Feathers in the Rain - SCP Foundation

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Turner panicked in the way only a phone alarm could incite: by immediately grasping wildly around to find the source and stop it.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

He felt his foot brush against his phone, rapidly contorted his body to pick it up, then pressed his finger on the home button.

bzz

Turner opened his eyes and winced.

His phone read 3:57 AM.

He tried to think back to the last few nights, digging through the hours where worry and doubt had played in a graceful disharmony of insomnia. He tried to think, but all that came was a mess of vivid yet inconsequential moments dotting a sea of naught recalled. Whatever he'd been thinking then, in those nothing stretches, he'd thought it reasonable to set his alarm for 3:57 AM.

Tired Turner would get his way, unfortunately, he could never sleep after being woken by an alarm.

swshhhhh

He'd knocked over a pile of papers as he went to stand up.

Turner thought to crouch down and pick them up, but stopped himself. Why bother? In just a few hours the room would be someone else's problem. It'd be easier for them to throw out every last object in the god forsaken room. He took it in one last time.

He'd been living in the room for years and it had only gotten smaller, gradually filling with piles of notes, files, and dry heaps clay that gasped out dust from their misshapen orifices. Sculptures, maybe, loosely. All unfinished. He didn't have anywhere to fire them if they'd happened to be any good, and they hadn't been any good.

The problem was he couldn't find it in himself to get rid of clay once it dried, once it was brittle and unworkable.

Turner took a belabored step to the right and bent over, picking up a dusty package of coffee pods from its place alongside an equally dusty coffee machine. Parr had given him both, right at the beginning. It had been a fitting witness to his time here, one way or another.

He took a pod from the box.

Click

He put the pod into the machine and a mug on its grate. It still had water in it from when he'd first filled it. Being proactive, he'd thought, building momentum.

He didn't even like coffee.

Click

drp drp drp

It was hard to think back, not a place he wanted to return to in mind or otherwise. Weeks of desperately molding a visage just beyond his grasp. Obsessed in every facet of his being and it almost killed him.

In that fugue, Parr's opportunity had been like a dream come true, a promise of something to work towards. Trying to recall the details felt like a different sort of dream. The reality that dawns when you just wake up. The feeling of vivid clarity fading into nonsense.

He couldn't remember how he met Parr, he'd just been there, ever-present. A lighthouse in the fog that brought him to shore. Never clearing the fog, as he so desperately desired, but that wasn't the lighthouse's job.

drp drp drp

Click

He didn't like coffee, but it would be good to be more awake.

Cup in hand, he turned and looked at the envelope squashed under the book on his bedside table. He was told to open it "when he was ready to go," and now was as good a time as ever.

There were no memories to think back to. There was no attachment, not really. It was just a place where he was.

He took a sip of coffee.

Blue squares bordered by thin grainy grey strips. Bathroom tiles between his fingers, shaking, arms resting on his legs. He wasn't crying. He couldn't cry. Not now. He had a meeting in almost 6 minutes. Not just a meeting.

The meeting.

His meeting. A meeting about him. His assignment. He had to get going.

Would it be better if he was already sitting in the waiting room when they called? Would being late make it any worse? He should leave. Why even go? Why waste his time?

drp

Stone. He focused on the tiles. Blue and grey. Colors were good to clear the mind. He traced a square with his finger once or twice.

Years of work. His work. His suffering. His meeting. He had to go. Anywhere. He couldn't keep living in that horrible room.

Flsshhh

Thud

He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked fine. Fine enough.

drp

He looked down at the sinks, where a single faucet sat, dripping.

drp

He twisted the handle.

drp

It was just leaky. Brute force wouldn't fix it.

drp

drp

He tried again.

drp

It wasn't worth worrying about. He needed to go.

Packing was quick, done in a few minutes. He knew what he was taking. He'd decided in advance.

No clay, no tools, just clothes, his laptop, his phone, chargers for both, and the envelope.

Otherwise unmarked.

To be opened: Now.

Unsealed.

Reading:

Turner N. Flock

Your transportation will be arriving shortly.

-Dross

Succinct and vague. Transportation, somehow, shortly.

Shortly could mean anything, but waiting would give him time to think, to neatly cement this new period in his life. That felt apt.

He took one last look at what had been his "home" for the last few years, a barren brick of tiny rooms just a few blocks from anything anyone actually cared about. Not a place to live in, more to sleep in, filled with people who didn't have time for anything spare what was necessary.

After the first month of the program, when he'd taken to walking in circles around the lot to clear his mind, he'd noticed just how little life the big brick had in it. He'd bumped into people regularly but they never wanted to talk. Tired, busy, or chronically angry because of a mix of the two, it didn't matter, minus one exception.

He could recall one person, a strange woman, who had said hello to him before he could to her. Brought up that she'd seen him circling for almost an hour and was wondering if he was "broken or something." They chatted about the weather, the city, current events, regular small talk, but he could sense something deeper. Turner wasn't one for small-talk regularly, he tended to drift into grievances and whining which he only later realized killed that one conversation. She had resisted that drift almost violently, steering the conversation to all those mind-numbing regularities. She had an extant momentum about her. It explained why he'd never seen her again.

He realized that he was pacing, walking, following that long hewn trail around the lot. One more time, he supposed, couldn't hurt.

Hours could have passed, letting himself be "broken", walking that loop, mind completely empty, but-

HONK

He hadn't noticed the car roll up. The driver's window was opaque, but the side door was open along with the trunk. He stood in place, watching.

There wasn't any thinking to do so he just stood there, processing nothing. The car didn't move either. It was here for him. Transportation sent by his new supervisor and neither of them were in a rush.

After a minute he put his case in the back and got in.

He walked slowly through the hallway. Retracing the path back to the main lobby.

drp

He imagined the bathroom faucet. Dripping meager droplets into perpetuity, broken, never stopping, but not exactly going.

drp

Droplets set apart by seconds.

drp

Minutes and hours apart. Droplets falling, hitting the basin beneath, and in doing so would be doomed to the drain. A nigh unbroken path, broken only when someone needed to wash their hands, carrying some away to somewhere else unknowable.

drp

Not unknowable. That water would find it's way to a basin in due time. It was a certainty, cyclic, inevitable.

"Turner Flock?" A voice spoke, pulling him out of his mind.

It was the secretary that had given him directions to the bathroom.

"Yes, that's me."

"Third door on your left, just down that hall."

She directed him with practiced professionalism. Faux positivity, flat and clear. Fine-tuned to elicit as little emotion as possible. Turner hated how well it calmed him.

"Thank you."

He saw a hand sanitizer dispenser on the desk and realized he hadn't washed his hands earlier.

sksht

The brick of rooms rapidly fell from view. It was gone. Simple as that. Good riddance.

Left turn. Main street.

Expensive restaurants he'd never gone to. Storefronts upon storefronts in a wall of offers and pleasures he couldn't afford, in money or time.

It was dead, nobody about. Turner checked his phone. 4:42 AM. That made plenty of sense.

Right turn. Side street.

Someone was laying on an abandoned couch, hopefully not dead, likely drunk out of their mind. Turner didn't drink, it made things strange. Like one time, years ago, before all this, another stranger, it stood out but he could barely remember it. In a way the fogginess made it stand out more, like a neon sign.

A bar, a stranger, they were chatting. Chatting about something interesting, important, not about Turner, about the stranger, or something he was doing.

He was weird, had a weird job, some kind of artist? They definitely talked about art, Turner's own stuff probably, exhibitions maybe, stuff like that, but not exactly? A performance. Maybe he was a musician? He wished he could remember, he'd drunk a lot, they both had. The stranger definitely did. Had he even? He didn't have a hangover the next day. He always got hangovers when he drank, no matter how much, it's why he stopped.

Darkness, he looked outside the window, disoriented.

Looking back didn't help, nothing, not a speck of light. The city was gone, leaving flat plains and open road.

Was that right? Had he been lost in thought for that long? Turner checked his phone. 5:10 AM.

He was so tired. The coffee hadn't helped.

He blinked. Noticing that was a bad sign.

He blinked a second time, for a few seconds, long enough that it was probably misleading to call it a blink.

drp

He opened his eyes.

drp drp drp

Droplets splashed against the window, the patter building in intensity by the moment.

He always found the sound of rain incredibly relaxing, especially when he wasn't caught in it. A distant tapping that echoed through your brain, dimming woe against it's ever-present rapping. It was raining that day too. It was the reason he decided on that bar. He had never been before, but it was closest.

patter patter patter patter

If only he'd had this a few nights ago.

patter patter patter patter

Turner closed his eyes.

There were two people waiting through the third door on the left, only one of whom Turner recognized. From the somber look on Parr's face they'd been discussing something serious.

"Right on time! Take a seat, Turner."

Marcus Parr was a coordinator of sorts, in charge of maintaining contact with recruits within the program and eventually handing them off when an apt assignment became available. He was fairly stout and completely bald atop his head, which meant his face had to do a lot of work. Luckily it did. When you talked with him it would draw in your eyes like a magnet, with perfectly proportioned facial features, a winning smile, and a bushy brown mustache. Not to mention he was likely saying something you really needed to hear. With or without business attire he was all sugar, helping after helping of everything you needed to hear.

Turner sat down across from him and was greeted with a warm smile. He gave a half-hearted smile back. Were they talking about him? Were they letting him go? Wiping his memory?

"Do you have any questions before we get started? All bases should be covered, knowing you, but it's good to ask."

He had hundreds of questions, but Parr was setting him up as reliable.

"No, I should be fine." He hoped his words didn't betray how he felt.

"Wonderful! First thing on the chopping block would be introductions. I'm sure you both know me, so I'll let you do the honors." He motioned to the figure sitting off to the side. The one he'd been talking to as Turner walked in.

He'd avoided looking at the figure for as long as was polite, leaning on the power of Parr's benevolent presence, but with the motion it became all but inevitable. He turned.

She was tall, at least with respect to Parr, and thin by the same measure. Attire short of formal, just a lab coat over a t-shirt and jeans, and a mass of hair pulled back in a bun at her shoulders that exploded into an erratic torrent of tangles. He looked her in the eye and noticed her own somber disposition. Her frown, however, didn't fade when she locked eyes with him and held out her right hand.

"Sycamore Ross. People call me Dross and you will too."

He shook her hand.

"Turner Flock. Just Turner is fine."

"Yeah. We'll see what sticks."

He had taken a risk going out without an umbrella. A dreary day, but it hadn't rained yet so he hadn't been too worried. He should have been more considerate. It was picking up quickly with no signs of slowing down.

He could feel the warmth in the lights that shone through it's front facing windows. "The Last Hurrah." It looked quaint and cozy, but the real draw was the murmur, the drone and occasional shout that popped and sputtered like a pot close to boiling. People were difficult but he would be drunk.

He blinked.

He was sitting next to someone at the bar who spoke with the patter of the rain. He was laughing, giddy, and the rain speaker looked pleased. He didn't have a face, but it was clear in the way he rippled. It resonated with him.

Now he wanted to show Turner something. To put on a performance. He motioned for Turner to follow him.

He blinked.

The rain speaker stood a few meters off on a small stage in the corner of The Last Hurrah. He sputtered, announcing himself to the others in the establishment, but he was focused on Turner. He could tell from the way the sounds bounced around the room. They all found their way to him in the end. It was why the rain speaker sat him there.

The rain speaker began to sing and the room was his in focus and breath. In body and mind. The world was still as he rippled, his concordant notes resonating through each and every body.

Turner tried to focus on the song, but each note slipped from his mind as soon as it entered. It had meant something once, but that moment was gone. It couldn't be recycled, not now.

He blinked.

They were back at the bar, talking again. The song echoed still, humming in tune with the pattering of rain that still fell, tapping on the door, begging to be let inside The Last Hurrah. The rain speaker leaned close to him, he leaned close to the rain speaker. He could hear a pitch humming as they grew closer. Closer and closer, almost touching.

He closed his eyes in anticipation. It had been enrapturing before, being the center of the rain speaker's song. Here, when they met, they would sing as one. No medium to interrupt them, no delay.

He waited for the moment to come. It didn't. There was no sound. Not even the distant pattering of that jealous rain. He opened his eyes.

He looked around. The rain speaker was gone.

He noticed three figures who hadn't been here before, one by the door and the others bouncing from patron to patron, all veiled in a fog that hid their features, with some excess emanating out to trace the edges of the room. He got up from the barstool and a figure walked over to him, arm-like limb stretching out to block his path. He halted himself and voiced his confusion out loud. The words were dampened by the fog, subsumed by its lingering stillness. Nonetheless, the fog soldier responded, and when they spoke the fog spread outward in a plume. The figure spoke at him, and he spoke back, but the words were eaten by the mist.

He tried to look at the other fog soldiers, to grasp the situation on his own, but the excess fog that once traced the room now rolled through it in waves, thick and suffocating. He wanted to know how the other patrons were responding but he couldn't see them. He was starting to inhale the fog. He didn't want to. He wanted to leave, and tried to move, but bumped into something he could barely perceive. It was the soldier he spoke at, who spoke at him in a plume that encompassed his mind, eating his world.

He closed his eyes.

His mind froze around the phrase.

"We'll see what sticks."

That was confirmation, right? Success, right?

He looked at Parr, who smiled back at him then spoke.

"If you two are getting right to business I'll be on my merry way. I wish you good luck, Turner, but you're going to be getting into territory that's for your ears and certainly not mine."

"Thank you for all of your help, sir."

"It's been my pleasure."

Thud

"I've got important work to do so we're keeping this short. No questions unless they are very important, and I mean very important. You get me?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

Her face fell into a grimace.

"Dross."

"Yes, sorry Dross. I understand… Dross."

"Good."

Turner nodded. She began,

"When Parr introduced you to this program you were made aware that it was somewhat irregular in comparison to others used in the Foundation. Some participants are quickly found unsuitable, discarded none the wiser, others excel and are quickly accepted within our midst. In the end it is fruitful, and we are able to recruit prospects that fit our particular niche."

"You, Turner, have finally cleared that bound, and in doing that, have been assigned as a Junior Researcher under me at Site-357."

"Our Site specializes in the containment of anomalous art and artists deemed too unpredictable to be contained anywhere else. To maximize the effectiveness of the measures that allow this containment, staff is expected to live on Site and to leave sparingly."

"In your position, you will aid primarily in interpretation and documentation of subjects and objects in our custody. This could include a wide variety of tasks, ultimately boiling down to what I think you're good for."

"With that short brief, congratulations on your position. This is your last opportunity to refuse it."

She tilted her head, prompting him. Parr had made it very clear what the end of the program could entail, and in truth, he preferred it this way. He didn't have a life otherwise. Why kid himself?

"I am prepared to take the position."

No reaction pressed through her dour face.

"Good."

She dug through her pocket, eventually producing a white envelope.

"This is for later."

She handed it to Turner.

"Don't open it now. Don't open it after the meeting. Give it a few days, open it when you are ready to go. For good."

He took the envelope and flipped it over. It was completely blank.

"Yes, Dross."

"The whole process will go much smoother if you don't think about it. Not that it'll matter anyway."

She stared at him. He gave her a questioning look.

"You're hopping into a whirlpool pal. It's what you signed up for. If you stay at the edge you might not have to paddle hard, but you'll feel its pull no matter what."

Turner looked back down at the envelope, not sure exactly what Dross meant.

"Like I said, important questions only. Do you need anything else?"

"No."

Maybe that was true now.

"Then leave."

He left and she closed the door behind him.

Thud

Turner opened his eyes.

The room he found himself in was unfamiliar, lit only by light through a window a meter or so off from the bed he lay on. The rest of the room was sparsely decorated, but from what he could see, it was furnished with simple furniture and a few conveniences necessary for comfortable living. Sitting next to a desk was his suitcase.

He sat up and looked himself over. He was still wearing the clothes he had had on when he fell asleep in the car, but he couldn't remember ever leaving it. How did he get here? Had someone carried him? Wouldn't they just wake him up? Where even was here?

Knock Knock Knock Knock

Turner jumped.

The knocking echoed from a door on the other side of the room. He stood up and traced the perimeter of the room, finding a light switch and turning it on, then walked towards it.

Knock Knock Knock Knock

He turned the door handle.

Click

Creak

"Hello?"

His eyes were still adjusting to light, so it took a moment for him to see Dross standing just outside the door. She was looking a wristwatch that Turner hadn't noticed the last time he saw her, but was otherwise dressed exactly the same. He scanned their surroundings.

It looked to be an apartment complex a few layers tall with walkways on each level. Sunlight came through the gap between the ceiling and a half wall. It was somewhere around midday.

"You're late. I didn't take you for the type to sleep on the job."

"What? Dross…"

"Follow me. We'll walk and talk."

She handed him an ID card then tilted her head to the left, motioning. He was given a moment before she turned and started walking along the curved apartment balcony. He had to work to match her pace as they began to descend a staircase.

"How did I get here?"

"You were on your way here, then you got here. Welcome, by the way. Next question."

Turner paused for a moment, desperately trying to interpret the answer in a way that netted him information. She was still descending at the same pace, he had to jog to catch up with her.

"What?"

"You got in a car and it drove you here. If you wanted a less confusing experience then you shouldn't have fallen asleep, would have saved me the trouble as well."

She was a straightforward speaker, in a way, if you accounted for the strange lens of her demeanor that twisted straightforwardness into loops and knots. It would be quite good to get a feeling for that lens, if he could. Deciphering it might be helpful if he was constantly taking orders from her.

"Stop dawdling, Flock."

They reached the ground floor and began walking through the plaza that bridged the gap between the walls. It was decorated with plants in its center, squished between uncomfortable looking concrete benches. Much like the rooms, it carried on forward and back, bending inwards at a slight angle.

"Where are we going?"

"Site center. File storage. You have work to do."

Turner stared at the window. He'd gotten in bed just to find he couldn't sleep. He tried, but it wasn't happening.

He reached to his beside table for his phone. 1:50 AM. He'd waited out half the night.

He opened his phone and turned off the alarm he'd set. It was late enough to get going.

It wasn't that he needed secrecy, not exactly. Most people on site observed time irregularly, waking moonlights into resting sunrise before returning at its height to work some more. Dross didn't let herself go the same way, as always she was stubborn, and she was his boss.

Others about would see a Junior Researcher going on an errand for their senior, carrying files to meet up for testing. This leeway led Turner to take his midnight walks through a sea of rushing, bustling scientists. A flood of people all simultaneously saving the world. It was their job here, and he was here.

They had better things to do than bother him.

Alone in this room of filing cabinets. All in disarray, but that was fine. Dross had left, leaving Turner to mill about and hopefully stumble upon some log she needed. He'd find it eventually, but in the meantime he could work to sort the room out.

Turner opened a drawer and picked through its contents, building up a small pile.

He walked to the computer in the corner, hooked up to the database, and began cross referencing.

clack clack click clack click click clack click clack…

If a file was already in the database it found its way to a second pile, for sorting later.

If it wasn't, he had to scan it in and assign it a file number.

Incident report, incident report, incident report, incident report, containment file, incident report, containment file, loose addenda.

click clack click click clack click clack clack clack…

Mismatched or loose files went into a third pile, to be sent off later to their proper location.

clack clack click click clack click clack click click-

Most of the containment files were out of date. Still good to have a handle on anyway.

clack

He looked at the pile that was no longer there.

He went to get another.

Normally, Turner had a lot of trouble navigating the concrete tunnels of 357.

They were indistinguishable from one another, brutal and bland, purposed only as an in-between and nothing more.

He'd spent a lot of time in them as he wandered, wasting whole nights going nowhere but forks and bends. He lost himself for hours on the first few times in alone, but quickly found that you could always leave their labyrinthine sprawl by following someone else to their destination. Luckily, there was never a shortage of people to follow.

At least today he knew where he wanted to be, if not where he was going, so he trusted the purpose-built tunnels and walked with no regard for path or planning.

He closed his eyes as he walked.

He walked.

And he walked.

It had taken him a few days to find the file that Dross was looking for. He always scanned over the documents, part curiosity and part necessity for sorting, but he hadn't been able to gather why that one was important. It wasn't for him to judge, anyway. Dross found it important, so it must be, and now Turner sat behind one-way glass as she interviewed a subject on its contents.

He was here to transcribe their conversation, an extra layer of redundancy just in case the many cameras, microphones, and myriad of other eclectic devices decided they didn't want to work. He tried to digest their conversation but didn't take it in. He was too focused on making sure he got down what they were saying, exactly how they said it. If everything else did fail, it was important he was exact.

He stopped writing after the two stopped speaking and soon after that Dross left the room. She entered the room with him and looked through the glass.

"Did she say anything interesting? Helpful for whatever you're looking for?"

"No. She made herself forget."

"Do you need the transcript?"

"Yes. Keep it with everything else."

She left the room.

Turner stayed for a few minutes, making sure all of the recordings and data were collected and tagged, then gathered his things.

He was still on the clock and he'd been making good headway into sorting out the file storage room. One of many similarly disordered rooms, he'd learned, but that didn't matter. He would get to all of them in time if he was allowed.

It was what he trained for, at least partially. It was what he was doing here.

It was his job.

Turner realized that he could feel a breeze.

He opened his eyes.

He stood on a road, out in the open, facing a monolithic structure off on the horizon that claimed a foothold in a wide spanning plain of grass, roads, and other little concrete shapes that were littered about. The moon was full in the sky where it watched upon the wide field. Gracing the structures with its pale reflected light, unimpeded by clouds.

Turner turned to find a chain link fence about twice his height in front of him that wound itself in a wide perimeter about a tiny concrete cube. There was an entry gate a ways round to the side, coupled with a security checkpoint.

He let his hand bump against the fence as he walked the perimeter.

He'd worked his way into a comfortable rhythm, sorting through the file storage room. At this point he was basically done, just left with a few drawers of files.

Incident report, loose addenda, containment file, containment file, incident report, incident report, loose addenda…

Miscellaneous documents were always a pain to sort out. Some cabinets just wound up being dumping zones, meant he had to look a lot harder to find where everything went.

click clack clack click click click clack clack click clack click…

Containment file, containment file, containment file, containment file, containment file, containment file…

Lots of files pertaining to the same object. Must have taken a while to get a handle on its containment. It made his job easier, couldn't speak for whoever had to work with it.

click clack clack clack click clack click clack click click click…

Incident report, incident report, incident report, incident report, incident report, incident report, incident report…

A collection of reports from the site's main MTF unit. Psi-64 or "Art Attack", whatever you wanted to call them. Their reports included a lot of arrests, events where anartists and their art were taken into custody.

clack clack click clack click click clack clack clack click clack…

click click click clack clack click clack click click clack click…

click clack clack click click click click clack click clack clack…

click click-

clack

Getting through the gate wasn't a problem as Turner's ID could get him to any low clearance cells without question. The trouble was that he didn't have security with him. Not that he'd ever be able to requisition any on his terms, but it meant he wouldn't have any way to get through the door.

He just wanted to talk to him. Just a little bit, desperately. He could bear with it being through a door.

It was quiet anyway, the cell being on its lonesome. Isolated for simplicity, the easiest way to counteract it's inhabitant's effects. Isolated for years, maybe. Left to be forgotten.

Turner approached the cell door.

He paused.

Raised his hand.

Waited.

Then-

Knock Knock

He was done, mostly.

Everything was documented, scanned, and where it should be, spare some documents he hadn't gotten to putting back yet. His job was basically done.

He put the pile of files he was presently working on down on the table, then walked over to the wall of cabinets and opened a drawer.

He rifled through them, checking for anything out of place, but nothing was. He moved to the next drawer.

Nothing. It all looked correct.

He was just done. Maybe he wasn't used to the feeling, but it really felt like something else was off. It nagged at him, but you can't act on that sort of feeling, so he just had to push it down.

He walked back to the table to grab his pile, but noticed something in an open drawer. He'd missed one of the files in the mass of Psi-64 incident reports, it had fallen somehow, flat to the bottom of the drawer.

He picked it up and scanned it.

Reports of unnaturally frequent rainstorms in the area…

Subject was identified to be the source of these storms…

Began when the subject started singing…

Turner frowned.

7 witnesses were amnesticised…

No cover story was necessary…

Subject was taken into custody at Site-357…

He had a headache.

Turner waited for a response.

There wasn't one, so he raised his arm and tried again.

Knock Knock

thud

"Shit."

The voice was muffled.

"Hello? Are you ok?"

"Not at all, if ever, are you not coming in?"

He was surprised how low the voice's voice was.

"I'd love to, but I can't. I'm not meant to be here, exactly."

The voice was silent for a moment.

The door shifted in its locked position, and the voice returned louder.

"Why are you here then?"

Turner paused. Why was he here?

"I'm not actually sure, to be honest. I think I saw you in a dream… I can try and explain it but it's always so foggy…"

"Feel free to take your time, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon." The voice laughed through the words.

"I suppose so yeah… So… It always starts with me walking down the street on the way somewhere as it starts to rain, and I don't want to get wet so I pop into a bar that I happen to be passing by."

"Mhm."

"Then I find myself talking to you, I think, I don't know how it's you but it is."

"Mhm."

"I don't know if we knew each other already or if we just met, but it seems like we were having a good time, talking at the bar."

There was no response.

"You go onto a stage and sing, which makes the rain outside fall much heavier."

Silent again.

"Then we go back to the bar, and-"

"You can stop now."

It was a quiet interruption, void of the energy from moments ago, but clear, clear as any words the voice spoke.

"Ok."

He took it as a soft confirmation. It would be harder to live with the actual memory. Heavier than the one he held onto, smothered and dampened by fog.

"Ok."

He stood for a while before speaking again. He hadn't been looking for much more than that, but was it really all he wanted? Why was he here?

"How has it been, here?"

The voice took a while to respond. Turner wished he could see his face, to measure all the gaps in the conversation.

"At first it was fine."

"Really?"

"They didn't put me here at first… Had me with a bunch of other people I could sing to."

"What changed?

"I think they got tired of all the rain."

He couldn't understand getting tired of rain.

"How long ago was that?"

"I don't know, really, but they got tired pretty quickly."

"That sounds par for the course, yeah."

The voice had had three years in here, at least, about as long as Turner had been in the program. They'd both been doing nothing, but only Turner by choice.

"Ever since then I've just been here, in this room. They give me books when I ask for them, some other things too. They just don't let me talk to people in person."

"Really?"

"This is the most I've talked to someone else in months. And the last time doesn't really count. They needed an interview, asked me some stuff about past performances, but I don't think they got what they were looking for."

Another void of silence. He needed to keep talking. He didn't know what he was meant to do when they stopped.

"Do you still sing?"

There was a pause.

"Not since they put me here. There's no point."

"Why's that?"

"Why else? I have no audience."

"Do you need an audience to be able to sing?"

"Yes! Doesn't everyone?"

"No?"

"Well I do!"

Turner stepped back from the door, he was in no place to judge. Whenever he tried to mold something out of clay it ended up warped, dry, unfinished or all three. He'd basically quit as well, only now admitting it. He hadn't even brought tools with him to the site. He'd brought nothing to site.

Why was he here?

It wasn't to save the world, like the ebb and flow of scientists in 357's tide.

Why was he here?

He stepped back toward the door. He was here.

He was here and there was still a part of his dream that was missing.

"Would you let me be your audience?"

thd

He saw the door shift slightly in its frame.

"You must know I'm rusty, very very rusty."

"That's fine. I can't judge."

A moment passed.

"Ok."

Then a moment more.

"Ok."

After which, through the door.

The rain speaker began to sing.

Turner couldn't find the words to respond to the rain speaker's song.

He just sat there in the rain as it grew, drenching his clothes.

It hid the one thing he managed to muster.

A downpour of his own.

Drowned out

by the

rain.