I

There was once a man named Huemaker who lived in a cave. He stayed in a small hollowed out room along with 469 others who also had their own little dirt rooms with makeshift doors, some reclaimed objects and a few mismatched and dented metal doors that had worn out stickers on them but if you went around and took notes of the sticker parts still intact that had been scratched off others; you would know these doors were from a business called “Rockets Movie Cinema” with a little red and blue cartoon character with outstreched arms and a rocket for a head. 

Huemaker spent his days milling in the circuit board shop where they reclaimed all the small pieces of gold and palladium and copper from green waferboards. Huemaker didn’t know the names of the precious metals he was picking but he liked seeing the strange symbols printed on some of the little intricate wafer boards. He noted that some of them had words using figures he recognized and some figures he didn’t. Huemaker learned from the scryne in his room that there are only 4 letters in the alphabet B O L T. He was shown through images to repeat this alphabet in order and sounded out “BOLT” if he ever found himself in danger. This command was shown to him nightly durring mandatory ‘room time’ as was understood to him by the guardians posted in his and everyone else's tiny cave dorm room doorways. He would enjoy making cold beans and cracker crumbs while the room scryne kept him company watching his favorite scrys like “bolt is my name” where a guy went and introduced himself to guardians as BOLT, and another called “on wings like bolts” where a beautiful cave woman with a little less dirt on her than most had prayed at an alter named BOLT. And of course the late night hard to catch show “bolt and bolt” verity show featuring life and death obstacle courses for extra beans and cartoons of guardians blowing up in silly ways. Mostly shows about goings on in the cave in various places like the main light shaft square park or the mudwater cafes, the poppy growing dungeons, work cairns, and the natural water springs that were popular gathering places for Huemakers neighboring cave dwellers, though no one ever talked. The shows however never used faces of people he recognized in the caves anywhere. He didn’t mingle much, he had a few friends he was forced to get together with regularly for some dirt football on whoever’s scryne was designated that week for if. They didnt talk to each other. There was another damper spiritually and socially in that place that lingered on everyone’s mind constantly. No one talked about it in fact it was major faux pax and would probably get one of the larger guards called on you. It was the giant black hole in the upper corner of the delivery yard where black tentacles would sometimes come out of and violently snatch one person from anywhere in the cave and haul them off into the void. No one dares go near it, everyone has heard the same story about one guy who got fed up and tried to look inside it with a flashlight. The tentacles snatched him up before any of the onlooking crowd could see anything. Some of the younger males in certain groups have made chin-up motions to others when passing by like they're not afraid to go over and look inside the hole, like it doesnt bother them, but none have tried it. All suspicion came to a head last week when a mandatory watching of a new room scryne show on everyone’s scrynes titled “real and true people: murders in the cave” didn’t show anything about the black void hole, but rather it began by featuring some blurry grainy security camera style footage inside a small postcard among other postcards being thrown on a table under a detective light in the shows opening intro sequence. The images only appeared on the scryne for a few frames but everyone saw it and it very much looked like a scene where a person was being dragged into a dark opening in that same delivery yard brick wall corner. That was enough for a growing population of the already suspicious and surpressed.

Yesterday Huemaker for the first time since he could remember, looked over across the room at the other who was sitting in another work hole, a dugout in the dirt floor, tearing apart green wafers using his pinky finger because the nails on his other fingers had been used up. Any talking or communication during work and any talk of any subject at any time that was not preapproved, which was very little, would grant a beating from the medium sized metal chrome guardians with red eyes. If the offense was dire or anything like the incident with the guy who kept screaming BOLLER, Huemaker thought; then larger black guardians with blue eyes come with a device that beheads people and then brings them back the next day. Huemaker had sharp eyes where most of his colleagues seemed to have weak ones. Whenever his guardians would look away, Huemaker would look over and try to notice things about his work neighbors. He could spot all sorts of things even at about 10 feet away. Not that Huemaker knew what a foot is, or any unit of measure, they gave the workers no tools or dignities of any kind, they had to do everything with their hands and feet. That’s how Huemaker noticed the man using his last pinky finger while fumbling nervously. That’s also how he saw the man mouthing and gently whispering letters that Huemaker did not know. Letters his room scryne had not taught him. He knew B O L T but the scryne said thats everything. He looked at his green wafer and thought of the other markings he would see on them from time to time and now his work neighbor was mouthing to himself forbidden things. He wondered if the guardians would notice and beat them both. Strange and new thoughts brought Huemaker back to that word he heard that man screaming. It confused him, "BOLLER". He learned that word on the second day he remembers being in the cave. He was in his room watching the scryne when he heard shouting coming from the hallway. The neighbor 6 rooms down had some sort of mental break and started inconsolably screaming “BOLLER” over and over again. 

Huemaker wasn’t familiar with this 'LER' word but he recognized the “BOL” enunciation. He saw in a show once, two faceless cave people destroying rocks with strange markings on them. Not the same figures that appeared on the rare green wafers, those markings were intricate and repeated and they showed up only sometimes usually half cut off as if they slipped through some great overhead machine. The markings on the stones in the scryne show were more primitive markings like a child's doodle. Huemaker had never seen a child and the message was received non the wiser. Huemaker's brain was getting hot trying to figure what it all meant, but like everyone else he kept his mouth shut for fear of a beating. 

II

Bang. A flash of light and smoke in the hallway. What looks like men in chunky black clothes that cover their faces and wrap around like big balls over their head are in the hallway. At least Huemaker hopes thats what he is seeing and not the other thought that maybe these are new creatures he’s never seen before with abnormally large heads and flashlights attached to them who have smooth black faces that move up and down when they shout but there appears to be no mouth. 

A strange noise is emanating from all around Huemaker now. The sound of a large rope being pulled very fast through a metal ring creating a high pitched screeching noise, rising and falling in overlapping and discordant tones. He whips his head around now as he’s upright from his dirt bed, and realizes the noise is coming directly from his room scryne on the wall next to him. Smoke and ash are filling the area fast. The unannounced whizzing of 2 small metal objects flying through the air is followed by the grunt of a man in black falling to the ground. Silence falls for a split second, where did it come from? Suddenly return fire from the black men’s rifles. Shooting into the hallway creating more smoke. Fires going up and walls collapsing. Guardians on the opposite side. But the men’s bullets and grenades are tools the guardians are prepared for as all projectiles reflect off their metal skin. Just a moment ago men shouting and a flood of lights through billowing smoke in the hallway, now disappearing almost as fast as they have showed up.

And just like that darkness falls in the caves, smoke and dust linger, and a few wailing crys from those caught in the firefight begin to rise up. As if they had them stored in the walls already, the guardians now bleeding purple and red and green liquids, bring out huge metal plates into the hallway and slam them down in front of every room. Huemaker is trapped in the dark and left alone to process what had just transpired over the past 2 minutes. Or was it 2 hours? Huemaker knows something is wrong and yelling BOLT wont help him, he has to escape. 

Time goes by. Faint pounding noises are heard every so often but only in a very insecure sprawled out chorus, which has ended abruptly as one of the faint noises was followed by a faint thud and then a faint scream and then another faint thud and then silence. 

III

Huemaker felt the dreaming sense of falling which bolted him awake. The body bag burst open and he fell half a foot onto the cold table. Men covered in all black, the same men he saw in the cave, strapped him to the metal operating table and left the room. All rational thought had left Huemaker but at least they had put some clean clothes on him. Later he would be haunted by this thought. 

Enter the man, Mr Bolt. Huemaker knew immediatlely that Mr Bolt looked exactly like him, as he had seen his own reflection in a glass darkly sometimes when the scryne would switch off momentarily between programs. The two men focused on each other.

"Hello Huemaker, I am Mr Bolt. I am a very powerful man in charge of a lot of powerful things and it’s come to my attention recently that you have been kept in a secret underground location by parties not affiliated with my interests as a sort of sabotage mechanism you see you are a clone of me, and though I am not sure where they came to possess my genome in such a way as to replicate me, I do know their intentions were…” 

BOLT BOLT BOLT

Immediately Huemakers freak out earned him a jab of a needle from the gloved hand of Mr Bolt, and to sleep he went. 

“Right Mr Huemaker I am a short leashed man I can not do whatever that was but you see I am not an evil man not totally yet anyway. I have rescued you now and we will decide what to do with you later. Perhaps a mindmold will help him talk, he's going to need it anyway.”

IV

"Where am I". Awake now, Huemaker found himself surprised in his sudden and extremely expanded vocabulary of ‘language’ and immediately the thought of that word ‘surprise’ had come to him as he was. A flood of strange thoughts begin putting themselves to feelings he’s long had and more importantly is having right now. "FEAR ANGER HUNGER FUCK" yelled Huemaker. He was in a beautiful 18th century castle bedroom. Somehow he knew it was an 18th century manor and that the way the evening light through the willow trees outside dances off the Brazilian rosewood wainscoting was his favorite part of the decor. Every new thought giving him more of a headache, “how do I know all this?”. 

Just then at the far end of the room a pair of doors with carved icons in them flung open and Mr. Bolt walked in. “Ah yes right on time Epstein has won the bet”. He walked over to Huemaker. A new flood of thoughts came to Huemakers mind, he knew all the things in Mr Bolts head. The foreign dignitary dinners. The builders network. The senators he met with last week. Every business dealing, backdoor handshake, and wanton cosmological outlook of Mr Bolt was all in there, copied into Huemakers mind. And like a wild lion he leapt out of bed grabbing the rod off the heater grate next to the window, and jammed it down the base of Mr Bolt's neck seated perfectly through the jugular notch. Mr Bolt gargled and fell to the floor. Seconds later the aids burst through to door to find there standing under the taxidermied bear heads and stained glass windows; Mr Bolt standing over the dead body tying his robe belt. He turned to the aids with a scowl on his face and barked “He got unruly and I had to end it. Get him out of here.”