No Breadcrumbs

There was another incident last week, where I am. I wouldn't normally be comfortable saying that except that there were a LOT of disasters across the sphere last week. Scientists are scrambling, so sayeth the news. Then again, I'm finding that all out second hand as I do not know how to speak this country's native tongue.. or even what it's called.

It is 1:39:3730. If I were to try to take the time to describe their equivalent of New Years, it would be pointless, because it was disrupted by one of a series of disasters both natural and otherwise... one that is starting to affect more than small points on the sphere.

Incoming this evening in the next post are transcriptions, dated as best I could and can. I've had less time than I expected to do this, as I, or rather we, have moved twice and are putting efforts into securing something we need... covertly. This is proving to be rather impossible, but that too is a story for another time.

Earthquakes, Riots, Rebellion

To say the very least it has been an interesting few weeks. As the prior post may tip you off to, I was momentarily recaptured. Since I was recaptured in the middle of transcribing my notes none of you have any way of knowing that, to put it plainly, the world, THIS world has gotten very tense.

Once the earthquakes began in Strudit, it became apparent how poorly prepared for the government of that particular country was. The largest cities in the country, such as the one I was hiding in, are sort of in chaos. I'm elsewhere now. Hopefully elsewhere enough that it will take some time for me to be found, especially when one considers how I got here.

That is a story for another time.

I am, in fact Here, though to try to teach you where Here was I'd need to have a scanner and a map. I lack both, but know that I am not alone... I am here with myself. I am absolutely horrible at thievery and it took me several attempts to get my hands on a device that could be used to finish telling this story.

For me, I think the story may be almost done.

Like I said earlier, suicide would not undo what has been done.

That leaves two options that I can ascertain and they're both guesses, they also rely on an independent variable which I cannot affect.

I'll continue transcription and post again soon.

In direct answer to last post:

Sorry, spooks, nothing to say to you.

Where

louis where are you

Transcriptions: Part 1

Below is a transcription of a small handwritten account of what has been happening to me, dated as best I could.

TD: 3:78:3729

It has been two days since they let me out of that tiny room. They took away Ruya's computer, finally and yesterday they did not let me out to visit her. Today, though, I woke up in my new room (which has a whole wall that is literally barred like a prison cell) to someone sliding in a tray of food. It was someone new, a woman I would gauge to be in her thirties. She was as formally dressed as anyone else I've seen in the building.

I wasn't able to get a word out of her but I ate breakfast either way.

Turns out that the meal was not without a catch.

Whatever they put in it knocked me out after, I assume five or six minutes and I woke up (with no idea of how much time had passed) in the passenger seat of a van outside of the hospital. Ruya's condition was mostly unchanged according to the nurses but somehow as I sat there I got the really bad feeling she was slipping farther away.

The suits gave me several good hours with her and then sent someone in to escort me out. I made the trip back to this place blindfolded, they offered me dinner and then sent me back to this cell.

Not a single person answered a single question I asked and I have so many.

After I scarfed down the meal they handed me what appears to be an atlas of the continent I live on and told me to start familiarizing myself with it, local areas first and then spread out.

I still have no idea where to start, I have no clue how far I am from Ruya's or what “local” even is.

But maybe if I do what they say they'll help me. I don't know, that feels too hopeful

TD: 3:80:3729

I've been staring at the map and made very little progress. I know the names of several cities around Ruya's, the name of the state (province?) that they are in and get a general feel for the landscape around there. The continent we're on has six countries (discounting a small colony on the west coast) all of which are divided into several provinces, though. I'm assuming that I'm anywhere near her but I could be hours away. I had to double check whether it had been a rotation or two since the last thing I scribbled on this pad.

They're promising me that I can see Ruya tomorrow. I might even be allowed to go by the house and pick up my own clothing instead of this suit. I meant it literally when I said they wanted me to suit up. They told me my studies are going to have to “accelerate.”

TD: 3:81:3729

Getting fairly late now I think, but the long and short of it is that I did manage to get hold of my clothing. The shirt, shoes and pants I arrived in are still holding together mostly, and I'm wearing them now. Feels a little bit like home but smells like Ruya's place. She is unchanged, though at this point, you can really tell that her usual hair color is not her natural, you can tell she has been fed nutrients through a tube and you can tell she has not been moving around. You can see the damage this has done to her.

It's damage that, as my captors remind me whenever possible, I caused.

They gave me a book to read. At least it's in a language I can understand. It's a handbook, all about procedures. I saw an acquaintance's basic training handbook after he came back from bootcamp once. It reminds me of a mixture of that and a rule book. I get this really bad feeling I'll be armed soon. Which is really bad when you're at the mercy of some faceless and nameless organization.

Guess it's not faceless after all, actually.

I've got a face.

Fuck that word, “faceless.”

And that monster. What do they have to do with him?

Final thoughts on the book: Most of the rules seem to be not to give out any information whatsoever. At all. Not even the time of day if you can swing it.

----------

TD: 3:84:3729

They have had me isolated in that fucking small room I was originally in for showing signs of mental illness. They tell me it's normal in those who have traveled. I think there is supposed to be a capital T in that. What they don't know and won't until they confiscate and read this in a few hours is that it might be a completely valid concern. Or maybe not. Two rotations ago, on the 82^nd I was being 'observed' while I 'studied.' (That's a kind way to say that they had a guard posted outside of my “Room” to make sure I didn't simply sleep the day away out of petty revenge for not being allowed to go to the hospital.)

I experienced something I haven't experienced in a long, long time and I forgot what it was like for it to be disturbing or novel.

I lost the better part of a day... but I gained something so much more rewarding.

I think it was a gift. That's insane, but it is.

Sean, my brother, he's alive. He's not happy, he's not well but he's alive and with his friends. I saw all three of them together. They look like hell, they're running from something, but they're together. I could fucking weep.

I saw home and I saw the only relative I love.

Fucking spooks can take this paper but never take that away from me.

TD: 3:86:3729

They took the page but gave it back. I'm sure they just think I'm going insane. Either way, I believe in what I saw.

TD: 3:89:3729

This quadrant is almost over and things are getting to be strange. I haven't had any more “episodes” as it were, but I have been given the option of familiarizing myself with the protocols given to me and following them or staying confined to my cell (they've let me out of the smaller room I was first kept in again.)

The vast majority of this, as I said, is simply to be quiet and let others talk. You never want to reveal any information and most importantly, under no circumstances are you to physically engage with a “Traveler.” Like me.

It explains why absolutely none of them have ever tried to physically assault me.

TD: 3:91:3729

The end of a quadrant.

The start of something else.

The usual morning came and went and I kept my head down and studied. I didn't think I had a chance in hell of getting to see Ruya today. I was right, but it still wasn't a usual day. Someone showed up about an hour after I woke up and only gave orders but no information. The concept of pure surrender is to hurry to along to shower, shave, put on makeup that “softens the lines of your face,” dress in a suit you've never seen before and get blindfolded, put into a van and injected.

(All of this without a struggle, because what would the point be?)

I was not knocked out but I was high as a kite. Apparently when someone is laughing or making jokes, not even the spooks' driver can remain a stone wall of secrecy. Not that they got most of it. I know that at one point I started screaming. “DON'T USE THE FLASHY THING ON ME, K,” directly into the face of one of the men who first visited Ruya's place. They were unamused.

Men-In-Black, man.

I made my first mistake while I was drugged up and in the back of that van, though.

It wasn't all fun and games for me, after a while I just got irrationally angry and I think in the end I asked them if they knew about the “Tall Faceless Fuck.” They didn't say anything but that of course means that they didn't say they did not. They did however give me another shot and I think that put an end to screaming or laughing or joking. We traveled for what may have been hours or a day or maybe a few minutes. That sedative was the strongest thing that has ever been in my system, even more than whatever they gave me the first time around. Why did they give me anything I wonder?

When we stopped it was the middle of the day in a busy city. The biggest on this world I've ever been to, which constitutes the biggest of three I've seen. I've noticed something that makes me curious about this world, this culture. I've never seen a building more than three stories high. If they need more space than that it is typically underground. Which, by the way, may be an explanation for why I never see windows when the spooks keep me wherever it is they keep me. I was pretty out of it on the way to the van, so I really cannot recall. As for on the way back? Well, they had to sedate me again because I think I lost it a little bit.

We sat there in dead silence for a while , like they were waiting for me to come around. At one point, the man to my left (one of the two who visited me at Ruya's home) reached over and physically slapped me. Considering I was restrained the only thing I could do was wince, but it did its job. The adrenaline made me a little more aware. Then he reached out and forcefully turned my head toward the window and held it there before speaking his only words the entirety of the trip.

“Blue jacket, red trainers.” (Sneakers.)

I looked for someone in a blue jacket and red trainers and I saw him and recognized him.

Now I know what they meant by “don't you want to meet yourself?”

The man in the red shoes and blue jacket, sipping what passes for coffee around here, was me. His hair was dark black, his skin complexion was closer to Ruya's than mine, but in every other way I might have been watching a video of myself. I was mostly in control of my self, ready to mark it down to drugs in my system making me suggestible, until I saw a boy who looked like Sean, my brother come to meet him.

Suffice it to say when I started to bang my head against the window and yell, they quickly gave me another shot and I wasn't awake until I was hanging half in and half out of my “room” with someone ordering me to walk on my own.

An interruption

This morning I was... interrupted.

I am safe now.

The promised information coming. There's a lot here. I may need to post it in parts just so you can see some instead of waiting for me to finish transcribing it, which... I don't know if I'll have time.

Can't talk about where I am, but this country does not speak my language.

A quadrant later..

I've been writing all this time, to tell you all about what has been happening but it's all been on paper.

It is late in the evening of 4:60:3729.

I have experienced, seen and learned many things. Not all of them are provable facts but those seem to be acceptable. A lot of questions have been answered for me and a lot more created for me. More than that, I've learned things that I need to tell Ruya.

If she would just wake up.

It has been the better part of a full quadrant, the cycle coming to a close. Here, the weather is getting cool, nothing like I expect it is back home, but still cool.

I considered killing myself last night but I am scared and it will not wake up Ruya and it will not bring back the dead. Tonight, I sit in this motel room, still wearing the suit. I don't know if I'm going to be arrested or left alone, but I will do my best to begin transcribing this hardcopy for you.

Update 3:76:3729

They did it simply at first, honestly.

I would step out of the house and they would be waiting.

It's not that they intimidated me that's not why I did it at all. It's sort of important to me as a person that anyone reading this believes that. I eventually had no choice is all. I kept going for about 25 days after the last post I made. I think they knew they didn't have to intimidate me, they just had to wait for me to run out of food or get tired of not knowing. I still went to the hospital daily and they tailed me daily. I have no vehicle or anything so the fact that they were trailing a person walking on foot was blatantly obvious to the world around me.

Once I made it into town people would see the big dark vehicle following along behind me and stare. Keep in mind that by that point I'd already walked what the Kayani language calls a Cret. It's about equivalent to five or six miles. That's how far out of town Ruyani lived. Fuck. She's been gone so long even I've started to call her Ruyani. Well, anyway, Ruya is still comatose. It's all more or less the same. Turns out she dyed her hair. I suppose back home it's not too surprising but her hair was the same color as everyone else's here, jet black. Apparently in her case that wasn't natural. She's a blonde. I wouldn't feel comfortable fixing it for her even if I could afford to buy hair dye.

She and I were never lovers or anything of the sort and it would feel too damn personal. I do make sure she has her things around her... or at least I used to. I've literally been in confinement since my last visit to her and just got out a few hours ago. See, we did this dance, these suits and I. A man I once knew named Quinn would have called them spooks. They're definitely spooks. Anyway, we did this dance, day in and day out. They followed me from the house, into town and eventually to the hospital. They parked out front and waited for me to leave. If I did not leave, a call would be placed anonymously when visiting hours were over and a nurse would come to chase me off.

It was on my third day without eating anything that the instinct to survive really started to kick in. Of course that, as far as I was concerned, meant going to spooks. I didn't like that idea. So my plan was, if I could make myself get out of the bed I would skip the hospital. I would not be the first beggar or the last out on those streets, the way I figured it. Unfortunately that was the day that I couldn't make it to the hospital. At least not on foot. I simply collapsed. I'm not even sure how far I got.

I woke up in the hospital and no one was asking questions about who I was or anything of the sort. They dodged any direct interaction. I ate, I hydrated, I was wheeled into Ruya's room by a nurse and I sat there all day beside her with my stomach churning and my pride wounded. There was only one reason I was at the hospital and not lying in a ditch somewhere along the roadside, after all. They brought me two more meals and when I finished the final I spent the next two hours checking that all of Ruyani's possessions were still there, none stolen. The man who left the video on this blog came in and for the first time since this all started talked straight with me.

He told me that having a choice was an illusion and that he was as tired as I was hungry.

I spent the next two weeks in a room the size of Ruya's hospital bed with paper gowns to wear and people poking and prodding me. There were any number of tests and scans that I can't really identify or describe, even if I was allowed. Most of it was psychological testing. I didn't know why I was going through any of it, I only knew I had to. I am wrong, in this world and I can walk and talk but I might as well be an infant. I know what they want now, I just don't know why.

They've promised to let me see Ruyani daily when I can but told me it might not be every day because it all depends on one thing.

I have to suit up.

I don't want to. I don't actually want answers.

I just want to see Ruya again.

I think this is my fault.