Back to top 27th Nov. 2005

After the failed attempt at getting the protesting job back Adrian a number of the left over protestors tried to get a job with the Hall of Bureaucracy but
but was denied. Some bit about not hiring former protestors for some reason. The next night there was a bright blue flash in the sky and the a wall of brilliant blue light come towards him. He couldn't remember anything any had happened after that. The next thing Adrian could remember he was waking up in a strange room, hearing something he had never heard before: birds chirping. The old Towz had never had such things for some reason. At least Adrian had never noticed them before. And there were lots of trees too. Upon waking up he knew almost immediately there was something different about him, something that seperated Adrian from the rest of the newly formed Towzians. At first no one really knew that there were different kinds of citizens in the city.
Towz, Adrian learned, had been entirely set into suspended animation for some undetermined amount time immediately after the mysterious light had engulfed the city.
The citizens had slowly woken up to find themselves in an entirely different sort of city. Trees were now conveniently placed around the the city, and it was much cleaner and nicer looking. The Hall of Bureaucracy was gone entirely, replaced by a festive looking structure. A large majority of the citizenry found the themselves living in a much different sort of place than they were before. For some reason all of this majroity just felt happy all the time and perfectly contented with how they were living. No one seemed to know what had happened or why but no one seemed to be complaining. At least that's what happned for a majority of the citizenry. What few percentage of the populace found themself less transformed as compared to the rest of the citizens were confused and didn't what was going on. But the Towzians weren't complete zombies, and worked to figure out what had happened. Eventually everyone came to agreement on the dams requiring seepage to maintain and perfection can't last without flaws. The new Towzians seemed almost completely benign and incapable of violent thought. Though some minimum amount of drive to improve one's self and specialize in what interests are most appealing remained, it was very subtle and hardly noticable. This may be the main reason behind the abandonment of any sort of concept of currency or trade.
The transformed Towzians were certainly a happy bunch but were a bit eccentric. None of them seemed to smile, they all seemed to think similarly for the most part anyway, and went through their assorted rituals without much discussion.
Those who were left felt left out of soceity and started to congregate together into groups. The outsiders couldn't seem to tell if they were being merely tolerated or if this was the Towzians version of "tolerance". Eventually Adrian emerged as the leader of the group of imperfect, flawed Towzians and set up camp in the large cavern. Adrian didn't know how long it had been since he had been taken out of suspended animation, all forms of time keeping seemed to have been lost. Perhaps it was the the source of the power that was preventing this from happening.
Then Jerome as his group showed up. Insisted there some sort of threat from outside the city the Towzians needed to pay attention to. The Towzians didn't seem to understand however. And the flawed ones, despite best efforts, just couldn't translate to the other Towzians anything about a threat. So Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan were taken out of Northern Towz and re-animated in the hopes of more success.
Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan just stared and seemed to pay a lot of attention to this as Adrian explained these details. It was
hoped, being only recently re-animated, the three of them could help bring some progress along. There were still many quesitons remaining in the minds of Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan but they had been resting for quite a while now. The four them decided it was time to get back on the trail. Another few hours and Adrian finally called a halt, announcing the destination was but a hundred or so yards ahead of them.

Chapter 9

The cavern the four of them had been traveling through all this time was now narrowing qutie it a bit. The cavern leading away from where they stopped was an increasing incline as it went away from them. At the top of the long row was a very unnatural looking wall, Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian could not tell quite what the wall could be made out of but it was clearly not the natural rock of the cavern. Adrian explained they'd need to sneak up to it and try to stay quiet.
As the four of them made their way up the the cavern trail toward the wall at the top a noise started to become more and more apparent. It was a strange noise, Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian seemed to almost feel it as much as hear it. Finally they had arrived at this wall sticking out of the rock.
"What do we do now, Adrian?" Cogil asked.
"Don't worry, I have a plan." Adrian retorted.
"Great, that sounds great." Cogil said.
Adrian put down his pack and started going through it. Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for: a brick shaped thing of some sort. He began to attached to the wall. Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan just stood back and watched, confused as to what inthe world Adrian was doing.
"Adrian, what are you doing?" Vincent asked.
"Oh, this will get us in, don't worry." He answered.
Adrian then inserted some wires into the the strange brick that was now attached to the wall and started to walk away.
"Come on guys, this will be much more fun from more of a distance. Trust me." Adrian said.
"Uh, alright. I still wish I knew what was going on though." Vincent said.
Before long Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian had retraced their steps all the way back to the original hundred or so yards from where they had started. At the end of the wires Adrian had attached to the strange brick was another device, strangely hidden. Adrian suddenly had a strange expression on his face like he was about to do something either really fun or really wrong.
"Adrian", Cogil started to say, "what exactly are you d---"
Before Cogil could finish Adrian squezed the device in his and there was a gian t booming sound that surrounded them and caused the whole tunnel to shake. Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan were thrown back several feet, dust and debris started to fall all around them.
"Adrian, what the hell was that?" Cogil asked.
Cogil then turned toward Ryan and Vincent, but didn't see them.
"And where Vincent and Ryan? There were right behind me a minute ago." Cogil noticed.
"What? Oh they're around here somewhere. We'll look for them in a moment. For now I just want to wait for the dust to settle so we can see if we got through that wall barrier that was here." Adrian explained. He seemed entirely too happy with himself that he had managed to blow something up and make a really loud sound.
"Can't we do both at once? Why wait for the dust to clear thene look?
"I guess we could do both at once, but I really want to see the result of my explosion." Adrian said.
"Ok, that's a bit wierd. If it's all the same to you I'm going to try and find them." Cogil said.
"Ya, fine." Adrian replied.
The air was still quite dusty but Cogil started crawing around looking for the Ryan and Vincent. Tracing a small distance behind where he was, Cogil continued to call out for Ryan and Vincent, but her still heard nothing. Finally, he saw what he thought was a show sticking out of the rubble. Cogil rushed toward it and looked in the area. When he got to the shoe it was obviously no one was around it. So Cogil continued on to look further down the cave. After several minutes of searching and calling the names out in the silence of the dusty cave he spotted them, laying unconsious on the cave floor.
Cogil rushed toward the both of them laying on top of some rocks and fearing the worst. Vincent had a few scrapes on his head but otherwise seemed to be doing ok. Ryan, on the other hand, just seemed to be in much worse shape. He was unconsious and his leg was wrapped around behind his back. With an effort Cogil managed to revive Vincent.
"What...what happened?" Vincent asked.
"Adrian decided to do a little demolishing without much warning to us for some reason. I always wondered about that guy, frankly." Cogil answered.
"Ya, he's wierd sometimes. What happened to Ryan?" Vincent seemed concerned.
"Oh, he's over there a little ways. And seems to be injured." Cogil said.
"Is he ok? What's going on?" Vincent asked, still a little dazed.
"I'm not sure if he's ok, you both were thrown back rather far and he is beaten up rather badly, his leg is bent behind his back." Cogil explained.
"Alright, help me up, I will try and have a look at him." Vincent asked as he tried to get up.
"Woe, buddy. You're not doing so well yourself. Why don't you rest a bit." Cogil said.
"Hey! Guys! We're through! Oh get up will ya?" Adrian yelled.
"His concern for our well being is so touching." Cogil remarked, not turning around.
Adrian, seeing his remarks had little effect on the activities of the other three looked annoyed. He started running twoard the group of them, dodging large rubble as he went along.
"Come on guys, get up. We almost to our power source here." He said. For coming so far so quickly he didn't seem to be out of breath at all.
"What's going on Adrian? We obviously have to very injured people here. I think Ryan is going in to shock, we have to get him back to the Cavern or taken to someone quickly!" Cogil exclaimed.
"Oh, that. Obviously no one has gone over the rest of this power with you." He said. With that statement Adrian went over and touched Ryan's forehead with two fingers. He closed his eyes and started chanting something quietly. After a few seconds Ryan suddenly opened his eyes and took a long gasping breath at the same time. Ryan sat up and continued to breath for another couple moments. Cogil and Vincnet just stared at this turn of events, confused.
"What just happened?" Ryan asked, "you two look like you've just seen a ghost."
"Oh, that about covers it" Cogil said, still a shocked look to his face.
"Even though we flawed Towzians, as some call us, are different from the rest of the Towzians we still share some common traits with them."
"Such as a seemingly saintly ability to heal people effortlessly?" Cogil asked, still surprised and shocked at this turn of events.
"Yes, among a few others. You three probably have some of the abilities as well, Northern Towzians have never been taken out of suspension before to really experiment and see what happens. Here, let me heal Ryan as well." With that Adrian leaned over and similarly pressed two fingers to Ryan's forehead, closed his eyes and after moments mumbled something incorherently. A few more moments later and Adrian opened his and lifted his fingers from Ryan's forehead. Ryan turned to him, and seemed to be confused. He touched his forehead and noticed the cut on his forehead seemed to be gone.
"what, what did you do? What's going on?" he asked, hopelessly incomprehensive.
"Just a gift all Towzians got with the great transition. You probably have the ability too. Get up now you two, you should be fine." he said.
With a little effort Ryan and Vincent got up and started to test out their legs. Both of them, though going through a bit of a trauma to their bodies, were quite surprised with their apparently abilities to walk around as if nothing at all had happened to them.
"Alright, Adrian. That was really magical and all but could you give us a bit more warning if you do that again?" Cogil asked.
"Yes, yes. Fine then. You're, aren't you? Jeeze. Bunch of babies. Alright lets go back to the wall and see if it's open." Adrian started climbing back up toward the wall that had ended the tunnel, hopping over rubble in his path.
Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan all followed closely behind, now wondering about the sanity and apparent stability Adrian contained. Adrian seemed to be having the best time, exercising his apparent new ability to quickly jump for boulder to boulder up back towards the top of the tunnel. It wasn't a few minutes and he was back, examing the area where he had placed the explosive charges.
"Well, not exactly what I had in mind but close enough. The wall hasn't been blown open but at least it is weakened a bit a cracked in some areas. If we work together we can break through this wall." Adrian said. The others just looked on, confused and suspicious of his intentions.
"What? Oh pff come on, I knew you'd be ok. I fixed a ya didn't I? Now come up here, I'll show you how to concentrate your mental energy into a form that further weakens an artificial wall.
Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan approached the wall, still staring suspicously at Adrian.
"Ok, now put you right hand on the wall and close your eyes. Concentrate on breaking through the wall. See it crumbling into peices in front of you, with a nice since gap we can all walk through. I'll concentrate and try to guide you with my mind." Adrian explained.
Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan placed thier hands on the wall and closed thier eyes, obviously skeptical that anything happen. After a moments a subtle crackly sound started coming out of the wall. The wall began to crack and get weaker and weaker. The wall around Adrians hand started to crumble faster and faster. A few more moments and that section of wall was turning into sand. A minute or so behind, the wall near the hands of Vincent, Cogil, and Ryan was also the starting to crumble.
This whole process was starting to give Vincent an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. He could feel the wall immediately in front of him start to crumble and fall apart, but he couldn't understand how it was happening. He just kept doing what he thought Adrian had instructed and visualizing the wall falling apart. Suddenly this idea just became incredibly clear and easy to him. It was like he was exerting his whole consousness over the entire wall, instructing the atoms that made the wall solid to part out his way because he said so. As he had this epifany the wall immediately in front of him just crumbled away and in front of him and a perfectly shaped hold in the wal now appeared, going back several hundred feat. The other suddenly stopped and just stared and Vincent, stunned as to what had just transpired.
"How in the world did you just do that?" Adrian asked.
Ryan and Cogil looked over and Adrian, utterly confused. Adrian, the ver person who had instructted all of them, was turning to Vincent and asking how he used the mysterious mind of power of Towz of mystery. How was this possible?
"What do you mean how I do it? You were the one showing the three of use how to do it, remember?" Vincent said.
"Yes, but I've never done anything like that and I've been doing this to walls for years. I don't think I've ever seen anybody do that to a wall before. That's just amazing." Adrian said, still quite surprised at the gaping hole and resulting perfectly shaped tunnel going into the wall.
"I don't know I was just concentrating and and I just had some sort of epiphany or something. I exerted my mind over the substance of the wall and told it I had wanted to move away for me. And it did. Now then, are we ready?" Vincent obviously seemed to miss the gravity of this development. Cogil, Ryan and Adrian all looked at each other and finally agreed to get going. As it turned out the wall wasn't just a wall but a an entire foundation of a building, or so it seemd to them all. Vincents perfectly shaped and rounded off tunnel seemed to go back into this foundation for miles but Adrian stopped them part way through and decided there were directly under their destination. The noise they had previously heard and felt in the cave tunnel seemed to be completely gone now, though Vincent was pretty sure there was a subtle rumbling in the floor.
Vincent asked Adrian how he could be sure that they had reach the right place directly below their destination. Adrian again described a method of touching the wall and this time concentrating more on the surrounds and disruptions to the material that made up the wall. How visualizing the inside of the wall would eventually reveal what was really inside of it.
Vincent touched the wall and reached out with his mind to try and find the openings in the walls around him. This seemed a little harder to him and he wondered what made it differently. He concentrated a few more minutes a little harder and suddenly this too made perfect sense. It was like he just formed a bond with the surrounding walls and the layout of the building around just visualized into his mind with very little effort. As the building plan visualized in his mind he was amazed at the size and scope of the structure. He further concentrated and tried to imagine more details. He then noticed a section of the building that hadn't appeared before and tried to further see it in more detail. With this effort the connection between him and the wall was suddenly severed and he was thrown back from the wall.
"What happened?" Cogil asked. "See something you didn't like?"
"I..don't know. I was visualizing the structure around us, the image was quite vivid. I thought I had found some other other section I hadn't noticed at first so I tried to zoom in further when a strange sensation just show threw me. It was really unpleasant." Vincent explained.
"Alright, that's where we need to go, to that spot. Now if you would be so kind as to make a new tunnel for us up to the next level so we can make our way over there..." Adrian suddenly stopped with a look from Vincent.
"You know, I'm not just some kind of trained monkey, here for to order around and dig tunnels for you. It's not like that tunnel making is easy or something."
"Yes, of coure. You just seemed to have toaken to it so easily and and don't seem to have aproblem doing so. Would you, please?" Adrian asked.
"Fine then, as long as you realize that." Vincent said.
Vincent leaned against the wall once more and started to concentrate. After several minutes the wall immediately in front of him looked a little softened up but no tunnel had yet been created. Adrian was about to say something when a strange tearing sort of sound shot through the air. Suddenly, an opening about as tall as the three of them was open immediately in front of Vincent. It was hard to see much further back than immediately in front of Vincent, it was like the structure wanted to hide the insides from them.
"Adrian, hand me the light." Vincent said. Taking the light, Vincent started to walk into the opening.
"That a little longer than before, what was going on that last time?" Cogil asked.
"Well I had to map out a three dimensional map in my head taking special care to avoid the spot that rejected me last time."
Vincent crouched a little bit as if he had been drained of energy a little bit.
"Then I had to create a tunnel network with a gradual incline that lead up the to main building. It took me several minutes but at least we'll have a pleasent walk up to the building." Vincent still seemed a bit out of breath.
"Oh you don't have to be hard on yourself at all, Vincent. You've taken to this ability incredibly quickly, much faster than anyone else in the history of Towz so far as I know. Just the fact you were able to do such a thing at all is quite impressive." Adrian said.
Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian started walking through the tunnel and started up the gradual incline Vincent had mentioned. The tunnel seemed incredibly long and seemed to go on without end but still seemed pleasent to walk through. Much like the design of Towz, Cogil thought. A few more hours of walking and Adrian finally suggested the four of them stop for a bit to eat. The others agreed this was a good idea and sat down where they were. Cogils pack had contained some apples and other fruits, which was convenient since that was Cogil's favorite kind of food. Ryan's, on the other hand, was much more of a compacted sort of meet product. Upon asking, he learned from Adrian this was called meat loaf. It had been sliced and packed in the form of a sandwhich. Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian were so relaxed after the meal they decided to just camp for the night.
It did occur to Cogil that it was in fact not night time and had only been a short time since last they had slept. But this he did not seem to mind because he was extremely tired what with the almost dieing in an explosion and all. Vincent also was extremely tired, but then he had good reason to be since head burrowed a long series of tunnels into solid rock and brick using nothing but his mind.
The following morning Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian all woke up around the same time feeling much better than the prior night. As they got deeper into the network of tunnels Vincent had created the noise all of them had heard and felt before started to come back, this time in a much more noticable way. The senssation produced by the noise wasn't so much painful as slightly irratating and a little unpleasent. The four pressed on even so and after some time grew accustomed to it. After what must have been hours, Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian came at last to a door leading what they all could only assume a door into the main building. Adrian took the lead this time. He turned the knob and they all went through. As soon as they were all through it occured to Cogil that a door placed right there didn't make a whole lot of sense and wondered if Vincent had some created it in the building wall like he did the network of tunnels. But if that were true why did he bother with a door? He would have to ask Vincent about that later.
As they entered the building it seemed abnormally dark. Not just lack any and all light, but even more dark than seemed to be possible.
"Ryan, you gota light?" Cogil asked.
"Ya, I think so" Ryan said.
After searching through his pack a moment Ryan found a little samp and light it up. The light seemed almost dimmed by the darkness around them but they could see a few feet in all the directions around them. The floor seemed to be very hard surface, almost like highly polished marble. As far as the light could reveal there didn't seem to be any thing around them in any direction.
"Whyich way should we go?" Vincent asked.
"Don't you know?" Adrian said.
"Well, lets see." Vincent stopped and thought a moment. Then, as if realizing something he set out in the direction directly away form the door they had come in. The further Vincent, Cogil, Ryan and Adrian walked the more defined the noise seemed to get. Finally they came to another rather large wall. The light didn't seem to reach up to the cielding so there was no way to see how high it went. The wall was also the highly polished marble the floor was made of. Everyone was suddenly stairing at Vincent expectantly, Vincent noticed.
"Alright, I'll try to see where it goes. Stand back." He said.
Vincent walked over to the wall and placed his hand on it. At once his face recioled as if in pain but he continued to hold his hand to the wall. His eyes were closed as tightly as possible and he seemed to be a deep almost trance-like state. After several minutes he finally took his hand offf the wall and opened his eyes.
"Well? What did you see?" asked Adrian.
"I couldn't see anything actually. But the source of the power is on the other side of this wall, whatever it is. That is for sure." He explained.
"What do you mean you couldn't see anything, Vincent? You were doing so well and seemed to be concentrating so hard." Adrian remarked.
"There something with this place. Makes seeing through walls and around corners quite difficult. And I get the feeling that is the way it was designed on purpose." Vincent explained.  ¶ 9:41 AM