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In a room dimly lit by the glow of a computer monitor, something was being set into motion.
The room was large, but the contents were confined to an old table that sat nearly in the exact center of the room. The monitor itself took up a good part of the table, but several other bits of equipment still managed to fit. There was a standard English keyboard, between a bigger one covered in kanji and a computer mouse. A small silver keypad with blank keys was close to tipping off the edge of the table.
Some wires led from the monitor into the floor. A distant humming that came up through the tiles suggested that the rest of the computer—the part that did the computing, so to speak—was stored in the room below. In fact, it took up the whole level below. It was a very complex computer.
A window at the top-right corner of the screen was scrolling through words and phrases, so quickly that, if anyone had been in the room, they wouldn’t have been able to read a single one. It suddenly stopped with two words highlighted. The computer chirped, and a box popped up.
Match Found.
It went unnoticed, and after a few minutes, the screen flickered and turned black.
It was some time before the door opened, framing two men.
Usually a "pair" is thought of as two seperate people who are either eerily similar or complete opposites. These two men fit into neither category. They were just two individuals who happened to be working together. They were remarkably unremarkable.
The first man began checking the computer. The other stood in the doorway, looking down the hall.
"Don't like this level," he said. "I'll be glad when they put me back on fifth." He chewed on a nail thoughtfully. "You'll go to third, a'course. You're new an' all, but everyone thinks you should be able to handle—"
"Mick?"
"Yeah?"
"What's all this mean?"
Mick sighed, and walked over to look at the screen. "I told you back in training that the—that." He blinked. "That. That the—"
The other man looked concerned.
"Mick? What's the matter?"
Mick blinked again, then once more, and then the writing on the screen finally got through to him.
"Holy hell! I don't believe—we found 'em!"
"Found who? What—where are you going? Mick!" The door slammed shut behind the man as he followed Mick down the hall. The keypad fell off the table and hit the tiles with a clang.
The dust had just settled when the door opened again, and a group of people entered. They seemed to be built on a larger scale than most normal humans. They had muscles like watermelons, or at least muscles that could easily allow them to rip one in half.
They spread out along the walls and stood at attention, showing an incredible mastery of the art of staring intensely at nothing. A woman walked in after them, taking long strides to the table in the middle of the room. Her thin lips moved quickly as she murmured to herself.
"Probably nothing, just check it and then get back to work, delegate the punishment for the false alarm to one of the guards..."
She trailed off as she caught sight of the computer. After a moment, she reached for the mouse, and began to scroll down the page. She hardly noticed when someone entered the room, walked to the table, and wordlessly looked over her shoulder.
"Ah, wonderful. After ten years, we can finally put this nasty business to rest. I take it there's a location?"
She told him.
He smiled, making the others look vaguely uneasy.
"We have a base within an hour or two of there, don't we? I suggest we work on building one closer. Nothing fancy. There's some work to be done..."
The door was locked, and the lights were off. A streetlamp outside shone in between the blinds, making the things in the room easily visible, although only in shades of grey.
Olive didn't need the light; she could see well in the dark. She liked having shadows around, though. They sparked the imagination. Her whole life, she had loved the creeping feeling they gave, and the fact that there was no way to really be sure that nothing was there until the lights were turned on and the darkness vanished. The instant the lights went back off, though, the shadows would return, mysterious as ever.
They reminded her that there very well could be things out there that she couldn't understand, and not in the usual math class sense. When she watched the shadows, there could be things watching her. They could be so close—they could be in her bedroom.
Of course, she had grown up since then, and knew that there obviously hadn't been strange, unknown beings lurking in her room. Those kinds of thoughts had come from a mix of paranoia and boredom.
They were outside. They didn't come into her house until much later.
She glanced at the clock, and then took the lid off the box. When her fingers brushed against the stone inside, she vanished.
