John W. Patterson
Word count: 2,164

Fetors Inc.

(Old house, older things)

by John W. Patterson
January 11, 2002

Synopsis: Corporate greed is stymied by one landowner refusing to sell. The spinster claims it is her duty to maintain the premises lest nasty things arise. Eventually all houses and properties around the corporation are . . . (no spoiler here folks). Multi-layered legal protection of the recalcitrant spinster's crumbling house and tiny lot keeps it safe from devastation. Over a century after the woman's death, nearly all access to the ancient edifice is cut off. It stands isolated from the outside, an oddity taking up space in the sub-basement of the massive corporate monolith. A new generation's CEO decides to ignore the law. * * * * * Prologue More years pass and the Fetors/Mahkr-Akali Meds corporation finally comes under new leadership. A more standard reign of power one genration to the next was stretched out a bit after the Dr. Mahkr-Akali discovery of FOY-1, an enzyme slowing the aging process. At one hundred and eighty years old, CEO Ennis Fetors meets an untimely death. A rival industry, Elder Ones Never aka EON, buys out all the FOY-1 patents and . . . well, the whole story is too convoluted to recount here. Simply said, Old Man Fetors' supply of new, high-grade, EON/FOY-XL, version 2, kills him within a week. Fetors/Mahkr-Akali Meds Corporation and EON then merge and all rants and legal ravings are hushed summarily. A very young, 75 year old CEO, Clyve Fetors, his mourning complete, plots new things and an overhaul of the family pharmaceutical business. He begins a thorough "housecleaning" and so discovers an old house in the heart of his empire in an area described in very old plain-text building maps as the "the Holdsworth chamber". He is appalled, mystified, and incensed. He cannot figure out how this anachronism 153 years out of phase commands such power to still exist in spite of his own family empire's global dominance. He orders its demolition -- deaf to the warnings of his legal council. He figures he owns the courts anyway and the trivial fines and compensation could instead go to build a park of public repentance somewhere upstate. This noisome pile of rotting wood and rusted nails is nothing compared to his recent accomplishment of having the Statue of Liberty moved further out to sea. The Fetors/Mahkr-Akali Meds Corporation's new Newark-New York World Transport hub was in need of Lady Liberty's prime location. Removing bothersome old wart from the foot of the glorious global giant of Fetors/Mahkr-Akali Meds Corporation was no worry. A slight complication arises upon the discovery of a family mausoleum beneath the house. Most of the crypts are clearly marked. One strangely marked vault, set into the floor, holds quite the mystery. The chamber is small. It is believed to hold the remains of a child. Its contents are exhumed following the removal of the other identified dead folk. May the circles be unbroken . . . The Cryptic Crypt "Yes, Mr. Fetors, yes, I know but -- all right. Let it be stated for the record banks that I don't like this demolition deal at all. It's pointless and we both know that. What good is ripping up this old house -- yes, yes, okay, your call sir. Yessir, please forgive me sir. But please, first have Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. drop-shuttle in DS-1 down here. He needs to see this before we move anything out completely," Drake Simms jaw-flexed his holo off real-time. He sighed discontent with this entire reconstruction op. Who cared what's in a 153 year old house in your basement when you control most of the planet? What was Fetors' obsession with this room anyway? To get personally involved in a demolition job like Simms did for the company was unusal -- but hey, Fetors is Fetors. Archivist/ research mech-unit 13a buzzed Drake, echoing from inside the isolation tentings, "Simms, a curious object draped in soiled linens has been unearthed by units 7r and 9t." "Continue MU13a," Drake answered. "Within the outermost layers of cloth, a hand-written parchment of variant fonts with a warning is found. It is scribed in both first-century Aramaic Greek, an archaic Semitic-Sumerian script, and another wholly bizzare dialect," MU13a spoke, viewing his internal vid-link with MU7r's receptors. "You can read it?" asked Drake. MU13a went on, "I'll translate the Greek. The finder is told to, 'Make Haste!! Inter this dread thing with fastings and prayer lest the Chaos of Tehom find its way back into The Order and consume all those who trespass the Hunger of the Void. May Elohim have mercy on he that stares into the Abyss of Apollyon . . .' but the parchment is covered thereafter in what seems to be dried blood of no known animal and --" "Repeat that last phrase MU13a," Drake asked, turning towards the drop- shuttle DS-1's access door bleeping. MU13a repeated himself exactly, "The parchment is covered thereafter in what seems to be dried blood of no known animal." "That's what I thought I heard," Drake answered, watching Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. step out of DS-1's access doors. Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. speaks, "I hate those things dropping like that, my blood vessels in my eyes will burst one day! 2000 levels down in 5 minutes, why that's 66 feet per second! The deceleration mode is too fast below level 20. Why's Fetors sent me here?" "I did that," Drake answered, "You know what we've got here, Doc." "Of course, Drake, of course, been on the thing since Fetors called! It's just an old house and some graves." "MU13a, describe what you see now, with the cloth removed," Drake says. "It is a small coffin-like box of silver. It is covered with crude religious icons - -", MU13a begins. Clyve Fetors suddenely steps out of his private DS-F behind everyone shouting, "Let's get on with this folks! Cut the chat. The gang's all here. Let's box this ye olden junk up and give it to some museum in Manhattan. Come on you muttering MUs, move it!" Everyone gasps as Fetors pulls aside the isolation tents, pushes two MUs away and reaches for and picks up the small silver box. "Ah-hah! There you are! It's beautiful," Fetors says. "Sir, I wouldn't do that," both Simms and MU13a speak. MU13a continues, "I am detecting an anomalous power surge from 100 meters beneath the sub-basement." "Sir!" Simms says again. Fetors looks at Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. and Simms walking out of the tent smiling in an oddly distant manner. "It holds power," Fetors whispers, "It calls power and gives power. In dreams I have seen this moment, gentlemen." Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. moves towards Fetors saying, "Clyve, please put that down. You have no idea how strangely you are acting now. Something's very wrong here. Please --" Fear, pride, and lastly greed squeeze the young Clyve's brain into a darkened corner. He comes out fighting his indecision and he brazenly opens the lid. He opens upon himself the full weight of eternal nothingness. The Chaos of Tehom glows in the box, a small blue sphere of incandescent light-storms. It pulsates, growing, feeding the Hunger of the Void. Clyve Fetors stands paralyzed as the horror rises bitter in his throat. Waves of bile-flavored agony rock his body as he cannot turn his gaze from the Abyss of Apollyon. Drake Simms falters back from the slow-motion scene of Fetors being pulled into the mad, whirling, maelstrom of screams and shreddings. Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. watches as Fetors is lifted from the floor and sucked into a blackened vortex at the top of the swollen chaos. Simms flees the few remains of the once grand house of Miss Ann Holdsworth. Strangely, nothing of the building's foundations is disturbed by the ever-growing globe of judgment. Simms pulls open the DS-F access door to the Holdsworth chamber and is nearly decapitated as it rips itself loose and catapaults back into the Chaos of Tehom. Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr. is finding it nearly impossible to move further and is pulled around to face the insane vision of destruction. The walls of the Holdsworth cubicle are bending inward and the ceiling is a convex impossibility. Simms sees Dr. Mahkr-Akali Jr., MUs, and equipment from the isolation tents falling, twisting, and swirling in angry oblivion. His glasses rip loose from his face as he falls to a floor cracking and bulging beneath him. A roar of winds deafens him and it is nearly impossible to breathe. He is sliding slowly backwards and feet are lifting in the air. Simms keeps crawling and eventually makes it back to the DS-F doorway. The Chaos of Tehom seems to pull with more force above itself as if it were a great pit. A critical zone lies about the engorged abyss and Simms just manages to pull himself beyond its full effect. He closes the drop-shuttle door and pounds the ground level button, The DS-F auto-stops at sub-level three, unable to manuever the twisting shaft. Simms exits, running for the old stairways. The floor curves beneath his feet as paper and glass shards dance about his ankles. An eerie howl of twisted steel and deforming matter grinds the hallways with derisive echoes. He shouts at panicked workers fleeing the wrong way. Simms avoids the other drop shuttles, figuring they are all contortred throats feeding the Hunger of the Void. How can he escape this place? Where is out when up is being pulled into down? As if to answer his quandary he spies a crack at the base of the wall. It is at the end of the hallway he is stumbling and pitching along. He falters, turning to see the chaos nears, studded with spikes of I-beam and armored now with the flotsam of human remains. Floor and ceiling tiles pummel Simms as the floor tips to near vertical. Wallboard splits and ruptures itself free breaking over his torso. He begins to believe this is no blind force of physics gone awry but a sentient fury of unending hunger. He nears the crack at the base of the wall. It is only thirty feet away. Pulling himself stud to stud along the naked wall, he sees an old woman standing before him. He freezes in place gasping on shock and gypsum dust. She reaches out to him smiling. Her long gray hair dances wildly as the fluorescent light flickers out nearby. Her aged eyes moistened with tears reflect the azure fires of Apollyon's approach. "Come, take my hand and live," she shouted, "Chaos consumes Order as your fear destroys life. You must come to me. I cannot come any closer. It is too near the Abyss of Apollyon. The Ancient Ones dream in their slumber and we die as they live. But some shall live as I and some like you. It is not your time blue-eyed one. My child tells me you tried to help him rest. Now come to me and live." Simms reaches out and steps forward. The cold, strong talons of the aged woman gripped his hand firmly. Together they walked away from the din of Tehom's cries. Simms bent down and stepped out under the broken sub-basement wall into subterranean night. He soon found himself falling but then rising swiftly again in the arms of the old woman. He looked up past her to dim starlight. Simms would live. Eventually, she slowly dropped him to the ground beyond the ensuing Chaos. He could see the mass of "Fetors Inc." curling itself into the violet-hued fireball bobbing now and seeming to dance in the night breeezes. It appeared to be falling in on itself, shriveling, shrinking back from the woman drifting just overhead. Simmss could barely hear her speaking. "Sleep now my child, rest until you are awakened again," she whispered. The Hunger of the Void was satiated, filled with the greed and the empire of the Fetors family corporation. Clyve Fetors and Fetors/Mahkr-Akali Meds Corporation existed no more. Drake Simms watched as the wraith of deceased, Miss Ann Holdsworth, and her terrible bastard child, the Chaos of Tehom, drifted together back down towards the Abyss of Apollyon, just beneath the old Holdsworth place. Simms walked over scorched earth and stone, past upended slabs of concrete, to stare blankly down at the ancient, crumbling, resting place of the Holdsworths and their eldritch legacy. Oddly enough the old house was mostly back together again, rebuilt in its former glory -- order from chaos. Simms wandered off in mild shock. Epilogue Six hours, six minutes and six seconds later, a slightly damaged mech-unit marked "13a" ambled along, wobbling out of the huge hole that once was the Fetors/Mahkr-Akali Meds Corporation. It was carrying a small silver container. "It holds power," MU13a muttered to itself, "It calls power and gives power. It holds power. It calls power and gives power. It holds power. It calls power and gives power . . ." Fini