Free The Lonely Whelk by Ariele Sieling

tail? The pop lizard’s tongue? The
bee’s knees?”
    “ Oh, you mean it’s neat.”
She nodded in understanding.
    John released a loud sigh. “We need to work
on your vernacular!”
    They rounded a corner and saw Rock and Clyde
standing there, waiting. A couple of other security guards in their
black sunglasses stood a ways behind them.
    “ Need to get rid of those
glasses,” Kaia heard Quin mutter. “Annoying.”
    “ Here’s the man of the
hour!” John announced, gesturing to Clyde. “Ready to join the
tour?”
    Kaia shuffled her feet a little, still
feeling a bit embarrassed about the role she had played during
Clyde’s interview.
    “ There you are,” Rock
responded, crossing his arms. “I was about to page you on the
intercom.”
    “ You’re so impatient,” John
replied in a scolding tone of voice.
    “ I’m not going in. I have
work to do. Bring Clyde back to me when you’re done with him.” Rock
turned and began to stride away from the group with the other
security guards close behind.
    John faced Clyde and rubbed his hands
together, grinning. “Well,” he said, “this is going to be fun!”
    Kaia raised her eyebrows in mild concern as
John bounded past him and headed for the end of the hallway.
     
    *******
     
    The room was huge and had far more people in
it than Kaia had imagined. When she had first learned about this
legendary room – literally legendary, as there was much debate
about whether or not it actually existed – she had imagined a
largely empty room with wisps of uncertainty that sort of tickled
the corner of your eye when you gazed around, accessible only to
the greatest and most secretive branches of the government. After a
short moment of reflection on the scene before her, however, Kaia
realized that the imagined scenario didn’t make a whole lot of
sense, and the actual scenario was much more logical.
    People bustled here and there, running back
and forth with papers and baskets – and a giant horse pulling a
cart thundered through a Door at the back of the room. Doors were
lined up neatly in rows; she counted at least fifteen to a row, but
since the room was round, some of the rows appeared to have more or
fewer in them. Each Door was outlined by a neatly painted frame,
and a name appeared on a sign over it. Ambassadors came and went
through them, and assistants handed them baskets and documents and
scribbled-on pieces of paper. One man yelled for his wife over the
commotion of the room, and she, struggling to contain her large,
voluminous skirts, scrambled to avoid the other people in the room
while getting to her husband as quickly as possible. There were
men, women, children, travel animals, wares, and suitcases – even
birds!
    The room was a veritable madhouse.
    “ Officially we call it
Vrata Soba.” John gestured around to the wild collusion of chaos.
“We are also pushing legislation to enlarge the facility, and
possibly move it off world. As you can see, it creates a great
amount of liability for not only the government, but quite possibly
the entire planet. If it were off-world, we could contain it a bit
more.”
    “ But... but... this room is
a legend!” Kaia exclaimed. “I took an entire class centered around
the theory that this room was propaganda created several centuries
ago by the Pomegranate City legislature to make themselves look
more powerful, but when it failed to work they instead covered it
up, which in essence achieved what they were going for in the first
place.”
    “ Ah yes, the Phantom
Conspiracy. The theory that Doors are invisible and all around
us... that the government has the science and money to create them
at will... and simultaneously doesn’t.” John grinned. “It’s all a
load of hogswaggle, quite frankly, and I hope you didn’t take any
of it to heart or I’ll be offended.”
    “ Of course not!” Kaia shook
her head. “There’s no evidence for anything!”
    “ Good girl.” John patted
her on the shoulder. “The