The Hunting of the Dark (1)

-Ishmael.

The Genera claims to have no interest in the pursuit of legacy. The Genera claims to be an organization of scientists. It is true that papers have been published, a hypertext of citable research made public to allow open vetting of their work. It is true that government grants have been sanctioned, oversight and regulation mandated alongside, to direct their efforts. All the same, Mr. STAB doesn't like the Genera, and what the Genera thinks of Mr. STAB is known only to themselves.

I find their emphasis on public oversight to be misdirection. Their code is silence. They allow for the publication of the results of their research, but they do not disclose the direction their insights are heading towards. They make no claim of patterns, only raw data, but they decide which raw data to publish. We do not know what they tell the government.

When they announced, in 2009, that they would televise first contact with intelligent life, I did not need Mr. STAB's memos to tell me to watch and assess.

The footage was pristine and HD. A stoic-faced man in a white lab coat, khaki pants, green sweater, with lightly unshaven face and clipboard by his side, monotonously narrated to the camera the precise procedures that led to this moment. His name tag read "JADE." He did not cough, stutter, or inflect once in the 30-minute broadcast.

As the story goes, Genera sensors became aware of an anomaly in Earth's orbit hitherto undetectable by science, an excitation of exotic subatomic particles no one had detected  before the Genera published their discovery of the "fossil particle." These fossil particles were doing something in space, and careful analysis revealed an encoded message: A Rosetta Stone (the Wikipedia terms of service in English and an unknown language), paired with a question in that language.

"CAN WE MEET?"

The Genera claims they consulted the correct channels. The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space of the United Nations declined to comment on whether they were consulted, as did the International Academy of Astronautics. The Genera claims, with the appropriate blessing, that they responded to this message, which led to more messages, which ultimately led here, to this broadcast, this bare white room with this monotonous man narrating these very events, explaining to the camera that this is a single entity who has agreed to enter the room, that the entity's natural presence affects recording devices, that the entity has shared science with the Genera that would allow it to develop a type of camera that could capture its appearance. "It is advised that viewers with nervous disorders turn off their television sets. The entity has agreed to manipulate its form to be palatable to humanity, but it is likely still to cause upset."

And then a tall pale man in a business suit walked into frame. The camera had to zoom out to get its head in frame, revealing that the entity had no face. The fidelity of HD was sufficient enough to call into question whether it was wearing a business suit or had made its skin look like one.

It did not speak. It did not shift stances. It stood perfectly still, arms at its sides, and faced directly into the camera.

I do not remember the rest of the broadcast. Bellman says nothing of note happened.

This broadcast was enough to gain the Genera worldwide and unanimous respect. And ever since that day, Mr. STAB's orders have urged extreme caution around the Genera. We are told to be extremely dubious of any of their claims.

I am not cowardly enough to hide that I am afraid of them.

"forks and hope"

Ishmael's shoes made a sharp crack as he stepped on old broken bottles on his way into the kitchen. He did not flinch. We've seen far worse than some eccentric artist's broken home.

Magreat's daughter, a dark-haired meek young woman who looked like she hadn't left the house in years, led us past the kitchen, past the discarded bottles that she claimed were her father's and that she daren't touch out of grief, down the stairs and into her father's studio.

Her name was Sorcha. Judging by the shakes inhabiting her wandering hands, at least a portion of the bottles were hers.

She hit the light switch and waved quickly at the dusty computer and stacks of obscure books before returning to the comfort of her crossed arms.

"It's all here. The police looked over it, back when it..." She trailed off. I can only assume she was going to say "started."

"But they couldn't find anything," Ishmael presumed, approaching the computer.

"No, nothing. Just his usual obsessions."

Ishmael touched the mouse. When nothing happened, he glanced at me. "Bellman, can you make this box work?"

Sorcha commented about computer illiteracy, in an awkward attempt at conversation, as I took the swivel chair and tapped the keyboard to wake the system from its long sleep. We were greeted by an open internet browser window displaying reviews of the missing artist's latest piece. The reviews were not positive.

No one said anything, just stared at the screen. I examined the desktop (background: Sorcha, smiling, a diploma in hand), navigated through the folders (OS: Debian 8; file manager: Dolphin), sorted the contents of each folder by Date, and scanned the most recent files.

Taking his cue to leave me to it, Ishmael pulled out his notebook and asked Sorcha some questions.

"You last saw him in December?"

"Yes. December 18th. I saw him leave the house."

"When did you become concerned? Did you know him to disappear from time to time?"

"Yeah, he has friends he sometimes sees... and when he's not working on a project, he likes to stay at hotels."

"Hotels?"

"He likes hotels. He said he found them calming. He would spontaneously book a night or two at a hotel and spend the night there. ...growing up, I thought that just a dad thing."

"So you didn't think anything of his disappearance for a few days."

"Yes. It wasn't until Monday that I started to think something was wrong..."

"Monday? The.. 21st?"

"I think so."

These were the easy questions. Ishmael started to test the waters.

"Did your father have any enemies? No? Any incidents in the last few years that raised your eyebrow? Even domestic, like, attempted break-ins, or mean notes left on your front door."

"Well.. this is just that kind of town. There's sometimes drunk people, they bang on our door late at night and then go away."

"Hmm." Ishmael writes some notes down. "Are you sure that's what that is? Could there be elements to his life you don't know about?"

"I..."

"I'm sorry for this line of questioning. We need to be thorough."

"You're certainly asking more than the police did."

"He's been missing for a long time, and we need to follow up on their investigation. This is just standard fare." A standard lie.

"I mean, yes, of course it's possible, my father has his own life. I don't even keep up with his art, beyond the big ones of course."

"The big ones?"

I couldn't help but answer this one. "The Blog Without a Face. Fear. The Graab."

Sorcha nodded. "Those big ones, yes. Those are the ones everyone knows."

Ishmael looked at his notes. "The Graab. That's that, uh, Viceking one?"

"That's right."

"I don't do much reading, myself, so I'm not as familiar with these as you two are."

"The Graab was his special project, his maze. He put his soul into it. And it was a controversial one, but nobody hated him for it. Mostly, people just didn't know what to think of it, or even how to read it."

I found something in my search. Without calling attention to it, I inserted a flash drive into the computer and began copying as much as I could.

Ishmael continued prodding in his intended direction. "People didn't know how to read it, huh? So he could have hidden something in there, something that might have pissed someone off who did know how to read it."

"It wasn't like that!"

"Probably not, no. As I said, I don't read much. Bellman here is the reader. Bellman, anything in this Graab that would help us?"

Why was he putting me on the spot? "Uh. Needle in a haystack, there."

Sorcha followed up, "Why would anyone want to hurt him for his blog maze? Why would anyone want to hurt him for a blog at all? Who cares that much about blogs?"

Ishmael waited for her to catch herself, then apologized. "Just covering the angles. I believe you. Bellman, how's it going?"

I let the computer continue copying files in the background as I pulled up a file tucked away in a hidden system folder. "It's nothing but notes, citations, rough drafts, and eBooks. There is this, which might not mean anything, but it's worth checking up on." I clicked on "nda.pdf" and directed Ishmael's attention to the signature.

As Ishmael leaned over my shoulder to examine the screen, I could hear Sorcha's anxious sigh somewhere behind me. Ishmael asked,

"Did he often work with the Topography Genera Center?"

How Am I Driving?

Call me Ishmael. 

What you need to know up front is I work for the people who are going to save the world. We are working at it right now, a decentralized organization with agents across the country. Our names don't matter-- identities are risks, so we go faceless through the fog. We are in the business of legacies.

Some people live their whole lives never making an impact on their surroundings, on their society, on anyone around them. Other people live entire lives in a year, never once turning off the fire in their eyes, illuminating the way for humanity to see its next move. Then there are the rare few who live on behalf of everyone they've ever met, every step carrying the load of the masses with them. It is not our lot to know which one we are. Still, someone has to. That someone is Mr. STAB.

I have not met Mr. STAB. I do not receive orders from Mr. STAB. I do not know anyone who has ever communicated with Mr. STAB. Instead, we deal with cut-outs from the agency that he supposedly founded. We are not his agency. We are a subsidiary branch of his agency. Mr. STAB's agency looks for legacy and assesses its risk, and then it distributes missives to contractors and branches according to priority. You do not need to know the details, as when we are done with Mr. STAB's newest job, his agency and all branches along with it will be dissolved, our legacies erased. At the end of every confidential missive we receive is the tag:

"Leave no footprints, tell no lies."

Today we travel in a black van, searching for a missing man. He left his house and daughter behind on December 8th, 2015, four months ago. No one at his usual haunts has seen him in that time. Local authorities brought us to a point of interest: A hidden room behind a corner store, a secret library. On a table, covered in discarded cigarettes and pencil shavings, is a plan. "Another of his useless mazes," to the police. We feigned agreement, thanked them for their assistance, and saw them on their way before taking careful study of the scrawlings.

The missing man is one Christopher Humphrey Magreat, the man who killed the Slender Man.

His plan, if completed, would replicate his success and empower anyone to be able to kill the Slender Man when it next returns.

 

What happened to Magreat?