+++

Both Salvo and Trig stepped back like veteran shinobi, too afraid to move any other part of their bodies in case it turned the machine off again.

They waited, glancing at the walls around the space, checking to see if anything was being altered, changed or opened.

There was nothing.

Nothing overt anyway.

‘What did you do?’ asked Trig, finally releasing a minute’s worth of breath.

‘Nothing. Flicked one of its lights.’

‘That’s it?’

‘And told it to fuck off in Russian.’

Trig nodded, assessing the two possible theories quickly in his head. If this were a comedy, the flicking would be responsible. But if it were an espionage thriller…more likely the Russian curse.

Query: has anything funny happened so far?

Answer: not at all. Absurd maybe, but not funny.

Query two: has anything dangerous happened?

Answer: not tangibly. But there was definitely tension.

‘Try saying something else in Russian,’ he suggested, for some reason nudging Salvo closer to the machine.

‘Like what?’ she asked, pushing back.

‘Something nicer maybe.’

‘I don’t know very much.’

‘Huh? I thought you said you were fluent?’

‘That was English wor. In Russian, I’m more like Upper Beginner. Maybe lower intermediate if the person I’m talking with has really low standards.’

‘But you can make sentences…’

‘Yeah, bad ones.’

‘That’ll do. Just say something basic, like, ‘I want to go to a new room,’ or, ‘please open the door, comrade.’

Salvo looked down and left at one of the light green triangular imprints on the floor and muttered to herself. Trig gave her some time, but, when nothing seemed to be happening after nearly a whole minute, he coughed and said, ‘doesn’t have to be open the door, anything is okay.’

‘Quiet a second.’

‘Just something to keep it activated.’

‘Trig…’

‘Sorry.’

Salvo held up a finger and closed her eyes. There was a lot of Russian to choose from inside her brain, but just like her study routine, it was half-assed and scattered all over the place. And the pressure of needing to find it fast or else the machine might do something defensively brutal to them wasn’t helping.

Not helping at all.

‘Diu lei,’ she said, eyes still closed. All she could think of was the manager of that Russian restaurant in Sheung Wan squinting at her and saying ‘what?’ over and over.

‘You okay?’

‘Thinking.’

‘The lights seem to be dimming…the machine lights.’

‘Stop talking to me.’

‘Okay. Stopped.’

Salvo went back to her Russian memories, even going so far as to put her fingers against her temples. It may have been effective in movies, but in reality nothing could overpower the anxiety of an already anxious human brain.

Trig watched this performance for another thirty seconds, saw the lights on the machine grow a little bit dimmer and decided to give his own Russian a shot.

‘Kako sti? Preeviet. Spaseeba.’

They were the only three phrases he knew and apparently all were stored in the machine database as more of its lights lit up. From somewhere near the middle, the same tinny voice as before sounded out.

‘… … … … … … …’ it started in pure Russian, and it didn’t stop until both Trig and Salvo’s faces were on the brink of meltdown. The actual melting type. Not Figurative or metaphorical.

‘Did you get any of that?’ asked Trig to the fingertip stuck on Salvo’s temple.

‘Nothing.’

‘Not even one word?’

‘Way too fast. Fuck. You should’ve let me speak to it, give it a closed question.’

‘You mean a yes or no answer thing…’

‘That’s what I was trying to think of when you gate-crashed with your ‘how are you? Please, thank you’ bullshit.’

‘Sorry, I thought you were stuck…’

‘Didn’t even bother to ask me.’

‘…and then that Russian came into my head so I just said it. Ask? You told me to shut up. I thought you’d want me to take the initiative.’

‘Jesus, Trig…’

‘Sorry.’

‘…you’re cautious when there’s no point and then you turn into fucking Cav when something’s actually at stake. Where did you even get those words from anyway?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Porn vid?’

‘Just thought it could speed things along a bit. What? I don’t watch Russian porn. Fuck off.’

Salvo pulled down the bottom part of her infamous retro Slazenger jacket [that she’d had since high school, possibly even primary school] and wiped off some imaginary dirt. It wasn’t cold in the area they were in, and there was no chilly breeze sweeping through, but that didn’t stop her trying to rub some warmth into her arms.

Trig watched her, interpreting it as a sign of annoyance.

‘Okay, ignoring the Russian porn tangent. You’re right, I messed up and shouldn’t have jumped in. But it’s working now, so…you can try your strategy. And I promise I won’t say a word.’

‘You don’t know any words.’

‘True.’

‘Just go stand over there, that way you won’t be tempted to interrupt.’

Trig pulled down the sleeves of his blank, black running jacket and backed off, stopping at one of the triangular imprints stamped on the ground. Salvo grunted, took a few moments to map out her prospective sentence then spoke it out loud in heavily accented Russian.

Despite the amateurish of the whole thing, the machine deemed it good enough to receive a beeping noise, the same type from earlier, followed quickly by a blinking green light on the left hand side, possibly a screen.

‘… … … … … … …’ it said, in much more digestible Russian.

‘Wai, I understand this one,’ Salvo yelled, tapping the machine with her left hand. ‘I think.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Wait, let me respond first.’ She turned back to the machine and said something longer in Russian. Another beeping noise sounded out, succeeded by another monologue.

‘Fuck,’ said Salvo, lips tightening immediately afterwards.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. The first line was ‘welcome to this place’, that’s the one I understood. Then I asked what this place was, and it started reeling off the entire Russian dictionary.’

‘Did you get anything?’

‘No, nothing, it was too fast. And my vocab is way too limited.’

Trig looked towards the green light, squinted at it, tried not to listen to the rhythmic throbbing noise it appeared to be making. ‘Okay. What could it be saying? Logically?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Some kind of description of this place?’

‘Possibly. I can keep trying. See if I can get shorter answers out of it.’

‘Or get it to speak Cantonese.’

‘Err…’

‘Or English maybe.’

‘Yeah, that might be more realistic.’

Trig nodded, fucked up an easy whistle, found a comfortable spot on the wall with no green slashes or triangles or holograms, and then proceeded to lean awkwardly against it. Somehow, he wasn’t so worried anymore. Probably because Salvo had stopped being pissed off at him and there was no apparent danger of cave death. The machine hadn’t activated any defensive measures, no laser turrets hidden in the ceiling, so whoever constructed this place clearly weren’t primitive militaristic types. And they knew Russian. Which was either very odd or very ambiguous. Maybe even esoteric. If that meant what he thought it did.

He ran through some quick theories in his head, ending on the usual ‘can’t know for sure, not enough data.’ But with the data they did have, it seemed highly likely that it could be aliens.

And those aliens had built a portal to a machine that said ‘welcome.’

In Russian.

Ah, it wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t impossible either. It was simply a puzzle they had to solve, a puzzle with no overt punishments for failure. Meaning they could continue trying indefinitely.

And maybe Russian wasn’t even required…Cav didn’t know any and he’d managed to make it through. Unless he’d been studying secretly in the petrol station. But then, he would’ve practised on them, shown off as soon as he could make a simple sentence. And he hadn’t done that. Therefore his Russian was still shit. And he obviously wasn’t in this cave-base-alien factory type place anymore, he’d got through. Russian-less.

Yup, that was the clincher.

If Cav had managed to work out this machine, anyone could.

+++

Time wasn’t clear without their phones on hand, but after what felt like an hour of repeated Russian noise and the occasional shaky-voice question from Salvo, Trig was forced to scale back his original confidence.

The machine didn’t recognise English.

The machine didn’t recognise Mandarin.

The machine didn’t recognise random Japanese phrases from popular anime.

The machine didn’t respond to direct questions.

The machine loved the sound of its own voice.

There was a chance they could communicate with it eventually, but there was also a chance they would starve to death in this room with the sound of electronic Russian nonsense ringing in their ears.

Almost on que, his stomach rumbled.

Diu lei, he thought, putting his hand over it. Biology was starting to catch up. No food since his last break, around five thirty, and no proper meal since lunch. And no sign of dinner any time soon.

Light up, take my mind off it.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a clump of ash.

What the…

Going back in, he pulled out more ground-up bits and examined them on the palm of his hand. It didn’t much look like a pack of cigarettes anymore, but that’s the only thing it could possibly be.

He tipped his palm and let it all fall to the ground.

Fuck.

The portal or tunnel or whatever it was must’ve done it. But not to him. Or his jacket. Or his shoes. Just to his cigarettes.

Was someone judging him?

Helping him to quit?

His arms tensed up, followed by his chest muscles.

His stomach rumbled again.

He laughed.

It didn’t matter.

The habit was tiny, less than ten a day.

It’s not like he needed them.

What cigarettes?

He stretched out his legs one at a time and listened to the machine waffle on in gapless Russian while Salvo held out one begging hand and repeated over and over the same sound.

Stop probably.

+++

Another unknowable period of time later, possibly ten minutes, Salvo came over to the triangular pads and said she needed a break.

‘Getting anywhere?’

‘I heard because. And Seven.’

Trig looked at the tips of his shoes, throwing some cigarette ash at the green beyond them.

‘You hungry?’

‘I was.’

‘Don’t suppose you have any snacks in your pockets?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Can I bum a cigarette?’

Trig indicated the ground by his legs, which was a bit pointless as the ash was too spread out to be recognisable as anything but dust. Noticing her confusion, he told her what had happened.

‘Diu.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘No food, no drink, no cigarettes.’

‘No bed.’

‘How long can humans survive without water again?’

‘Don’t know. Four days?’

Salvo turned hands into fists and, in what seemed to be a brand new habit, clicked her knuckles together. ‘Time for more Russian.’

‘Good luck.’

He watched her walk back over to the machine, re-igniting the green lights on its panels with a single phrase. And the accompanying throbbing sounds, of course. Then it was back to rhetoric mode; the machine voice droning on and on while Salvo slowly moved her right ear closer to where the audio seemed to be coming from.

Perhaps it was saying nothing. Just formalities like, ‘this place is for all who come here’ or ‘the metal is composed of this and the walls are made of that.’

Or maybe it was just a long, detailed warning list.

Feeling more than a little useless, Trig lifted himself up off the triangular pad and drifted around the chamber. The complete lack of decoration was, in a philosophical way, unsettling, especially if they were to be stuck there, yet it didn’t overwhelm him.

Zinc Burger was well-decorated, after all.

And the room wasn’t exactly blank. There was the odd diagonal skew of the ceiling. The Green triangular pads. The weird green tint of the metal panelling. And the machine god figure propped statue-like in the middle of it all, speaking in Russian tongues.

To others it may have seemed terrifying, but to him…the more he looked at it, the more he considered it all, the greater sense of serenity he felt.

Of course, he would’ve felt even better if they had a way out of there, or had his cigarettes, or a cup of water…but…at least this was something new.

Something different.

He moved closer to the walls, examining them for secret latches or cracks that could indicate a hidden door. There was nothing egregiously visible so he tried tapping and rubbing the smoother surfaces, as well as bumps in the floor. Or the ground. Or the floor. Technically, they were inside some kind of structure so it should’ve been floor, but he kept using them interchangeably.

Strange, he thought.

He completed a full lap and stopped on the same triangular pad he’d sat on before. Tapping the edges of it hadn’t worked the first time he tried it, but he tapped again anyway.

It didn’t work a second time.

Where the hell was the exit then?

If you build a space like this, you have to build a way in and out, he reasoned, bending down and running his finger along a suspicious ridge on the bottom of the wall.

But then…did it have to be a door?

Perhaps the machine was the entry point, and if they could say the right phrase, a panel would rise up and let them inside. Or these green triangles on the floor could be some kind of wall-less elevator, controlled by the machine.

It was plausible, but without a fluent Russian speaker around, they were stuck.

Didn’t help that the machine spoke so fast.

If it slowed down to half speed, maybe Salvo could do it, but as it was there was just no way.

It was brain-destroying.

He’d tried to decipher the machine’s monologues himself a few times, but each time he focused for more than a thirty seconds, his eyelids had started to droop.

His eyelids were starting to droop now too.

Bending down was clearly a mistake, as was trying to scrutinise objects and theorise, but it was too late, he was already near the floor and wasn’t it just easier to sit down and rest for a bit instead of trying to get back up?

Clenching the sleeve of his jacket into a scruffy ball, he forced his eyelids open and then pushed his legs up into a caveman hover posture. Told himself to walk and then walked, in a weird curve over to Salvo to ask how it was going.

‘I feel drained,’ she replied, bending down to massage the top of her thighs.

‘Mentally?’

‘Brain, throat, legs. Must be all this standing and trying to think in Russian at the same time. It’s not natural.’

‘You should take a break.’

‘I just did that.’

‘Take a longer break.’

‘And then what?’

‘Try again with a fresh mind.’

Salvo turned the leg massage into leg whacking, and then looked around the space, inevitably being drawn to the two triangular imprints. ‘There must be something we’ve missed.’

‘I’ve checked everything.’

‘You don’t build a place without an access point. Right?’

‘Humans don’t.’

She paused, running her eyes back up the length of the machine. ‘You really think it’s aliens?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Nah, it doesn’t make sense. Cav must’ve been here, and he doesn’t speak any Russian. How did he get out?’

‘Maybe someone came to get him?’

The leg whacking stopped, turned back into massage, a very low energy one. ‘You mean the aliens?’

‘Or the bin bag guy I saw…he could’ve come here.’

‘I don’t know if I like the idea of that. The same guy who was trying to get you in that tunnel. Same guy who did get that other guy in there. Maybe assaulted him too.’

‘We don’t know that for sure.’

‘For sure, no, but-…’

‘And it doesn’t seem very militaristic here.’

‘Not yet.’

Trig realised this was going in a direction that would make them both depressed so he put his eyes back on the machine. Logic and reason was required here, not terror. In Star Trek, some episodes would start with a supposed monster and by the end it would turn out the monster was in fact a diplomat from the planet Ooboo or something. That’s the kind of optimism he needed to inject into this weirdness.

Wrapping himself in his own advice, he advanced to the machine and placed his hands on the light that seemed to blink the most when Russian was being spouted.

If there’s a machine, then someone built it.

If they built it, they must be connected to it.

Why would they put a machine here?

To tell them when someone was there.

They were there.

The machine knew they were there.

It had communicated that fact to its builders.

Those builders would be there soon.

They would not be sociopathic murderers with bin bags on their shoulders.

They would be nice.

Star Trek had promised him.

Nice and curious and-

Trig’s eyelids started to feel heavy again so he took his hand off the machine and lightly slapped himself on the cheek. Surprisingly, Salvo didn’t ask what he was doing. Maybe she was busy thinking out the same thing, the rationality of the machine’s existence here. He turned round to relay his chain of logic to her.

Kai zi, he thought, looking over at the wall.

Possibly anticipating the amateur logic coming her way, Salvo had pre-empted the assault by laying herself down next to one of the green triangles and using her scrunched-up Slazenger jacket as a makeshift pillow.

Trig hurried over, refusing to believe she’d fallen asleep that fast.

‘Salvo?’ he said, gently nudging her shoulder.

She rolled over just enough to reveal the chill koala t-shirt underneath, with the notorious text command to ‘LEAF ME ALONE.’

‘You’re not asleep.’

‘Arrrrrr…’

‘See?’

Salvo made another bizarro noise then buried her face deeper into her jacket. Trig tried a few more ‘Salvo’ attempts, plus some light tugging of her hair, but it was no good, she was out.

The Russian must’ve exhausted her, he told himself, sitting down with his back against the metal wall. Even more than my double shift at Zinc Burger.

Diu, was that really today?

He thought back, but didn’t have to go far. It’d only been two hours since he’d walked out of work. Maybe three. And now he was god knows where, surrounded by weirdly dark green metal and a machine that only spoke Russian, hoping that someone not psychopathic would get a message from said machine and come and retrieve them.

It was a big if, no matter how tightly he attached himself to the word logic.

+++

A green light

somewhere above, a ceiling perhaps

the throbbing sound

then a voice talking to him in Russian,

only now he could understand every word and

the light blinked

no, not one light, four of them

blinking as the figure spoke

an alien with a strictly triangular face, telling him in posh Russian that he wasn’t supposed to be there, but as he was there, he may as well join this new triangle scheme he’d come up with

and a form appeared in front of him

a green pen

with four blinking lights

and it wasn’t a triangle scheme

it said PYRAMID

and the alien with a triangular face was pushing the pen into his chest, saying, ‘sign, sign, sign,’ and when he tried to resist, he found he was frozen stiff and the pen

it was shrinking

no

it was burrowing

going through the fabric of his Aso-des t-shirt and inside his chest

making a tunnel to his lungs

and the alien’s face was gigantic

eclipsing the lights

hovering above

asking him something that wasn’t intelligible anymore, something not even Russian.

The lights stopped blinking.

‘… … … … … …?’ asked the voice, each sound drawn out within a raspy breath.

‘What?’

‘… … … … … …?’

Trig closed his eyes and waited for the darkness to erase the noise, but the noise persisted.

His eyes shot open, zooming left.

Salvo was there, sitting up, jacket as a shield, squinting at something.

‘What’s going on?’ Trig asked, slurring the end of his speech due to residual fatigue.

‘… … … … … …?’

He spun back and faced the voice.

It was something dark with a triangular face…no, a slightly triangular face…and there was something electronic-looking in its…was that a hand? A claw? Something in between?

Trig tried to move his face closer, but there was something stopping him.

He put out his hands to feel it, to push it away, but there was nothing.

No physical obstacle.

Just air.

‘Who?’ he asked, turning his head slightly.

‘Their hands,’ replied Salvo quietly, one arm in tight against her chest, the other holding out the balled-up Slazenger jacket as a defensive shield.

‘… … … … … … … …?’

Was it language? Words?

Trig wanted to say something intelligent in response, but his brain was in panic mode and all he could think of was, ‘fucking triangle.’

So he said that.