Work Text:
“What… is it?” Ford turns the device in his hand, the hard, plastic outer case warm from the stifling summer heat (or, more likely, from being stored in Fiddleford’s pocket for hike from the house to the diner). Whatever kind of electronic it is, it’s remarkably small, able to fit comfortably in his palm. Boxy, but still rounded at the edges in an almost-ergonomic way. When he flips it, he realizes that the other side seems to have a small glass display, a small keyboard taking up the bottom half just below it, a circular dial of some sort between the two with four rectangular buttons lined up on its sides.
“I call it the Accelerated Logger: Experimental XML edition,” Fiddleford beams at him from across the table. “The ALEX device for short. I’m still fanoodling with the name though, since I reckon giving it a human name is a little creepy.” Ford flips it around a few times in his hands, getting a feel for the weight, pressing a few of the buttons on the keyboard, seeing if he can’t get the little glass screen to do something.
“But what exactly is it?” Ford repeats. “What does it do?”
“Oh right, right. It’s a new journal.” Ford glances back up, not sure whether or not he’s joking, since this device obviously isn’t a journal. The confusion must read on his face, because Fiddleford backtracks. “Well, sorta. It’s like a miniature computer that you only write entries in and— here let me show you.” Fiddleford takes the device back and holds down what seems to be a small button on the top of the device, one Ford hadn’t noticed. “So, this here’s the power button.” He sets the device down on the table between them as the screen flickers to life, the screen lit but dark. “It’s also the sleep button to shut off the screen when you’re not using it. Saves battery, but God willing, I don’t see you killing it any time soon. This high-powered interdimensional residual schism-based collision heap power cell’s got more energy than a kindergarten classroom the day after Halloween. But that’s besides the point.”
“It’s powered by interdimensi—”
“This here is your home screen,” Fiddleford continues on, unimpeded. “You can create a new entry by pressing this button here,” he presses one of the four buttons lined up just above the keyboard, the one on the left with the pencil on it, and a pop-up box appears on the screen with the prompt Type new entry here above it, “then you type in whatever you reckon to record. And then you can push this button," he pushes the next adjacent button, which has a pound (#) sign on it, and a smaller pop-up appears, “to add tags to the post. On the home screen, that same one lets you search through all your tags real fast, that way you can find specific entries without having to flip a bazillion pages crazier than a chicken with its head cut off when you need to find something. This one is the back button,” he presses the button to the left of the circle pad, and the tag pop-up disappears, “which will back you out of any screen until you get back to the home screen. But if you wanted to make a post, just type it in here” using the keypad, he quickly types in Test post 1, “and then press the center button,” he presses the button in the center of the circle, and the post disappears, replaced by a small box on the top of the screen that reads the same text he typed. “And there it is! You can also add titles to posts and stylize the text all fancy-like. And when you have loads of posts, you can scroll through them chronologically using the trackpad—"
“Fiddleford, this is very kind of you—”
“Oh! But this button here,” he presses the one unused button of the tray of four, and Ford’s not even sure his friend heard him, he’s so caught up in his excitement. “Well, by all means, it doesn’t do diddley-squat right now. But eventually, I want to make it to where we can each have a device and type messages to one another, sorta like instant messaging! And this button would take you to your inbox to see—"
He’s not sure how to say that, while the gift is nice, he just personally prefers his journal. There’s something about just writing with paper and pen that an electronic could never duplicate. But Fiddleford seems so excited over it, and he’s never been one for tact, that’s for sure. Maybe if he just…
“Look, Fiddleford, I really appreciate the thought—”
“And I know you still have Journal 3 to finish,” Fiddledord barrels right on, and for the first time, Ford notices the there’s a slight tapping sound coming from under the table. A shoe hitting the ground increasingly faster. “So if you wanna finish it out, I understand that. I just know you’ve always been a worry-wort about your book getting damaged by rain and all, so I figured this would help fix that. All the posts store in an empty pocket dimension, so there’s no chance of them getting destroyed or nothing. And even if the device gets damaged, I can make a new one and reconnect to the same dimension. And I also installed a camera so you can take pictures of anomalies instead of having to sketch them all the time and… And…”
Fiddleford trails off, though he’s still smiling and expectantly looking at Ford, as if waiting for a reaction.
His foot taps even faster under the table.
Five beats per second. Maybe six.
“What do ya think?” he asks.
It’ll be a while before I finish Journal 3. Maybe by then he’ll forget.
Ford sighs.
“I think it’s an amazing little piece of tech,” he says, picking it up and giving it an appreciative once over. “I’ll try it out after I’m finished with Journal 3. Thank you.” The tapping goes silent, and Fiddleford smiles.
“Well, I’m glad you like it!”
“Could you tell me more about this interdimensional power cell that you said powers it? It sounds intriguing.”
“Oh, it is!” Fiddleford says. “Obviously it’s based on the portal research, just on a much smaller, easier-to-stabilize scale. When I made the hole for the memory storage, I realized there was a dang near infinite amount of energy flowing from it, so I finoodled a way to back-harness it…”
Ford pours himself his sixth cup of coffee of the morning. Well, he hasn’t slept in… he can’t remember how many days, so thinking of it with respect to the morning can’t make much sense. Not in the colloquial sense. All he knows is that the sun started peeking through the snow-laden treetops over an hour ago, and he’s on his sixth cup of coffee since then.
It’s working well enough, he guesses.
He’s still awake, as far as he knows.
Not like he can really fall asleep now-a-days.
Can’t risk Bill…
He takes a sip from the mug, lukewarm black coffee even more bitter than the last cup, and yet somehow more familiar. Ever since the incident last week, this has become his norm, that bitter roasted taste a constant in the back of his throat.
He’s not sure how long he can keep this up.
Ideally, just long enough to get everything taken care of.
After that…
The Journal is sitting on the dining room counter, gold hand glinting at him in the morning light.
He doesn’t think he can trust a word in that thing anymore. Not after everything Bill has done. Not after learning what he now knows.
He’s not sure he can bring himself to open it again.
That’s ridiculous. It’s just a book.
Then why does the mere thought of it make him want to throw up?
He tops off his mug and heads back to the elevator, ready to continue his work. The portal has long since been shut down, but he swears he’s been hearing sounds coming from it. Which is concerning considering the nature of the machine and what lays on the other side. The room should be silent. Unsettlingly so. But when he’s down there, he swears he hears something.
Something like voices.
Which he knows is absurd.
He ignores them for the most part.
He has research to do. He needs to figure out how to keep Bill out. Either temporarily, or for good. And while initial attempts have been unsuccessful, he hopes knows he’s developed a plan of action that has a reasonable chance of success.
The elevator doors open, and he finds himself in the bottom floor of the basement.
He doesn’t know why he keeps insisting on bringing himself down here.
Maybe as penance?
Maybe out of some sense that he needs to guard it?
Maybe because he simultaneously enjoys and hates the way it makes his gut turn at the mere sight of it, something rotten and aching churning just below the surface.
Part of him… part of him wants to tear the damn thing apart. Some small voice in the back of his head says it’s the best idea, that it’s the only rational idea, that leaving it standing the next room over is dangerous and reckless, especially when it will never be turned on again. That it would be the ultimate way to rub Bill’s betrayal in his face.
But…
Because of course there’s a “but”, otherwise he would have torn it down already
But he can’t bring himself to do it. Not to something he spent months of his life on. Not to something that could still be the answer to all his questions. Not to what he knows is the single greatest piece of engineering this world has ever seen. Not when he’s scared of the aftermath the next time he falls asleep.
And so, he finds himself at a stalemate. Locked in a dilemma he can’t seem to reason his way out of. It leaves him staring through the safety test window, watching the monument as it stands proudly the next room over, fluorescent lights glaring off it.
It’s like some sick joke that he never even learned the punchline to. That there was never a punchline for to begin with. Something he had hoped would be beautiful and wound up causing nothing but pain and destruction.
It leaves something bitter in the back of his throat.
It’s almost familiar.
He takes another sip of the coffee. It’s cool now, the basement sapping every bit of warmth right out of the room, the winter ice settling deep into the dirt.
Maybe he likes that the cold helps keep him awake?
He sits down at the desk, aimlessly leafing through the pages strewn across it, hoping some spark of inspiration will flash across them and tell him what to do.
He moves a diagram to the side and uncovers something from what feels like eons ago.
The device Fiddleford gave him, before everything went bad, back when they went to Greasy’s Diner for breakfast from time to time and life wasn’t completely consumed by the portal.
Back when everything was still okay.
He picks it up off the desk, the device still fitting comfortably in his hand like he remembers it did, hard plastic cold against his palm.
The Accelerated Logistic—no, the Accelerated Log… Logging… Logger?
It was so long ago. He barely remembers…
He finds the button on the side and holds it down, the screen miraculously flickering to life moments later.
After I’m finished with Journal 3…
He knows he has a better time thinking through his problems when he can write them down.
Maybe this will be a good replacement for the journal.
Maybe.
He clicks on the button Fiddleford showed him all those months ago, but instead of the expected pop-up, he gets an error of some sort, asking for a “blog username”.
Why am I doing this? This is pointless.
You need to get your head on straight. Think through this all rationally. This will help.
It’s just another Journal!
What if I can’t fix this?
What if I can’t get him out?
A username.
Back in college, he remembers one physics professor introducing him to the work of Nikola Tesla, and there’s one story he always remembers in particular.
Tesla once built a great machine, an oscillator, meant to change the way electricity was produced and revolutionize the way steam engines operated. Tesla claimed that, during a certain experiment, the device began to vibrate at the resonant frequency of the building he was in, causing the whole building to shudder and quake, compromising the structural safety of the building and risking the lives of its occupants.
He took a sledgehammer to the device to end it.
Or so he claimed.
Ford wonders how true the story is, whether the machine really went unstable, whether Tesla was really able to simply destroy his work so easily.
He wonders what Tesla would do if he were in his own shoes, a literal demon tormenting him, his machine standing between him and the end of the world, or maybe all the answers he ever hoped for. A chance to be somebody and do something important.
Knowing something is the right thing to do, but just feeling deep down like it’s wrong. That there are other solutions.
A username?
He quickly types in the first thing that comes to mind:
whatwouldteslado
When he clicks enter, the pop-up disappears, and the screen is back to how he remembers.
Perhaps Fiddleford updated it while I wasn’t using it.
He shakes the thoughts off and starts typing, the click of the keys echoing through the room.
He’s not sure why… And he’s not sure how to describe it…
But as unfamiliar as it is, something about the device almost feels… promising. Like a new beginning. Some distant light at the end of an impossibly long tunnel.
It’s a good feeling to hold onto for now.
And so, he types.
Entry #01.
This is the first entry that will hopefully be of but only a small handful.
I am livid…. Among quite a number of other things, but I need to go about this in a rational manner.
I have recently come up with a rather simple solution to my main issue. Deploying it will not be easy, but I have already faced difficult challenges and I have no doubt that I can successfully carry this out on my own.
…
Post.