More
M
A strange, short history of Seven Monolith Village by Char Wetherham.
Journal entries found and transcribed below by Julie Castillo.
I came to the desert looking for my friend Ximena; I met her on a hacking techring. We have become close over the past year, and last night she said she wanted to show me something in the desert right away, asking me to meet her at the Datamosh Bar… but she never showed up. She’s been hinting at some hacking she’s been doing into the data of Dramcorp, and I’m worried she may be in trouble.
Before I went to meet her, I grabbed supplies for a quick one-day desert trip at the Omega Mart in Vegas. Then I went to the bar, where I chatted with the bartender. She told me about the Dramcorp Factory in the desert, and when I mentioned I was headed that way, she got quiet and asked me what I knew about Additive S. I don’t know much, so I shrugged. She quickly changed the subject.
After three hours and no sign of Ximena, I was very worried about her. She wasn’t active on the server and wasn’t answering either of her phones. I told the bartender I was headed into the desert to find her. She looked around the room carefully and then told me to go to the Dramcorp Factory and walk out into the desert from there; she even drew me a simple map to find the village.
I walked here from the Factory, but I can’t find Ximena. The environment is arid, but clouds overhead look threatening. They are shot through with rainbow-hued colors that phase strangely against the canyon walls. An extraordinary river of light (or something else) runs across the canyon floor, but I don’t dare touch it. When I close my eyes against the infringing darkness of night, shifting patterns play across the insides of my eyelids.
It was dusk when I arrived, so I set up camp near the river of light. Dry wind trickled through the canyon, with hints of music and sounds, lulling me to sleep… After the long day hiking to the canyon from the Factory, I drifted gently into strange dreams.
I woke up to extreme disorientation…my surroundings look the same as they did last night, but I can’t tell if it’s morning, evening, or late afternoon. My cell phone doesn’t work, so no service or internet. Even the clock and maps have gone wonky. The light patterns still play across the canyon walls in ever-evolving geometries. I ate some prepackaged camping oatmeal and wandered out into the canyon to clear my head. I crept closer to the river, looking into its depths until I feared it would pull me in. The river is not made of water or even liquid – it’s something else entirely! And it seems to flow from the Factory! I hope I can find Ximena; maybe she can clear this all up.
Seven Monolith Village is an odd place; I found myself in a kind of town square. There are a few houses and what looks like a gas station. I tried the phone booth out front, but the line wasn’t working — I kept getting connected to random things. I met a woman named Rose, who said she knew Ximena but hadn’t seen her in a few days. She took me into her home and made me some tea.
Rose’s house was full of relics and strange dried herbs. She showed me a book that told the history of the village and its people. The book had many authors; the first was Asunción, who started the book in the 1930s. Her family travelled from Texas. The sketches were fading, so I used a gloved hand to sweep the desert dust off. As I flipped through the pages, I saw drawings of milkweed, saguaro, and yucca, plus an entry about a man who mysteriously fixed a broken-down family car with no tools except his hands. He told the family to find a “well” when they reached Nevada. The plants became even stranger, and referenced beings the author called “elders.”
Another book was about shadows, saying “One million voices will open the door.” I blinked as I read this, memories of last night’s dreams roiling through my mind.
As I continued, the entries became stranger: a drawing of a glowing flower that healed wounds; more mentions of the well; and entries about building Seven Monolith Village. Asunción’s and Rose’s dreams intermingle with my own until I can’t remember which is which…what is the “Source?” Rose shook her head when I asked and pointed to the strange glowing river and said, “It’s runoff now. We cannot reach the Source.”
I read an entry for tentacled mushrooms, “glow bulbs,” which Asunción says resemble onions, and chaser weed, which she says chases living things and ensnares them, drinking their blood. I nervously looked around the floor of the dwelling for these creatures! I can’t wrap my head around it…why do the plants glow? Is the desert radioactive? I wonder if it's unsafe, but I keep leafing through the book, unable to put it down. Did Asunción lose her mind out here in the desert canyon? I fell asleep that – night? day? – with the book next to me on my camp bed, dreaming of Ximena and Rose.
The next morning, I woke up to the same feeling of mental confusion, the pull toward the river, which I now know to be runoff from the Dramcorp Factory, and the familiar patterns on the canyon walls. Rose directed me to Ximena’s home, and I walked to it, trying to figure out what the Factory runoff was doing to the land. She and her roommates weren’t home, but I looked at their books and saw the computer that Ximena used to talk to the rest of our group. I left a note and moved on.
I crossed to an old gas station. Inside was an older man working at a strange device, pouring glowing liquid from the river into a series of tubes. He said he was making Mish Mash. A drink! This was Charlie. He told me that Ximena and her two friends, Lora and Jesse, were off causing trouble at Dramcorp. As I was leaving, he handed me a pamphlet about a “Paranormtour” of a local historical site. He said it would reveal secrets of ancient Zenia. I’d always assumed that Ximena’s stories were myths.
Rose had lent me a history of Seven Monolith Village, so I sat by the river of light and read more. Asunción and her family seemed to have gone through a portal into a “Forked Earth.” I must have walked through the same portal! Asunción then talked about finding a cave with a skeleton in it. I looked at the pamphlet Charlie had given me… was this the same skeleton? I put the book down and went out into the canyon; it took me the rest of the day to find the secret cave. I hesitated on the threshold, frightened of what I might find. And then I went in.
I am shaking so hard from my extraordinary discovery in the cave, I can hardly write! The stories of an ancient civilization are true! I don’t know what day it is anymore, and I don’t care. I don’t intend to ever return to Vegas; there’s nothing for me there now. What I found in the cave is earth-shattering, monumental, and I want to share it with Ximena. But she’s not here.
Yesterday (I think?) I entered the cave, and it was filled with wondrous things, including a glass enclosure (sarcophagus?) with the long-dead bones of a non-human being inside. According to the pamphlet, this was Thali, long-gone daughter of a Zenion priestess. On the walls, fantastic records of the long-ago history of The Forked Earth were painted. As I carefully examined the paintings, I heard whispers and glimpsed tall shadows at the edges of my vision; when I turned my head, they disappeared. I spent hours in the cave, trying to decipher the paintings and mesh them with the historical information in Rose’s book. I decided I would stay in Seven Monolith Village until I found the truth. I settled down to sleep that night with a peace in my heart that I hadn’t known in years, and the hope that Ximena would find me here soon.
