#loched.doomsday

SECTION ONE:[A SONG FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD STARTS PLAYING, A MELODY THAT REMINDS YOU OF A TIME WHEN YOU WERE A HAPPY CHILD — ONCE.]

It's hardly been that long in the scheme of things. When compared to the grand span of eons that make up the universe, a few hours in a small, loud, flying tube of death didn't matter much. In the world of light and electricity, however, it may as well have been an eternity that Loch had already spent squeezed into this seat that pinched at his back and his neck. He was used to working on a different scale than the human. Loch was made for the immediate pulse of circuitry and this was as close to torture as he could imagine. Nothing like the demand of inaction ate at him quite so deeply.

Sighing and shifting for the tenth time in as many minutes the question he had done his best to ignore swam to the surface and breached his mind: how did I get here?

Just as quickly came the melody of a band never far from his mind and the questions posed when he was just four years old and with a muscle memory Loch never bothered to try to suppress, his head began to bob to a tune only he could hear as he quietly sang under his breath: 'Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down...' The Talking Heads had always spoken to that deep, unknowable part of him that had remained unchanged through the years and had more than once fueled a late-night dance party when the code swam before even his trained eyes.

It was a shame his mother never liked them much. She had always preferred the crooners from her days, which were more than enough to put Loch to sleep half the time.

It was a shame he was the only one left of that house that remembered the words to this song that danced freely in his brain like the rattle of an earthquake.

It was the same as it ever was.

SECTION TWO: [A FIDGETABLE, ANALOG ITEM, CAN BE KNIFEY THOUGH YOU BETTER HAVE A GOOD REASON FOR IT TO BE]

It had been another uncountable slew of minutes turned to slurry when the mountains had finally broke and demanded their presence be known. For a moment, Loch's heart had leapt with the hope that they were perhaps finally arriving. The same extremely large dickheads that had demanded he be separated from both his fish and his beautiful Alienware computer (never mind the Dell Ultrasharp curved monitor they had taken as well) had mentioned something about the mountains, right? Loch knew he should have been paying better attention, but watching literal thousands in equipment be carted away was a little more distracting than hour four of boring corporate bullshit.

(How did I get here? Letting the days go by...)

His fingers ached with the urge to type. Loch's brain practically ate itself in worry as his eyes ached with the memory of that headache and the damn flying helltube just kept going. His ears were doing to implode on themselves. It was sheer self-preservation that he found that worn river rock in his hands, pulled from the pocket of his backpack. It was dark in color, worn smooth over years of water and smoother in Loch's hands. His sister had found it, that time when she dug so deep into the ground she found water. That water held the rock.

Loch clutched it in a closed fist, thumb running along the self-made groove in its surface and focused on breathing and not the possibility that this entire thing was a hologram pulled together by a fringe cult of Owlmen or their Sincerely Completely Personable friends. But it never hurt to keep a healthy degree of suspicion, and Loch kept his eyes on the minimally staffed crew.

SECTION THREE: [ A PLACE OF GREAT PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE, BE THAT POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE]

Loch was beginning to believe he was going to die on this damned helicopter and no one was going to notice because they were all going to just keep flying until they ran out of fuel and crashed in a terrible ball of fire without even the courtesy of Mothman making an appearance. He was going to be that man stuck in the Twilight Zone screaming about a man on the wing of the plane if something didn't happen soon. When nothing did, as things seemed determined not to on this thing, Loch found himself dozing off.

(And you may find yourself in a beautiful house...)

The home was warm. In his bedroom sat his set-up in its full glory kept perfectly cool as a dull green glow emanated from the doorway as Loch let the code run. It was going to take awhile, after all, and if he was going to see the same damned error on line 3549, he might take a hammer to the entire beautiful setup. Best to let it rest for now.

The rest of the house did not smell of dirt as it so-often did and instead smelled of the faint lavender perfume Mamá loved so dearly. The curtains that the golden hour shone through were the handmade ones, covered in small embroidered plants as soft and thin as lace. The dull thudding noise from the kitchen spoke of Mamá's famous locos tonight and that silly betta fish seemed to laugh in time with his sister's high-pitched, airy giggle.