In Progress Paradox, A Lovecraftian Story

[EmeraldCityBlues]

Ok, here's the scoop:
All this gray Seattle weather nonsense has got me thinking about one thing: Cthulhu! So, I've decided to revitalize an idea I've had for a while, but never really got around to: a Lovecraftian fiction story, set in the Pacific Northwest, about a man who comes to work for a company that- oh, look, I've said too much. For all intents and purposes, this story takes place within the Cthulhu mythos. But enough said, just READ THE GODDAMN- er... I mean, just please take the time out of your busy lives to read the first installment of my humble tale. Oh, and I realize that this first installment is pretty damn boring.:dead:
Don't worry, I'll pull the rug out from under you with the next installment!:sunglasses:

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Mostly, I remember the general look of the place. Driving past along the freeway, perhaps, one wouldn’t think much of it- a squat building, mostly brick and glass, three stories, tops. One would probably assume that this was an office building, and one would be correct, judging by the large metal plaque next to the front doors: “Paradox Software”. In smaller text: “Company headquarters”.
I was here for a job, plain and simple. After the big move to the Northwest, I got a call from a friend back in Salt Lake. He had been a co-worker of mine at my previous employer, Omni Ltd. He had recommended a place called Paradox Software, on the basis that they produced similar products to Omni: applications designed to streamline a desktop, making it easier to manage applications, media, whatever. He said he couldn’t tell me an exact location, only that the place was located somewhere within the stretches of freeway and small towns between Seattle and the Cascades to the east.
I had been able to locate the place with a bit of help from Google Maps, and, after receiving a phone number, spoke with a bright-voiced young woman about arranging an interview with the Manager, a man named John Whates.
I had located the building fairly easily, as it was visible from the freeway, and now I stood in front of the revolving glass front doors. I paused before I went in, adjusted my tie, and checked my watch, a little ritual I always perform when nervous. Ultimately, the interview went smoothly. Whates was a strange looking man, with a small, pinched forehead resting above two large, quivering eyes. He greeted me at the door, which was unexpected, and led me to the conference room, where he would be conducting the interview.
Something within me just didn’t like this man, his quick, nervous gait, or the seven shades of insincerity that were draped over every word he spoke. He seemed like a nice guy, but something was of about him. He was trying too hard, I thought, that was it. Each smile was forced, every nod of the head a strenuous motion. Nevertheless, I sat through the interview.
The first thing he wanted to know was what had led me to seek work here. I recounted the tale that I had told to innumerable friends and relatives over the phone: how, upon discovering that my wife was pregnant, she and I had both become anxious, deciding what we needed was a change. It had always been her dream to live in the Pacific Northwest… she convinced me to move to Seattle. Deep down, I really didn’t want to make the move, to leave behind my well-paying job, our friends, any of it- I kept this part of the story to myself. I explained how a friend had informed me of his company, and that had led me here. Having already read my resume, which I had sent in an email prior to the interview, he informed me that I was in luck- Paradox was in need of programmers such as myself. “What we are creating,” he muttered in a hushed tone, as if concerned about eavesdroppers, “is something rather ambitious. It is something… new to us.” I motioned for him to continue. “We wish to create an entirely new desktop operating system, something to compete with the likes of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. This is why your kind of expertise is perfect- we need programmers, and lots of them.” He motioned to the rows of sterile cubicles in the dimly lit main room through the conference room window. “The staff I have now? About half of them are going to be relocated to more obscure branches this month, in order to make room for a new developing team… a team made up of people like you”. In all honesty, I was flattered- and intrigued. But it was his last words that got me.
“So, Mr. Samuel Basen….”. He was using my full name now. “Will you come on board?”. There was no turning back for me now. I shook the hand of this strange man, who I now felt slightly less uneasy with.
“Yes”.
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Any criticism is welcome. As I said, this first chapter ain't exactly "Die Hard".
More soon!

 

[EmeraldCityBlues]

Installment 2.... things start to pick up! This one's significantly longer than the last. Just a heads-up, this chapter's rated PG-13 for brief language. I plan on doing about two more installments of approximately the same length as this one.:sweatdrop:


Those next weeks were the easiest I’d seen in a long time. Diana let me do things to her at night that I had not permitted to do since news of the baby arrived.
She was so paranoid, so worrisome, so sure that something horrible would befall our precious, our gem of life tucked away in a bundle of warm cotton amniotic
wools. Looking back, I wish I could have proved her wrong.
The third week. That was when things started to change.
I began to become disenchanted with the state of affairs at the workplace.
I had thought I would be right beside Mr. Whates and the “new team” he had assembled, planning out this “revolutionary new software” he seemed so passionate about.
This was not the case. I spent my days typing what seemed like an endless stream of code on a dim, outdated monitor, the blocky cream-white kind big enough to fit a small child into. Apparently, the rest of Whates’s new team and myself were in charge of laying the base foundation for the software, a menial task, while the planning and design were handled only by Whates and his “senior staff”, who dwelled in the building’s basement floor, an area that was off-limits to anyone who was not “of rank”. This was only one of many quirks I noticed. What was down in that basement floor, and how was it so important that we were permitted from entering? Why had none of us ever met any members of this “senior staff”, or even seen them? They arrived before us, and apparently did not leave until late at night.
Most noticeably, the entire building had the strangest atmosphere to it. Time seemed to stretch itself out in the duration of those long, bleary-eyed hours. Minutes and seconds became useless statistics. Each eight-hour sift was a grey eternity; I could almost feel my will draining away the more I sat in front of that accursed screen.

The main floor was a galaxy of sterile cubicles. The walls were grey, and the lights on the ceiling cast a glow that seemed to grow dimmer every day.
Perhaps most unnerving were the mannerisms of Whates himself. On occasion, he would call all 32 members of the “new team” into the expansive and desolate conference room. In those times he became a jabbering mannequin, possessed by some maniacal energy, ranting excitedly about how the new operating system would revolutionize the market. He never gave us any specific specs or details. In reality, none of us really knew what we were creating. He only said that it would be “new, new entirely”. One point he made sure to cover in every meeting was how he wanted this new OS to be “on every CPU in every household in the Northwest” within 5 years. There was definitely something off in his nervous, excited voice, something menacing.

Sometimes I spoke with the man in the cubicle across from me, when I was sure I wouldn’t be noticed by Whates or his receptionist, who surveyed the main floor with hawk eyes. He didn’t give me his first name; I knew him only as by his last name, Pryce. We talked about Whates and his eccentricities, about the mind-numbing autumn weather, and about our thoughts on the new operating system, which had been given the working title of “Mariana”. Pryce was a level-headed man, far more than I, and for that I respected him. He sometimes spoke of a plan to park his care in a vacant lot up the highway, then return to the building and wait until 11:30, which was when the senior staff supposedly left.

After the first month, Diana pointed something out to me, holding up a small make-up mirror- I was beginning to look worse. I suppose “drained” would be a good way to describe it. Much to my discomfort, I realized I looked a bit like Whates himself- dull fish-eyed gaze, graying skin, dark bags under the eyes. I chalked it up to stress. Once again, my nights with Diana became less and less passionate.

On Monday, the levee began to break. It started with a memo from Heidi, the receptionist. “See the Boss at lunch. His office”. Short and sweet. Excellent.
This is it, I thought. The shakedown. Whates mentions my bad work ethic; he gives me a warning, or worse. I really didn’t know what “worse” was.
I watched as the minutes and hours on the monitor’s clock steadily whittled down, backed by a soundtrack of clacking keys. I tried my best to focus on my work. I didn’t know why this was such a big deal, but my fingers were shaking.
Finally, 12 o’ clock arrived. Zero hour.
I knew where the office was situated: the far north end of the room, a perfect vantage point from which the lord could survey his serfs.

I entered the room only to find it empty, the door slightly ajar. This gave me a few moments to survey the room.
The walls were adorned with a slew of strange knick-knacks, artifacts and relics of unknown purpose: statuettes, woven cloths with strange embroideries, silk and satin, marble and stone. All had found a place for themselves among the assortment of more typical objects: pencil cups, staplers, and paperweights.

One item in particular caught my eye: an aging map of the world, yellow around the edges, pinned to the white stucco with four shiny brass pins. The map was outdated, the continents appearing lumpy and grotesque. Around the edge of the map were Victorian-era paintings of four partially clothed men (well, two men, two women), meant to represent Air, Earth, water and Fire.

I had seen maps like this, mock antiques sold for a pretty penny at tourist traps worldwide. But this one was different: the paper was genuinely aged, crinkled and yellowed, and there was no label at the bottom from the corporation who had printed it.

What really caught my eye were what had been stuck into the map’s face: an array of colored thumbtacks, stuck in at seemingly random locations, spanning across the western US, East Asia, and West Europe. One was located in what would be the Puget Sound area, perhaps representing this building. Perhaps it represented branch locations? No, no, this was impossible; Paradox was much too small of a company to have so many branches, covering such a wide span of countries. And some placements made no sense: one black pin was placed somewhere in the Antarctic sea, near New Zealand, and was apparently the only black pin on the map.

Just as I was pondering yet another oddity, Whates walked in. Our eyes met. A look of surprise on his part was quickly covered by that same wide, insincere grin.
“I see you’ve found found one of my toys”, he said, the grin twisting his face into something just a bit less than human, like a ventriloquists dummy or a decaying corpse. I didn’t respond, and he went on: “One of my many antiques. A map of company branches, in part, but mostly locations of friends and family”. I gestured to the lone black pin, standing like a monolith in the middle of the sea.

There was a disturbance in Whates’ fake charisma. The uncanny grin faltered for a moment. Then, in one fluid motion, he plucked the pin from the wall and pocketed it. “ One of the employees messing around. Maybe Heidi trying to pull a fast one on me”. The mask was back up, but for a moment he had been slowed, faltered. He had shown weakness.

Whates glanced at his watch. “ Now, if you’ll excuse me for just one second, I have something to pick up over at the copy machine. I’ll be back in, oh…. 5 minutes. Go ahead and sit down, we’ll talk when I get back”.
With that, the grinning creature was gone. I sat down, slowly, in a chair facing Whates’ desk. But there was one last thing, one last artifact that caught my eye, adorned with a halo of sunlight reflected through the window.

A statuette, carved into some green stone, perhaps jade. It was no bigger than a closed fist, probably smaller. The bottom half resembled a block or pedestal, adorned with lettering that looked like some kind of cross between Greek and Japanese. Certainly nothing I recognized. Crouching on the pedestal was a… well, a thing. It was some sort of beast: I saw a head, draped with an array of tusks or tentacles. The body was bipedal and squat, somewhat portly, crouching atop the pedestal, gripping with it’s clawed hands. A pair of small, feeble-looking wings rested on it’s shoulders.

Something about this disproportionate, almost cartoonish being was deeply unsettling, and I just had to have a closer look. I reached to grasp it’s smooth, reflective surface…..

Ice. Searing, biting ice, sludging through my hand, my arm, my whole body. I desperately want to sleep. I need to close my eyes…
Blue. All is blue; feeling is gone, only a warm comforting numbness. I’m sliding through shades of blue, sliding down the spectrum. Now gray, now black.
A vision… what is this? I feel weight, weight of water, thousands of tons, but I remain intact. Now black gives way to something new. A different shade entirely, rising up in wisps. A shadowy green, engulfing my vision, filling my head my head, weighting my chest, choking, sick, sick, sick I feel SICK-

I come to on my knees, my stomach emptying its contents in long, wracking heaves, an exodus upon the carpeted floor. Steps at the door, drawing closer, and I know who it is. A deep sense of dread blooms in my chest, for no reason at all. The door swings open. No grinning mannequin this time.

To summarize, I left work early. The drive home was hell, my head thick and heavy, my skin stinging and feverish. What in the hell had I done? Occasionally I would fall into a sort of trance, a waking dream behind the wheel. My vision distorted. Shadows stretched and flickered. One thought kept rising to the surface of the swampy pit that was my mind: that I had stepped into something I shouldn't have.

 

[EmeraldCityBlues]

Crap... i just realized that something messed up when I pasted the text from Word, and the paragraph structure got screwed up. I'll work on fixing that.
EDIT: Oh, that wasn't a mistake, indenting just doesn't work like that on this forum. My bad. I attempted to make it a bit more easy on the eyes by spacing between each paragraph.
Also, not to be too needy, but if anyone has actually read this, and if they have any feed back, that would be cool. Go ahead and berate me! Otherwise I'll get cocky, and no one wants that :).