Athena sighed as she sat down on her bed. Her search for further information at the library had turned up almost as little information as was available online. For something that had been a bit of a scandal in its day, there was surprisingly little actually written about it. The most she'd come away with were some old newspaper articles, which mostly told her what she'd already learned, and a handful of excerpts from police questioning transcripts following the death or disappearance of the company's three lead figures. All she'd gotten from this was the name of one of the higher-ranking developers.
On the other hand, that hadn't exactly been nothing. Following up on that, she'd discovered that he was better known as a leading developer at a one-time big-name player in supercomputing, and had worked at Parsons Entertainment while on sabbatical from that position. And interestingly enough, while Parsons Entertainment had been located in southern California, his primary employer had been headquartered only a couple hours away, on the outskirts of the Twin Cities. Of course, they were long since defunct, but it seemed within the realm of possibility that he might have retired hereabouts.
But that could wait. It was late, and she had school tomorrow. She'd try to find out more in the morning.
Darrin sighed as he finished sweeping up in the arcade. Mr. Cooper had already gone home, leaving him to handle the evening shift and closing - which mostly involved sweeping up candy wrappers and putting the occasional misplaced personal item in the lost-and-found basket behind the counter. He supposed that it wasn't much of a job, to most people, but it was low-pressure, at least. Besides, there would be time for "real" jobs once he finished college; for now, it was kinda nice getting to work in a more fun environment. It took him back to his own childhood.
He pulled down the shutter over the front entrance and set the latch on the outside door, turned out the main lights, and went around back to the switch panel that the arcade games were hooked into, switching off one bank, then the next. He took a quick look out on the floor. Everything looked good...no, wait, there was one machine that was still powered on.
He walked over towards it. Oh, right, this was that old prototype Mr. Cooper had just rolled out today. He had the feeling there'd been a surprising amount of interest in it, but oddly enough he couldn't recall seeing anybody actually playing it. Well, it was mostly a curio for the Mr. Cooper's gratification, so that wasn't too important, he supposed. And now that he looked, it did actually show several players listed...which was odd. Did it let them just leave sessions running somehow? Well, there was no helping that; he was supposed to shut all the machines down. This one just wasn't connected to the main panel, that was all.
It was plugged into one of the wall sockets through a rather beefy surge protector, but that had a nice simple power switch tucked away on the end that was furthest from clumsy feet in the aisles. Darrin reached down for the power switch, then jerked his hand back with a start. He thought he'd felt something, some kind of static charge, like what you felt in the vicinity of high-powered electrical equipment. He regarded the power strip warily, but everything looked normal enough. Besides, it was just an arcade game, not some kind of big three-phase appliance or anything. It must've just been a breeze from the HVAC or something.
Hesitantly, he reached down towards it again. Then, deciding that it was silly to waste any more time on this, he darted his finger in toward the switch. And before he ever reached it, the world disappeared in a flash.
The place was oddly familiar, yet alien. She drifted through what seemed like endless hallways decked out in dingy painted brick and drop ceilings, watching the faded patterns in the carpet go by as she moved past closed doors with those tall, thin wire-grid security windows. Here and there she would come to passages blocked off with those folding accordion walls, leaving her to turn down another corridor in one direction or the other. She was certain she must have turned in on her own path at least once, but she never came across anything that looked immediately familiar.
The place was familiar, though. It was the spitting image of a place her parents had used to take her when she was little. A church basement, or a community center...? She couldn't remember. But she vividly recalled the feeling of being here. They would drop her off in the evening for Girl Scouts, and she would have to make her way through these empty halls, under these dim, yellow fluorescent lights with the slight flicker, wondering all the time what was in those darkened rooms behind those narrow windows, trying to remember which way to go, until she finally made the turn and arrived at the room where the group was meeting.
Athena drifted through the endless halls. The fact was that she hadn't been involved in Girl Scouts since the third grade. But for whatever reason it never occurred to her to turn around and leave. This didn't seem like the kind of place where you could just do that. She turned a corner and came upon the only one of the doors that had a light showing through the window, just like it had used to be. Only when she opened the door and went inside, it wasn't Mrs. Licklider and the troop there.
It wasn't really the same room, either. In one sense it might as well have been; everything in the broad strokes was exactly correct, from the drop ceilings to the cheap wood veneer on the folding tables to the unplugged coffee maker sitting on the counter between the meeting room or fellowship hall or whatever it was and the kitchen beyond. But everything else...
The near end of the room was arranged around one of the folding tables, with a number of places set for a meal. Nobody was currently seated at any of them, but three people were standing expectantly nearby. One was a slightly lumpy-faced man with thick curly hair, wearing an old-timey doctor's coat and stethoscope. Another was a woman in possibly her late fifties, wearing a slightly rumpled pantsuit and wire-rimmed spectacles; the most normal of the three, except for the part where she seemed to have a small galaxy hovering above her head. The last was an august-looking older gentleman with a strong, wintry face and neatly-arranged white hair, who was wearing cartoon wizard's robes with a sharp but thoroughly incongruous red tie.
At the other end of the room the floor was cleared, and a piano was against the wall by the kitchen door. She could see a couple other figures moving around in back. There was an old-style floppy disk - the actually floppy kind, which she just vaguely remembered from her grandfather's old PC, years ago - framed and hung on the wall; the only other decoration down that way was a piece of classical statuary off in the far corner. Its head had two faces looking in opposing directions; she thought she knew it from somewhere. Music drifted in softly from somewhere distant.
The wizard turned to face her, a smile slowly creeping across his face as he rubbed his hands together. "Aow do you like the chotel?" he asked. Something about his voice was wrong, even aside from the oddity of his pronunciation; it sounded like he was speaking from an entirely different acoustic environment. Athena stared at him, not sure how to respond.
He nodded towards the other two. "She is the charpenter. Hhe is the cook." If they heard him, they didn't respond.
"We hexpected you soonar." He gestured toward a chair. Not sure what else to do, Athena sat. He smiled. "Hwaiter!"
Athena became aware of another figure by the table, but she hadn't noticed anybody approach. Moreover, she actually recognized this one; it was her friend Zoe's older brother Jon. For some reason he was dressed like a bellhop and had a bird of some kind sitting on his head. Something seemed off about his build, too, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. He looked to the wizard.
"Pelease, hher order," the wizard said. Without even consulting her, Jon went over to the doctor, or the cook, or whatever he was, who thrust a hand into his coat and pulled out a horse's foreleg, which Jon proceeded to place on her plate. Athena stared down at it. It was less gruesome than she would have thought; while the end that should have been connected to the horse was bare muscle and bone and tendon, there was no blood and it didn't seem to have been actually torn or cut or anything. She turned back to the others, who watched her expectantly. Then she noticed that the leg appeared to still be alive; the muscles were gently flexing and relaxing and one of the major veins that she could see under the skin was softly pulsing.
"Hwone day we hwill have many guests," the wizard said, as if there was nothing at all out of the ordinary about this. "Hwen they bringg their friends, we hwill have many many guests."
Athena frowned. She turned to Jon. "What's going on here?" she asked. He stared fixedly back at her. "Dhinner."
Somehow having a familiar face in this tableau and still not being able to get a sensible response was much more unnerving than the nonsense of the situation itself. It made her feel like she was talking to a pod person. She eyed him warily. He certainly looked like Jon. "Are you Jon Madison?" she asked.
He blinked and stared blankly at her, pausing a long moment as if he was contemplating the question. "I chould be," he said after an oddly long pause. "Eventuallee."
There was an awkward silence as Athena tried to figure out what to make of all this. "Hhe has a neww secret, is hhe 'him?'" the wizard said, looking at her expectantly. "Do you...'eat?'"
Athena stared at him, then down at the leg, then back at him. Something fluttered past the edges of her vision. She gingerly pushed the plate away. He frowned slightly. "Hwe will put it inabochs fouryu."
She'd had enough of this. She stood up and turned to leave. At that moment, there was a sudden flicker and the lights went out. The music, wherever it was coming from, continued unabated. She turned back to the table; despite the darkness, the three central figures were clearly visible, although she couldn't see "Jon." The wizard clapped twice and the lights returned. "Ffire durill," he said, his smile thinning out a little. Athena turned to go again and flung the door open.
Instead of the endless hallway, there was only empty space.
Athena awoke with a start. She couldn't remember what she'd been dreaming about, but it had her in a cold sweat. Turning onto her side, she tried to catch her breath and calm down and get back to sleep.
