The Lonely Whelk Read online

  Then one day, everything changed: she remembered something.

  The memory came when a man walked into the shop wearing a suit. She never learned his name, never spoke to him except to say, “$12.91 please,” and “Have a nice day.” But something about him triggered an old, old memory of the man with the strange tie, the man with the funny accent, the man who gave her the rubies. It had been six months after her father died, but before the first time the shop moved.

  A strange little smile lit on his lips when he shook her hand.

  “Hello!” he said. “I’ve brought you a gift. From your father.”

  He reached a hand into a very strange suit coat. It looked old, a style from Britain in the 1950s, perhaps, but the fabric was new and almost sparkled – it glistened. He wore an unusual tie, as well, with oddly-shaped animals which appeared to be dancing around spikes. His clothes were unlike anything she had ever seen. From his pocket he drew a small box and set it on the counter in front of her.

  “How did you know my father?” she asked.

  “We were old friends. Your father was an amazing thinker and quite the dreamer!” His eyebrows jumped up and down on his face as he nodded eagerly at the box. “Open it!”

  As she picked up the box, she thought for a moment that she saw a glimmer arise from the edge, but when she opened it, the inside was dark; even the velvet lining was black. Two red gems rested on the velvet. She gasped.

  “They’re beautiful!” she exclaimed. “You say they’re from my father?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” the gentleman replied. “He left them with me and I did not receive word of his death until recently. I am very sorry for your loss.”

  “It’s been over six months since he died,” Hazel said, looking up. After a moment’s thought, she supposed there were plenty of people that might not have heard. The pain was so real for her, though, it was hard to imagine everyone else wasn’t feeling it too.

  “Yes, I know. I’ve been...” He paused, frowned for a moment, and then stated, “...traveling. Yes, that’s it!”

  His hesitation made Hazel think that he wasn’t being quite truthful with her.

  “So by traveling... you mean not traveling?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “That is beside the point.” The man gestured towards the box. “These are special earrings. You don’t put them on your ears, you put them in your ears. Like, you know, inside...” he pointed into his ear.

  “Why?” Hazel made a face. They were pretty and they were rocks – two reasons why she wouldn’t put them in her ears.

  “Well...” Then the gentleman began to talk very rapidly: “They’re-specially-designed-to-help-translate a-variety-of-other-languages-using-the-science-of-brain-chemistry-and-cognitive-mathematics, and-I-think-you-should-try-them-next-time-you-move-to-a-new-place. I have to go now.”

  Then, before Hazel could even begin to process what he had said, he had turned on his heel and bolted from the store.

  She tried them a few weeks later. Spanish to English. French to English. Dutch to English. It was incredible. The only problem was that they didn’t translate her words back. But they still helped.

  Today, strange as it was, had started out as a normal day. She swept the floor and neatened the racks of sweatshirts, all the while dreaming about the vast expanse of the universe, and wondering about the myriad of things that might exist out there: dragons and dwarves, alien races shaped like light bulbs, planets made of enormous diamonds, civilizations built entirely on fleets of spaceships… she never got tired of imagining everything that could be. She wiped down the counter, and even pulled everything out of the cash drawer to make sure nothing got stuck or was hiding in the back. Then, her mind full of thoughts about the wonders of the universe, she headed into the back room.

  When she came back into the shop, everything was different, and everything said “Whelk.” And for the first time, she didn’t know what that meant.

  Outside the windows, it was dark. She walked over to get a closer look.

  “There must be a sign,” she muttered, squinting. “Oh, there’s one!”

  It read, “Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point.”

  “Are we in a mall?” she asked herself. It seemed awfully dark for a mall. And dreary. There were no lights or emergency lights, no people, no fake trees. Only the sign.

  She opened the door and cautiously stepped out. It was a long hallway, expanding in both directions. Everything was grey and metal. It all seemed very industrial. She glanced again at the sign: this time, where there were letters before, they were now strange symbols which she couldn’t read or understand.

  Gasping, Hazel took a step back, and then another and another, until she stumbled back into the shop, still gasping for breath and crying a little.

  “It doesn’t feel like home, anymore,” she whispered to herself. “It doesn’t feel like home.”

  Later, when she thought back on this moment, it seemed odd that the location of her shop was what made it feel like home, and not the shop itself, but at that moment, she was overcome with shock, and headed into the back room to have a shot of wonderful, wonderful whiskey.

  The back room had a warm feeling: an orange rug adorned the floor, strings of beads hung down the walls, and she had an extraordinary number of hats, each of which she loved equally. They had a life of their own; each had a name and was unique in character and appearance. A couch and two chairs sat in the corners, and a reddish lamp made the room glow crimson. On the far wall was a large cupboard. Here she kept everything from extra toothpaste and deodorant, to hooks and nails and other useful tidbits, to souvenirs that she had purchased all over the world. It always amused her – a tourist shop owner that collected souvenirs. But these souvenirs didn’t change when the shop moved; it proved that she had been to the many places her shop had taken her.

  She pulled a large bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and poured herself a glass.

  There were decisions to be made. She could 1) stay here until she grew old and died or someone came to tell her where she was, 2) explore, or 3) drink herself into oblivion and deal with the problem later. After another shot, she realized she could also put more effort into searching for whatever mechanism it was that caused the shop to move, and then maybe drive home, but the chances of finding anything seemed rather slim.

  Wandering back into the front room, she peered through the window at the dark hallway. For all she knew, her shop was some kind of spaceship and she had landed on a planet very far away. Or maybe it was a time machine and she was seeing the future. Or, she pondered, maybe she was in an asylum and none of this was real.

  Almost in response to her last thought, she caught a glimpse of something white out of the corner of her eye, near the end of the hallway. She moved to the door, opened it, and peered down the hall.

  It was a monkey – a little brown monkey with a long white mustache, a pink nose, and a cute tongue that kept flicking in and out of its mouth. And it was looking at her.

  Hazel ran back into the store, closed and locked the door, sat down on the floor, and began to cry.

  John was giddy – at least, Kaia assumed he was giddy. She had only known him a few hours, but his excitement, although contagious, seemed a bit excessive. She felt that she ought to be more excited than him; after all, she was the one who had just received one of the most prestigious internships in the world.

  “Don’t worry,” Quin said.

  She jumped and gasped. “I didn’t know you were there!” She was startled. He was walking behind her as silently as a timorous cat, the kind from the desert region.

  “My apologies,” he said.

  “What were you saying?” She turned to look at him.

  “Don’t worry about John being so hyper. His favourite thing – probably in the universe – is to show people this room. It’s his pride and joy.”

  “He didn’t make it, did he?” she asked.

  “No I didn’t!” John cut in delightedly. “But
I’m in charge (more or less) so it’s like it’s mine! And I’ve made some significant changes to improve safety and efficiency, and basically, it’s the bat’s eyes!”

  “Bat’s eyes?” Kaia raised her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, you know... the beamel’s leer? The crasaton’s tail? The pop lizard’s tongue? The bee’s knees?”

  “Oh, you mean it’s neat.” She nodded in understanding.

  John released a loud sigh. “We need to work on your vernacular!”

  They rounded a corner and saw Rock and Clyde standing there, waiting. A couple of other security guards in their black sunglasses stood a ways behind them.

  “Need to get rid of those glasses,” Kaia heard Quin mutter. “Annoying.”

  “Here’s the man of the hour!” John announced, gesturing to Clyde. “Ready to join the tour?”

  Kaia shuffled her feet a little, still feeling a bit embarrassed about the role she had played during Clyde’s interview.

  “There you are,” Rock responded, crossing his arms. “I was about to page you on the intercom.”

  “You’re so impatient,” John replied in a scolding tone of voice.

  “I’m not going in. I have work to do. Bring Clyde back to me when you’re done with him.” Rock turned and began to stride away from the group with the other security guards close behind.

  John faced Clyde and rubbed his hands together, grinning. “Well,” he said, “this is going to be fun!”

  Kaia raised her eyebrows in mild concern as John bounded past him and headed for the end of the hallway.

  *******

  The room was huge and had far more people in it than Kaia had imagined. When she had first learned about this legendary room – literally legendary, as there was much debate about whether or not it actually existed – she had imagined a largely empty room with wisps of uncertainty that sort of tickled the corner of your eye when you gazed around, accessible only to the greatest and most secretive branches of the government. After a short moment of reflection on the scene before her, however, Kaia realized that the imagined scenario didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the actual scenario was much more logical.

  People bustled here and there, running back and forth with papers and baskets – and a giant horse pulling a cart thundered through a Door at the back of the room. Doors were lined up neatly in rows; she counted at least fifteen to a row, but since the room was round, some of the rows appeared to have more or fewer in them. Each Door was outlined by a neatly painted frame, and a name appeared on a sign over it. Ambassadors came and went through them, and assistants handed them baskets and documents and scribbled-on pieces of paper. One man yelled for his wife over the commotion of the room, and she, struggling to contain her large, voluminous skirts, scrambled to avoid the other people in the room while getting to her husband as quickly as possible. There were men, women, children, travel animals, wares, and suitcases – even birds!

  The room was a veritable madhouse.

  “Officially we call it Vrata Soba.” John gestured around to the wild collusion of chaos. “We are also pushing legislation to enlarge the facility, and possibly move it off world. As you can see, it creates a great amount of liability for not only the government, but quite possibly the entire planet. If it were off-world, we could contain it a bit more.”

  “But... but... this room is a legend!” Kaia exclaimed. “I took an entire class centered around the theory that this room was propaganda created several centuries ago by the Pomegranate City legislature to make themselves look more powerful, but when it failed to work they instead covered it up, which in essence achieved what they were going for in the first place.”

  “Ah yes, the Phantom Conspiracy. The theory that Doors are invisible and all around us... that the government has the science and money to create them at will... and simultaneously doesn’t.” John grinned. “It’s all a load of hogswaggle, quite frankly, and I hope you didn’t take any of it to heart or I’ll be offended.”

  “Of course not!” Kaia shook her head. “There’s no evidence for anything!”

  “Good girl.” John patted her on the shoulder. “The reason there is so much secrecy around this room is that we don’t want people off and on different planets without regulation. It’s a dangerous thing having these Doors sitting here. Diseases, parasites, predators, airborne biological contaminates, biological weapons, insane madmen, poisonous gases… even weeds could cause huge issues for our planet. And not just our planet, but all planets. It’s the ultimate opportunity for cross-contamination.”

  “You mean like famine, drought, plague, dead people,” Clyde offered. “People mutating and creating new species.”

  Kaia started. She had forgotten he was there.

  “Precisely. And clearly we want none of those.” John began to stride forward. Desks lined the walls of the room, and there were regular doors at even intervals along the curved walls. “The regular doors lead to rooms with more Doors, but they are specialized locations that need extra security. Don’t go in those rooms.”

  A woman with glasses and her hair pulled back in a tight bun strode up to them with an attitude of impatience and focus. A scowl seemed to have taken up residence on her face more or less permanently, according to the wrinkles around her eyes. “John,” she stated bluntly. “Caverty is missing. Again. We think he slipped through the Expialma Door and is hiding out with that woman with the third arm. Unfortunately, she’s hiding behind an army, which is currently fighting a war on either side of our Door. So we can’t go and get him. He’s a liability. A missing liability who might die. And if he doesn’t die there, he might not survive here, once I get my hands on him.”

  “Oh, blast,” John said, shaking his head and tightening his tie. “That is why we can’t have people buying their way into this profession. Get his dad on the line, and write up a report for Drake and Tom. If anything changes, let me know immediately.”

  Kaia’s eyes were wide as she listened to the exchange.

  “Isn’t that something Rock should be informed of?” Clyde asked. “Doesn’t that represent a huge threat to the building and our government?”

  “This is not an unusual thing,” John said, turning to face Clyde. “Employees become overwhelmed with the immensity of their responsibilities, and sometimes run off. As you can see, that is easy to do here. Caverty was an employee for us a number of years ago, but we had to fire him because he was having relations with, well, you heard, the woman from Expialma. Caverty is a Ruthitan from the planet Planzge. We like to have at least one of them on staff at all times, as they are highly intelligent and have positive relations with many different civilizations. Unfortunately, they have a particular inclination to run away, looking for adventure or some nonsense. Last time this happened, we revisited the policy, and this time will probably push legislation change. If he takes action, he becomes an immediate security liability and at that point we inform Rock.”

  Clyde nodded, understanding. “I understand, but it seems it might be valuable for security purposes to have the information sooner, so we can plan in advance of this gentleman taking action.”

  “Kaia-kee, write that down and I’ll bring it up with Rock.”

  “This is incredible,” Kaia said, pulling a notepad from her bag to scribble a note to remind John about security detail later. “How many places do you have access to from this room?”

  “We can currently travel to three-hundred-twenty-seven other planets, and have access to another six which are dangerous or not recommended for various reasons. That allows us access to billions of people, millions of races, and thousands of civilizations. The statistics are mind-boggling.” John was waving his hands in circles as he became more and more excited. “Not only that, but we provide a means for a lot of merchants to sell their wares to other civilizations, so naturally we charge a toll. We make more off our toll – which is pretty small related to most of the income of those we work with – in one year than we make in an entire decade from tax
es here in Pomegranate City.”

  “That’s incredible!” Kaia was thrilled. All the science she had ever studied, all the math that she had absorbed into her over-excitable brain, and all of the most amazing surprises in the world could not have prepared her for this room. Doors that led to hundreds of other planets, people from thousands and tens of thousands of other cultures – babies, men and women, animals, foods – so much to learn and see and…

  “What is that?” she gasped, slapping one hand over her mouth and pointing with the other.

  John pulled her hand down and placed a finger over his mouth. “Hush!” he exclaimed. “And don’t point. It’s rude. His name is Deidrick and he is extremely kind – one of our most influential ambassadors.”

  “But... but...”

  The individual under scrutiny was none other than a giant, snow-coloured, long-haired bear. In addition, he was wearing boots and a hat, and walking on all fours – the boots were, indeed, on all four of his… feet? Paws?

  “He is beautiful,” Kaia conceded, still staring. Then, as she watched, a group of blue men wandered through a Door. At once, her eyes started picking up irregularities of all sorts within the people mingling in the crowd. One man was twice as tall as everyone else in the room. A group of oddly-clad women were actually covered with fur. Two young women in lab coats appeared to be talking to lizards, and the blackest man she had ever seen suddenly vanished into a puff of smoke. That elicited a mild reaction from the workers nearby, as they rushed to cluster around an ashy circle on the floor. After a moment, one of them reached down and picked up what appeared to be a very, very tiny version of the man who had been standing there at full size only a minute before.