A man paces back and forth eagerly as he checks his phone. He looks to be in his mid-to-late thirties, possibly someone who works in the technology sector, maybe as a freelance programmer. However, one look at his room, walls cluttered with movie posters and a mini-fridge adjacent to his computer, would quickly show otherwise. He irritably twists his finger through his shaggy black hair, and sighs.
Where is he? He said he was on his way. He needs to hear this.
Andrew rechecks the file, making sure it’s still there, as though it might disappear as suddenly as it had appeared if not properly watched. He saved it to a cloud storage, then a physical storage, just in case the internet went out. He saved it in three different formats, so that any audio program could read and play at least one version of it. He resisted listening to it again, to avoid missing any text message in response from the only possible person he knew that might understand why this particular audio file was so interesting. He had tried to find a better description for the file beyond the unhelpful, bland platitudes that he had bombarded against Jacob, but nothing really fit beyond: weird, interesting, amazing, unique, and other essentially useless descriptions as far as trying to explain what it was, or more importantly-- what it sounded like.
Then, suddenly, a knock at the door.
Baring his usual dopey grin, Andrew heads to the door.
Finally!
Andrew swung open the door, and eagerly brought his friend inside.
“Here! Just sit down, I already have it set up.”
Jacob looked equal parts confused and worried.
“Okay, okay! I’m going man!”
Jacob walked over and sat down at the paper and snack bag cluttered desk. He knew exactly what kind of behavior this was. This was Andrew’s “conspiracy theorist” mode. Frankly, the term “conspiracy”, gave a lot more credit to Andrew’s average “theory” than most would say they deserved, Jacob included. Jacob was the only real friend that Andrew had, and Jacob knew that without him, Andrew would likely just obsess and spiral. However, he couldn’t say that at the end of the day the path the Andrew usually led him down wasn’t, at the very least, pretty weird and at least vaguely interesting. So when he told Jacob that this was: “Absolutely the craziest thing I’ve ever found.” That the file was “Seriously, absolutely amazing! Just... weird!” He couldn’t exactly turn down another opportunity to head down the rabbit hole that was Andrew’s obsession with his “audio enigmas.”
Yes, “enigmas”, as Andrew called them. These sounds were recordings he made using a device he had built himself. It would’ve been impressive if it wasn’t such a waste of his intelligence and talent. He usually ended up with various garbled electronic feedback and noise that sounded, as far as Jacob was concerned, like sounds you’d hear on a spaceship in a low budget sci-fi movie. The actually interesting part, at least as far as Jacob was concerned, was that Andrew was usually able to figure where the sound of coming from, whether it was feedback from a local radio station’s signal, or the white-noise from a factory, and track it down. He was even able to duplicate the sound once he had found the source, “solving the mystery” as it were. It was a strange hobby, and arguably pointless, but at the very least it kept Andrew satisfied.
Jacob put on the headphones, hoping the sound would live up to the endless hype that Andrew had built. He hovered the mouse pointer over the play button, and looked back at Andrew, who just nodded vigorously, and hit play.
...
Jacob didn’t know what to think at first. Was the sound weird? Yes, but most of the sounds Andrew found were, at the very least, that. Was the sound interesting? Well... not really, but can a sound really be interesting without any context? However, was the sound unique? Absolutely. In fact, just as Andrew had struggled, Jacob now found himself equally unable to find any terms to apply to the sound. It was like smelling a kind of spice or herb that you’ve never come across, you can’t really describe it without knowing it. Finally, Andrew broke the silence.
“Well? That’s some weird shit, right?”
Jacob just nodded as he played the file again. He raised one earphone and turned towards Andrew.
“Drew... What the hell is it?”
Andrew shrugged, beaming.
“I got no fucking clue man!”, Andrew laughed in booming exuberance,
“Isn’t it great?”
Jacob laughed, although closer to a meek chuckle than a real laugh.
“Only you would think not knowing is great.”
Andrew turned to a pile of papers stacked on top of a closed laptop.
“Seriously Jake, I have no idea where this came from-- let alone what it is.”
Jacob furrowed his brow,
“What? How can you not know where it came from? Where was it pointed?”
Andrew shook his head without looking up from the papers,
“It wasn’t pointed at anything. I always leave it pointed in the same position when I’m not specifically trying to look for anything. I mean, I have it set up to record it it picks something up, but for the last year it was always nothing. It was only yesterday that I checked it, and saw that it had picked something up. I aimed it there all day today, and it still hasn’t picked up anything else.”
Jacob smirked,
“Well, you have your first real mystery on your hands don’t you Agent Mulder?”
Andrew rolled his eyes,
“Well, Scully, I’ll just have to rope you into this, won’t I?”
Jacob chuckled, putting down the headphones, and sitting backwards in the chair,
“So, where do we start?”
Andrew took on a sudden look of seriousness, as he thumbed through the various papers in his hands, before finally taking out two and handing them to Jacob.
“We start here, which is the only real lead I have.”
The first was a Google Maps printout, leading to a location that seemed to be in the middle of an empty area of undeveloped land. The second was a Google Streetview, that showed that it was in fact some kind of empty warehouse or factory, that seemed old, but not excessively dilapidated.
Jacob’s eyebrows rose,
“What is it?”
Andrew shook his head as he took the pages back,
“No idea, could find any information on it, not even what it’s mailing address was-- let alone anything about what it was at any point of operation-- if it ever was in operation.”
“So,” Jacob said, “when do we go?”
Andrew grinned, and hoisted a pair of backpacks.
“Tonight.”
Jacob put the bags in the trunk of his car, as Andrew fumbled with the car’s stereo, which he was in the process of hooking up to his phone. Jacob chuckled quietly, thinking about how little his friend had changed over the time he had known him. He wondered if he would still be doing this sort of thing ten years from now. Part of him hoped that eventually he’d grow out of this nearly juvenile fascination with all this pursuit of these non-mysteries. Although, for now, he was fairly amused by the ordeals that Andrew dragged him through.
Getting into the car, Jacob noticed Andrew’s look of frustration as he fiddled with his phone.
“What’s up man? No reception? We don’t need GPS or anything, I got the directions right here,” Jacob said, as he patted the print-out that Andrew had prepared for them earlier.
Andrew shook his head,
“Nah, it’s the sound man. I can’t get it to play on your stereo. I listened to it on my phone before we left, so it’s not the file.”
Jacob shrugged, starting the car.
“Whatever, we’ve both just heard it. It’s not like we’ll forget already.”
Andrew nodded, tucking his phone into his shirt pocket.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Immediately, Andrew went from dejected to ecstatic.
“Okay, let’s head out!”
...
As they climbed out of the car, they stood for a moment in stunned silence. It was clear that the pictures they had seen online were outdated. Very outdated. The slightly dilapidated warehouse they had seen online was, in reality, a wilting mass of rusted sheet metal and peeling paint.
“Wow,” was all Jacob could manage after a moment.
Andrew was a slightly more optimistic, as he turned to Jacob and smiled.
“Good thing I packed us those asbestos-graded masks, right?”
Jacob was more of a realist.
“Drew, man, I don’t know-- This place looks like it could come crashing down on our heads, you know?”
“Oh whatever, it’s fine.” Andrew scoffed. “The worst thing we have to worry about is stepping on a rusty nail or something, don’t be overdramatic.”
Jacob sighed, and resigned himself to the fact that Andrew wasn’t one to be deterred from a place like this.
As they entered the building, they found that the interior was in better condition than the outside would have led one to believe.
“So,” Jacob started, “do you really think it could’ve come from in here? I mean, usually the places are, I don’t know, occupied, right? I mean, they at least have people still there. How could it be coming from a place like this? I thought it was just in bad condition when we looked online, but it’s pretty clear nobody’s been here for years.”
Andrew thoughtfully tugged at his patchy beard.
“Well... The only thing I can think of, is if something is still tied into the power system, which in turn is still hooked up to the power grid. Although, I have trouble believing they would ignore it for this long. But, hey, anything’s possible right?”
Jacob returned a nonplused nod in response, “I suppose.”
Andrew patted him on the back,
“Hey, this is the only place it could’ve come from. I mean, you saw the drive up here-- there’s literally nothing arounds for miles. If the sound isn’t from here, then it’s just a bug, or a mistake in the program. It would be the first bug I’ve had with the program since I’ve started using it, but, like I said-- anything is possible. This is just the more interesting possibility.”
Jacob smiled,
“Well, at least you’re being a little more realistic.”
Andrew laughed,
“Exactly! Now, let’s figure what this place was. My bet is on some kind of storage facility for cryogenics, which was abandoned once the fad died out in the early 2000s.”
Jacob just rolled his eyes in response.
...
Andrew had immediately gone for the remnants of what looked to be a corner office, while Jacob had decided to check the door in the back, looking for anything that might clue them into the direction of a generator or power supply.
Inside, Jacob found various empty shelves in various degree of collapse, along with a single large circuit breaker in the corner of the room. Jacob sighed. It was clear that this place didn’t have any kind of generator or major machinery. He opened the circuit breaker and flipped the various switches to no avail. It was obvious that the place was as dead as it looked. Jacob decided to head back to Andrew, hoping that he’d found something to make this expedition at least worth the gas he’d spent to get them there.
He found Andrew sitting in a rusted metal folding chair, which he couldn’t believe he actually sat in without winding up sprawled out on the floor like a comedic caricature. Andrew was looking over a toppled file cabinet, searching through a clearly empty drawer.
“Hey, so, did you find anything?” Jacob asked.
Andrew sighed, shaking his head.
“Nah, this place has been out of commision forever by the looks of it. I’m thinking that the whole ‘this is just an empty warehouse, and the sound is just some glitch,’ idea is becoming ever more likely.”
Jacob nodded, and sat on the floor.
“Yeah, there’s just the one circuit breaker, so this place isn’t exactly a powerhouse, you know?”
Andrew chuckled, this time without the usual enthusiasm.
“Sorry I got you so worked up, I was sure this would be worth checking out. It’s not even old enough to be interesting in a kind of ‘urban exploration’ kind of way. It’s literally just a glorified abandoned empty garage. Really wasted your time...”
Jacob shrugged, smiling.
“Hey, can’t know without checking, right? Let’s give the outside at least a once over before we head out. Maybe there’s at least, I don’t know, some separate utility closet or something. They had one at that place we went to last month, right?”
Andrew nodded as he stood up.
“Sure, might as well.”
...
They had found something. The two of them differed on what exactly it was, but it was definitely something.
“Come on man, it’s just like you said! It’s like a separate utility area, or whatever! It’s a pretty simple explanation Jake, don’t bail on me now.” Andrew pleaded.
The “it” in question, was a small set of doors set into the ground. And, as far as Jacob was concerned, it looked more like a cellar than anything that even resembled a utility closet.
“I still don’t know man. It just doesn’t sit right, you know? I mean I was talking about like a shed attached to the building itself. Not like a fucking medieval wine cellar like fifty feet away from the warehouse. I don’t even think it’s a part of it, it seems like it’s something left over from whatever was here before the warehouse, whenever that was...”
Andrew groaned in frustration.
“Oh for Christ’s sake-- now who’s the one with the active imagination man? It’s not some serial killer’s secret storage space, or some middle-of-nowhere homeless squat spot! It’s just like, a place for the generator. They probably just had to keep away from the warehouse for like, zoning reasons or some shit-- it doesn’t matter!”
Jacob shook his head,
“No man, that doesn’t make sense. I mean that’s like way too far. I don’t care what zoning fines you’d get, it wouldn’t be cheaper to have your electrics this far away from the building.”
Andrew grabbed Jacob by the shoulders.
“Dude! That’s just one explanation, there’s probably a millions reasons why they’d do this, the point is that it’s here, we found it, and it’s probably where we need to go to find our sound, right?”
Jacob let out an exasperated sigh. It was clear that Andrew wasn’t going to let this go that easily. Even if it meant having to run screaming from a giant rat or some territorial, knife-wielding vagrant-- there was nothing that was going to stop him from dragging him down into this-- whatever it was.
“Okay! Okay... Let’s go down there. But! If see anything in there that seems like people are living down there-- I am done. You hear me? The last thing I need is to get shanked by some junkie for walking into his drug den-- alright?”
Andrew laughed, and clapped his hands together.
“Yes! Yeah man, for sure. I promise, first sign of sketch-- and we are gone. Deal?”
Jacob hesitantly smiled.
“Deal.”
...
Jacob felt ridiculous wearing the respirator mask, but Andrew insisted they wear them. Judging from the giggy look Jacob could see behind Andrew’s mask, it was mostly for Andrew’s own personal enjoyment (and making the descent feel more movie-like) than it was for their own safety. They had decided knocking would be the safest first step. Andrew had insisted that Jacob be the one who knocked, since he was the one paranoid about anyone being inside the “clearly abandoned” structure. Although Jacob was fairly certain it was so Andrew would be farther away in case someone came bursting out of the doors.
Jacob knocked. The sound reverberated for a few moments.
“Nothing.” Jacob said, visibly relieved.
“See? I told you there was nothing to worry about.” Andrew returned smugly.
Jacob rolled his eyes, “Yeah, but did you hear that echo? It sounds like the things pretty spacious. I’m still saying that it’s not any kind of utility space. At this point, I’d bet on some kind of secondary storage area.”
Andrew shrugged, “I don’t really care what it is, all I care about is finding the source of that sound.”
Jacob sighed, “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s all about solving the ‘mystery.’ Let’s just get this over with.”
Laughing, Andrew handed Jacob a flashlight. “Hey, you didn’t have to come, you know?”
Jacob couldn’t help but smile. They both knew there wasn’t a scenario in which Jacob would tell Andrew “no” to another aimless meander into the unknown. It just wasn’t in his character.
...
Andrew was the first to descend the stairs, his flashlight pouring light into the utter darkness. [to be continued]
