“Hey, wait,” Libby said, stepping forward and raising one hand, but there was no response from the four androids except for all of them raising their right arms, hands lifted in a gesture of farewell, palms toward the crowd in Callahan’s. And then, from their edges inwards, the four glowing figures developed a coruscating sparkle which dissolved their shapes until each was just a point of light that lingered for a moment and then winked out.
“I’ll be
damned
,” Xander said explosively. “They
beamed up
.”
Libby, dropping Dave’s arm, glanced down at her wrist, and sighed.
“Well, it’s ten minutes past midnight,” she said. “I guess if we all walked out of the front door right now we’d be right back where we started out. I guess it’s over. Dammit, Monday
always
comes.”
EPILOGUE: MONDAY ALWAYS COMES
“The final newsletter is a work of art, Libby,” Dave said, grinning, as he stuck his head around the door into the Con Ops room and caught Libby’s eye as she blearily looked up from the computer screen.
“Thanks,” she said with a yawn. “Worked on it all night. I actually literally haven’t been to bed yet. Too much to do, too little time., But I have to confess, it’s easier when someone actually does half your work for you. And you can always rely on fen.”
“You mean the elevator signage?” Dave said. “Yeah, that was inspired.”
Libby patted a pile of paper on her left. “I’m keeping the originals,” she said. “
Too
good.”
Dave stepped fully into the room and picked up the sheaf. “You stole them off the elevators?”
“I left replacements,” Libby said. “Don’t worry, safety first. But those… those are
mine
.”
The signs in question had been the ones that Luke had raced to place on the crippled elevator bank. Initially they had simply stated OUT OF ORDER in large black type with a line below, in smaller letters, saying PLEASE USE STAIRS. But passing con–goers had annotated each individual sign, in different pens and different handwriting. Libby, wearing a wide grin of her own, glanced up at Dave as he stood there with the pilfered signage in his hands, and said,
“Start from the bottom and read up from there.”
Dave was already doing that, laughing out loud as he did so. The sign from the Lobby level had, in an act of inspiration, been left absolutely untouched – a virgin control panel, showing what the origin of the game had been. But on Floor 1 the competition began, with handwritten commentary underneath each original warning statement.
OUT OF ORDER
PLEASE USE STAIRS
We mean it!
Uh–oh…
Floor 2 upped the ante.
OUT OF ORDER
PLEASE USE STAIRS
We_ really_ mean it
Yeah, they actually locked it
You tried to open it?
He touches wet paint cuz they might be lying
With wet paint you don't fall 20 stories
….or 200,000 miles
238,857
that depends, how fast are we approaching?
Dave looked up.
“I’d pay money to know who wrote that wet paint comment,” he said.
Libby traded grins again. “Gets better.”
Floor 3 signage was a little more meta.
OUT OF ORDER
PLEASE USE STAIRS
This is not the elevator you were looking for.
Obi–wan Kenobi… is that you?
(handwave) There is no Obi–wan Kenobi…
I find your lack of faith disturbing. – D.Vader
Floor 4 went back to banter.
OUT OF ORDER
PLEASE USE STAIRS
Fitness 4 Fen
Fitness forfend
Fitness Forever!
Fitness final, 20th floor, required. Fail = not permitted to leave premises
“There
is
no 20th floor,” Dave said.
“Someone thinks there might be heaven, though,” Libby said, tapping the next sheet.
Floor 5 did indeed seem to put forward that hypothesis.
OUT OF ORDER
PLEASE USE STAIRS
Stairway to Heaven
Go looking for stardust!
MOONdust, twit
Green cheese
…and ham…
Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Today the Moon, tomorrow the Klingon Empire…
The final floor of Tower 1 had a number of entries that had been scored through by each successive contributor, until the final triumphant line.
OUT OF ORDER
PLEASE USE STAIRS
Out of whack
Danger
LETHAL danger
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Inconceivable!
Dave was laughing out loud again as he put the papers down. “Can I keep one?”
“No way,” Libby said. “They’re a set. And they’re mine.”
“How’s everything else going?”
“I don’t know. It’s a Monday. The sun rose like it always does, just like nothing strange had happened at all. I know, I saw it, I was awake and working at sunrise, and somehow it seemed so… miraculous. Just to see a sun rise in the morning. There’s a feeling I don’t leave a convention with every day.” She paused, looking down at the hands folded in her lap, and when she lifted her eyes again they were inexplicably full of tears. “I went out, for a walk, just after it was light,” she said. “There, in the parking lot. No further. Went to the edge of the bluff and stared at the ocean. And I – you know, I hate to use that word again, it feels like I’m wearing it out – but there’s nothing else to explain – it was simply a miracle, and that’s final. The fact that I was walking, on solid ground, here, on my own world. The light on the water. Everything.
Everything
. I wasn’t sure whether I’d just woken up from a dream, or had just entered one, but it almost felt like I myself was the dream, you know what I mean? That I was the only thing that could not possibly be real, because I couldn’t exist in both the world as it was around me and the world that I’d been in all weekend – they didn’t seem like they could
both
contain the reality of myself…”
“I know,” Dave said. “I went for that walk too. I came down from Callahan’s last night, just after the big landing, and I actually went outside, just to… just to… I don’t know. Make sure, I guess. And all of a sudden the very idea of a Moon hanging in that heaven seemed to be so impossible that I laughed out loud, out there in the parking lot, all by myself, like a loon… You didn’t put any of
that
in the newsletter, did you?”
“It would have seemed like I was gushing, or being pretentious, or something,” Libby said. “Somehow it was just so… private. Like going into a temple to say a prayer, and nobody else would understand if you tried to explain to which god you were praying, or for what. On the whole… well, but the elevator signs were a godsend. I don’t think they could have coped with the profound, not in the newsletter, not when everyone probably had their own experience of it, and nothing you and I could say would match it.”
“I know what I was praying for,” Dave said with a small dry laugh. “At least while it was all going on – just to make sure that everything went… I mean… I spent most of the last three days braced for some horrendous disaster and we went around the Moon and back and the worst that happened was a stuck elevator and a bunch of psyched–out civilians and a couple of con people… speaking of whom… has the doc been in touch…?”
“Far as I know, he requested an ambulance or two for this morning,” Libby said. “One’s been and gone already, roughly around the time the sun came up. I watched on the cameras, the woman they took out was in a wheelchair, awake, but looking around in a confused sort of way as though she wasn’t quite sure where she was or how she’d got there. But she seemed okay, otherwise, and she should be fine with about ten years of therapy, I guess.”
“Or two, you said – what’s the matter with the other ambulance patient?”
“I either missed it coming and going or it hasn’t been yet,” Libby said. “No idea. Xander’s down there, though, look. He would probably know.”
“I suppose I’d better go down. I’m supposed to be hotel liaison after all. I should be on hand in case anyone decides they wish to register a complaint.”
Gaining the lobby, Dave found Xander in conversation with Luke the hapless hotel manager, who was looking pale and exhausted but impeccably groomed, his grey waistcoat somehow miraculously clean and unwrinkled and his brass nametag gleaming.
“Hey, Luke,” Dave said, lifting a hand in greeting. “What, your replacement isn’t here yet?”
“I checked in with the head office, this morning,” Luke said. “An entirely new shift of staff is on the way. I just have to wait until they get here to hand over the report.”
“You have to write a report? On this weekend? You poor bastard,” Dave said. “What are you going to tell the corporate office?”
“As little as I can, actually,” Luke said, offering up a wan smile. “But it’s going to be a fine line between telling them something that sounds sane and is an absolute lie, and something that is at least marginally true but doesn’t make me sound like I spent my first stint as Night Manager up in Callahan’s stuck into the sauce. Either way, I hope I still do have a job when the next shift change happens.”
“I’m really sorry,” Dave said, and meant it sincerely. “We certainly had no idea any of this would happen.”
“Of course not,” Luke said. And then appeared to stiffen his back and brace himself against an assault as he muttered, “Oh, good, here comes another one…”
The receptionist had just pointed him out to a woman with her dark hair scraped up into a pony tail, and the woman was bearing down on the group by the door dragging a small wheeled suitcase behind her and wearing a thunderous expression.
“You the manager?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Luke murmured soothingly.
“Well, I just wanted to let you know that I am
not happy
. I don’t know what kind of service you think you are providing, but I wanted to watch the game on Saturday afternoon and could I get anything on my TV? Nothing at all except your crappy pay–per–view movies. I am simply not going to be blackmailed into that! I will be writing a strong letter of complaint to the management!”
“I’m very sorry, Ma’am. We had technical difficulties…”
“That’s not my problem! I am
so
not happy! And all these absolutely weird people you have crawling around the corridors – really, one would appreciate a heads–up in the future so that one can make plans that don’t include a Trekkie invasion!”
She stuck her nose in the air, very nearly literally, and flounced out of the door without waiting for a response.
“Trekkies,” Dave growled softly. “She probably wouldn’t recognize a Star Trek uniform if it bit her. She probably thinks that Rory Grissom is a Trekkie.”
“Speaking of,” Xander said, “I still haven’t managed to locate the man. Now that the phones are functioning again I even tried phoning him but it goes straight to voicemail. I suspect he left it lying around somewhere and the battery is sending a weak SOS by now, but still. I kind of feel awful. Our Guest of Honor was basically abandoned to…”
“To the convention of his dreams, most likely, from your account of what his room looked like when you didn’t find him there,” Dave said. “Speaking of captains, though, isn’t that our guy from before – when the replicators first came online? The airline pilot?”
“I think you’re right,” Xander said.
The airline pilot in question, in shirtsleeves with a jacket over one arm and dragging a small overnight case, approached them with a smile.
“Glad I caught you guys,” he said. “Once again, thanks. It’s been… something.”
“Don’t you have to write a report on this? I mean, were you supposed to report to work anywhere…?”
“Yes,” the pilot said, “but my flight is this morning and I’ll be right on time. No report needed. And you can be sure that I won’t elaborate too much on what – well – let me put it this way. Those pilots who report having seen UFOs out there … tend to have short careers. And this weekend – if I reported
this
… Well, I won’t. There isn’t a soul in the world who really needs to know the details. Anyway, I’m on my way to the airport now, with the rest of my crew.”
“Uh, were they… was everybody else… okay?” Dave asked carefully.
The pilot laughed. “I talked everyone round,” he said. “All is well. But I’ll not be forgetting these last few days in a hurry. I actually went out there earlier, out into the garden, and just stood looking at the sky – I fly large metal objects for a living, and I think nothing of it, it’s an everyday thing – but now, all of a sudden, it seems to me like I’ve never really
done
it before. Not truly. Not being aware of what I was actually doing, or of how improbable it was… or of how trivial it all seems, now, after a
real
miracle just happened.”
“Are you going to be okay? Flying?” Dave asked carefully.
“Oh, yes,” the pilot said. “Once I’m in the cockpit of the plane it’s going to be the familiar routines that kick in. I’ll be fine. But still and all… there was… there was the Moon.” He lifted his hands in a gesture that was pure helpless wonder, unable to articulate further the things that he was thinking. “Are your… friends… still around?” he inquired at length, glancing around him and lowering his voice as if he were asking for classified information from an intelligence operative.
“Disappeared around midnight last night,” Dave said.
“Well, if you ever run into them again, be sure to give them my regards,” the pilot said. “Thanks again, and good luck!”
“One down on the good side of the ledger,” Dave muttered as the pilot walked away.
“But here comes trouble again,” Xander said in a low voice.
A corpulent man in a crumpled business suit, his hair in a severe crew–cut, stalked purposefully toward poor Luke. He was a head taller and twice as broad as Luke, and the hands that emerged from the sleeves of his suit jacket looked like small shovels; Xander, himself of a wiry build and looking like a child next to the approaching brute, felt an irrational urge to step out in front of Luke to protect him.