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New Lands, Part 1
Written on: Thursday, June 04, 2009
I've been a very bad boy, yes I have. But the thing that sets me apart from the really rotten people is that I wanna be a good person. And its not that I've not been down that path before hahaha. This probably isn't making sense cos I'm not elaborating enough, but no matter!
Time: 2:53 PM Important point that I want stuck here forever is this: I really love my parents and I want them to be happy, and that means doing well for my exams. I've been questioning so many things before but now I'm sure I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure, its a whole new thing. This is what I'm supposed to do so hell yeah amma do it. In the meantime I'll leave you with this aaaahahahha. The idea kinda was stolen off a dream I had two nights ago, and I'd been trying to figure out how to story-ize it. Sialah why does this post sound so emo, its not supposed to! And I'm far from emo! In fact I'm just feeling damn excited to study now. Shit man, I'm becoming some kinda... freak. This story I'm about to share is complete, though may be revised later. If I wanna HEH. We were shipped off into a new neighbourhood, off an island not far from the East Shore. This place was supposedly safer, and we were told to look forward to new beginnings and a better future. What awaited our arrival was, instead, a dismal half-town that looked like it’d been vacated a few years back. It was a classic scene from an old cowboy movie; there was a barber shop with its faded and dusty sign hanging from a bent nail threatening to break. The streets were worn and held the footprints of many pedestrians past. At least the officer-in-charge looked alive. He was a short, chubby man who walked with a severe gait, but nonetheless cheerful and always wearing a nice smile under his thick moustache. We were told to address him as Mr Cherbie; how fitting. It was Mr Cherbie’s job to quickly show us around the town, and brief us on our, well, new lives. The town, he explained, was a unique amalgamation of old-style living and jaw-dropping technology. Its old inhabitants insisted on preserving that old charm to their town, while employing whatever technology necessary to make their lives a whole lot easier. Personally I didn’t give a care. As we were walked round the side of what used to be a hospital, something caught my attention. About ten feet from where we were, there was a huge landing, something like a helicopter pad. There were faint markings along its perimeter, and there was an awful lot of dust clumped at one side. Unthinking, I asked Mr Cherbie what that was. “Oh, uh, that! Well that young man, used to be a... uh... they wanted to make it a helipad, but they arr... Well turns out it wasn’t high enough! Heheh! The real helipad’s on the roof right about there,” he pointed to the distant wing of the hospital. I let escape a small smile, barely amused by his tale. Somehow I was not satisfied with his answer, and I knew I had to find out more. Not today, though. * Two nights later, we were growing accustomed to our surroundings. We had a routine planned out for us, and diligently followed. Days started at 8am with exercise at the courtyard of our hostel, and school started at ten. We practically spent the rest of the day indoors, at lessons, taking breaks, or just having some fun. We were a small group, just thirty of us, and how well we coped would be the deciding factor to bringing in more people, and possibly upgrading this place. I was all for the former, but I didn’t really like the idea of upgrading; the place was nice, and what we needed we had. Well whatever, these things were not for me to decide. The few wardens, as we called them, were quite people. They mainly kept to themselves, but they never caused us any trouble or anything. If we smiled they smiled back, if we talked they’d answer in one-liners, but they were always there standing guard; against what I never dared ask, for I know there are some things in this world best left untouched. I’m wise for my age, and I plan on staying that way. I think my teachers saw that in me too, because they’ve taken something of a liking to me. I’m always held back after class for some reason; it could be because Mrs Riley wants to highlight ways I can improve on my writing, or that Mr Burns has an ‘interesting mathematical question I’d like to pose to you, young man!’ Whatever it is, I’m starting to like this new life. * This are going very well for us, and the officers said we should be expecting more people in, say, three months. I was pretty excited of the news, so were my friends, but a lot of the adults didn’t really do a good job in hiding their worried expressions. Come to think of it, it was the same expression most of them wore the day we arrived. It’s like they knew something but couldn’t really tell us, and that bothered them a lot. But I guess it could just be nerves, we were all new to this foreign land. Save some of the mentors and wardens, who probably arrived a few weeks back to prep the place, I reckon. To a young man like me, their troubles were theirs alone, and that could not prevent us from having fun. Now that the adults thought we were good children, it was time to move to plan one. Scaring the hell out of the girls. Now don’t get me wrong, we gentlemen have got nothing against the girls. They’re really nice people and we’re good friends, but it just so happens that girls react the most to pranks and stuff. Our intentions are completely justified, see? The plan was to sneak to the girls’ half of the hostel during shower time, and at the same time, turn off the lights, let off a fart bomb and firecrackers. It was such a simple plan but oh, the possibilities! The fart bombs we had from our previous ‘life’, and firecrackers were simple enough to make. We had a really cool guy with us who knew all about the chemists’ tree and stuff, and he said he could even make Nay Palms! I had no idea what that was but it sure sounded impressive. With everyone sure of their duties, we proceeded to the shower our usual way. We made noise, like we always did, but not too much. We moved quickly, but not too fast. We couldn’t give away our secret plan, no one could find out we were up to something. In the shower room, we turned on all the showers, while eight guys stayed behind to create the ‘ambience’. Zack and Joey then crept out the back, and stood as our lookouts. Zim had the firecrackers, Vidal and Vicente, the coolest twins ever, had the fart bombs. I had the important task of switching off the lights, and I was excited beyond words. When the all clear was given, the four of us ran along the corridor, all the way to the girls’ half. We then carefully lined the outside of their shower room with firecrackers, making sure no one would step on them when they got the shock of their lives and tried to run away. The twins went round the block to the air vents, where they would deposit the silent fart bombs. And by this time, the rest of the guys had finished their hurried showers (we were usually fast, anyway) and we could see them scrambling to the viewpoint at the adjacent block. Some of their wet bodies glistened in the distance as they watched excitedly, unable to hear anything just yet. Then we heard the starting signal: someone had picked up the pungent smell! As more of the girls detected the putrid odour hanging heavily in the shower room, Zim was quick to start off the firecrackers, at the same time I turned off all the lights. What a sight it was from our hiding spot at the stairwell! The darkness of the entire corridor was lit by the sparkle of the firecrackers, and the noise they made was unbearable! Just as we had predicted, the girls started screaming their lungs off! A few seconds later, several towel-clad bodies burst out of the shower room still screaming. We were decent men so that was our signal to turn away, and were quite sure the other guys did the same. Our firecrackers only lasted for ten seconds, but the panic and disorder we had caused was priceless. As the girls kept screaming in their confusion, we took the stairs up and ran helter-skelter to our dorm. We lay on our beds breathing hard, excited and scared. There was no doubt that some adults would come after us soon, and we realized how unprepared we were for a thorough scolding. Still, the joy of our successful plan was overpowering, and we were all grinning. That’s when we heard the knock on the door, “Boys, I’m coming in.” * The next day we were quieter, only because Mr Cherbie was so kind in his reprimanding. He didn’t want to scold us and spoil our fun, but he told us there were some things we really should avoid doing in the future. He seemed so understanding and never lost his temper; we couldn’t help but feel embarrassed at ourselves. He was right, it was childish of us, but he need not worry. We gave him our word that we’d play no such stupid tricks in whatever future we had at this place. The girls were more forgiving and started laughing with us by midday. Everyone had a chance to share what they thought had happened, and by bedtime, we were closer friends than before. Boy, does it really take a pathetic prank like that to bring people together? I guess its something my twelve year old mind won’t figure out any time soon. * For the next few weeks life was back at its usual routine, but we were all happy. Just the small group of us on this island made us feel like a family, and we were beginning to love one another like siblings. Every moment spent with each other was pure bliss, and we were having the time of our lives. Strange, how some of these people I’d known for so long but had never gotten this close to before. Whatever the reason, it was happening now and we were very happy. As usual, everything happened without incident, till one day, we ventured out to the hospital after lights out. We had gotten quite good at this whole creeping about act, and our sparing usage of this gift meant no one was ever a step ahead of us. We had just planned on finding a nice spot to sit and chat; for so long we had been confined to a small boundary, we craved so much to explore this town, to at least have some change. That’s when we stumbled upon the ‘helipad’ again. Without anyone holding us back, we went right up to it for a closer inspection. “Hey, Zim? How come there’s so much dust over there? Whaddaya reckon,” “I dunno Joey, I guess we’ll just have to sweep it all aside. Could be something beneath it, yaknow! Like those pirate-“ “Yeah ok we get it,” Davis interjected as he proceeded to kick off the large mounds of dust. We joined in too, and in no time we had uncovered what seemed to be a see-through panel. It felt rubbery to the touch, but was almost completely transparent. That’s when we saw what was beneath it; a timer! “Eh guys, do you see that?” “Yeah man, its a damn timer?” “Its counting down!” “Aw yeah it is!” “Dammit man, what the hell is it counting down to?” “05:062:2458?” “The last set of numbers is counting down, but what could it be? I thought it’d be seconds, then minutes, hours and days, but this?” “Maybe its counting to when the door will open!” “Whoa that’d be so cool! And Mr Cherbie said it was a helipad, hah!” “Okay guys but first we gotta figure out when this thing’s gonna open,” “Well, given the large numbers, I say we just check back in a week, no point thinking so much now, eh?” “Yeah I’m tired of thinking... Let’s just find someplace to sit,” “Agreed, let’s go.” And so we left the ‘helipad’, and found a nice spot at the reception. We talked through the night and didn’t once mention the helipad. When it was too early in the morning to be late, we dragged ourselves to our dorms and plopped down, thankful it was the weekend; we could sleep in, there was nothing to do. The next week we went out every night to check the helipad, but it hadn’t changed. The red led timer always showed a different set of digits: first 05:014:1296 on Sunday night, then 04:158:3296 on Monday. Everyone was slightly puzzled as to the ticking of the mysterious timer, but I guess no one actually put much thought into it. Nobody figured it out in that week, and so the next week, we only returned once on Wednesday. By then everyone had lost interest, and the plan was to come back in a month, just in case something really did happen. But I had figured it out on Monday, while lying on my bed. From Sunday to Monday, approximately 24 hours, give and take some, had past. That was why the first set had gone down to four, resetting the middle to 168, and as the remaining hours of that 24 hour period passed, we returned to the timer at 158. Put simply, the timer worked in this order: weeks, hours, seconds. It made sense, since the only set of numbers always on the move was the last section, which had four columns. Four columns for the 3600 seconds in an hour. My calculations could not have been wrong; the door would open at around 12pm on the Tuesday that was five weeks from the night I figured it out. Something told me to keep my finding to myself, and I did. There was a queer excitement in knowing something like that. In the meantime, I had to plan my detour on Tuesday, during lunch. * Tuesday came, and I went through the plan in my head. Lunch was at one, and the lesson before was, to my advantage, a library session. Our English teacher had found a dusty old library and was really excited about it. I had to admit, the books were really fascinating, but the dust got to me. I had made it a point to excuse myself once in awhile to read somewhere else, and no one thought anything of it. On the few occasions I had been checked on, I was sitting quietly in a nice clean area, reading. By today, no one would bother looking for me. As I made my way to the hospital, a lump grew in my throat; I was really excited, and my imagination was going crazy. As I approached the helipad, my heart jumped. What we thought was a helipad, was actually something more of a trapdoor, and today it had opened by a sliver. I peered at the timer, it was gone. The LEDs had turned off. For a fleeting moment I thought the door was electronically locked, and now that the power was cut, the light turned off. Sometimes I liked to play the part of the silent genius, don’t blame me. I slowly walked to the open edge of the trapdoor, and pulled. It lifted with remarkable ease, uncovering a staircase |
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