moved his spidey-sensored fingertips along the thin metal surfaces and staying in feather-touch contact with the siding of the mega computer structures. He focused his vision down the crack of towers as far as he could, but he saw nothing but dead space. He moved on to the next bank of machines and did the same, still nothing. Then on to the next in the long line and from there, he saw people. A number of human bodies appeared to surround a few terminals set at the far west end of the large, inefficiently designed (from Emerson's perspective) bowed sphere they were standing in. I would have set the CPUs in a spiral pattern, emanating outward from the center like the Milky Way, he thought. I could probably fit several more units, and then it would look awesome, Emerson digressed. He strained to eavesdrop on any conversations being spoken down through the extended crack of light but heard nothing outside of the constant humming that surfaced off of the large units. His hands inadvertently and then purposefully ran themselves along the warm, thin sheet metal casings that housed the CPU circuitry. As he did this, he saw things happening. The many blinking green and sparsely-covered red and yellow lights that sprinkled the outer portions of the CPU casings seemed to create a pattern that followed him as he moved. He knew he had to get going but was momentarily distracted by the eerie dance the tiny blinking lights seemed to perform. He made his way back to the hallway, branching off at the elevator.