Ouch

After a few more moments of strategy, we broke for action.

Ms. Chapman and I walked down the up escalator between the second and third floors. As it was still inactive, this was not complicated. This landed us on the opposite side of the floor from the other bank of escalators, which would be used by Harry and Larry. It also put us slightly closer to the door to the Jewels exhibit. We walked past the Bison Hunt on the side with the hidden snake button and towards the Pow-Wow. Poking our heads around the corner, we saw we'd beaten the gun men to the goal. Cautious, but slightly more relaxed, we stepped into the pool of light before the doors.

It's really very thick looking glass. I don't know if it's meant to be the shatterproof type that they have in banks but it looks like very serious glass indeed. Given time and enough damage, I'm sure the gun men would get it to break. It would no doubt be quite a mess.

The escalator, well, stairwell at the moment, erupted with noise. The gun men burst from the opening. A very upset looking man made a beeline for me. In a flash, his fist was raised, my face exploded in pain, and everything went dark.

The Next Wrinkle

As we tried to determine our next course of action, a new wrinkle was added to the mix. The lights briefly returned and went back out. Presumably other circuit breakers were tested until the loudspeaker crackled to life. For a time there was only distant noise being broadcast but eventually a grumbling became clearer and clearer. This culminated in a while of feedback and the sound of microphone adjustment before speech was deliberately broadcast.

“Okay lady! Very funny! I'm trying to be nice here. I wanna do this the easy way for both of us. No fuss, no muss, in and out without having to bust up the joint too much. But let me tell you this: you only get once. That's it! And that was it! You got ten minutes to meet me at that door and open it or we're gonna start throwing dummies at that thick glass window until it breaks. We may get a little trigger happy at that point too. Ten minutes! Tick-tock! And bring your chair-swinging boyfriend with you too!” Squealing, the microphone was roughly thrust aside.

Larry broke the awkward silence. “Well, he certainly sounded cross.”

Harry hummphed with irritation. “Thank you for that observation. I don't know that we had noticed that.”

“It's not an unreasonable point to make,” I interjected. “There didn't seem to be any bluster in that speech. He's mad and likely to do what he says he'll do.”

Ms. Chapman was clearly uncomfortable. “I don't wish to return to his clutches. At the same time, if we don't placate him, I'm concerned about the consequences, not so much for the building, but for the people yet inside.”

“We don't know who is left in the building,” Harry pointed out.”We may well be all there is left.”

“There are some left in the office,” Ms. Chapman retorted. “They were captured with me.”

“They may already be dead at the hands of these violent men,” Harry suggested.

“If they are not?” Ms. Chapman demanded. “If they are unharmed and become harmed due to my inaction? How should I feel then?”

“You're starting to make me feel guilty for pulling you away from them,” I noted.

“Had I thought it was that bad an idea, I could have resisted more.” She smiled slightly. “It's not like I wanted to stay with that criminal and help him accomplish his wicked goals.”

Harry was clearly concerned. “It doesn't seem right that you should give yourself up like that. There must be something we can do to help.”

Larry blinked. “We?”

“You and I,” Harry explained. Larry just stared at him dully, causing Harry some excitement. “You're not just going to tell me that you're just going to walk out on these people in their moment of need, are you?”

“Can we?” Larry asked.

“No we cannot,” chastised Harry.

Larry smiled brightly. “I was only checking.”

I had a thought. “It seems that our problem, at a very basic level, is that these bad guys have hostages. If you two can try to free them, it removes that bargaining chip from their side. I know it won't be as simple as that...”

Harry interrupted. “Sir, you may rely on us.”

Catching Up

As I had intended, we retired to Morocco to compare notes. My chair went from weapon to seat for Ms. Chapman. I don't know if it was the glasses or the polite maturity of her good looks or just her tone but she very quickly took charge of the discussion. Maybe it was because we were standing before her like naughty school children before a teacher. It was a little distracting. As I had less to say than Harry and Larry, this was not a big problem for me. We related our side of the situation, some of us more concisely than others.

Ms. Chapman's story was both grim and incomplete. She had been in the lower level offices, discussing what yet needed to be accomplished this evening, when the gun men had interrupted, led by a terrified young employee that had been forced to bring them inside. The gun men had further forced their way to the main fusebox in an effort to shut off the alarms. The labels proved to out of date on the circuit breakers and the lights were shut off in error. This outage led to a brief struggle between a custodian and a gun man that ended with the power mostly off in the building and the custodian badly wounded from a bullet wound. Unfortunately for the gun men, the electronic door locks were controlled by a separate power supply, as a security measure, and the door to their target was still barred to them. This is what had led to Ms. Chapman being on the second floor and being hassled for the code, which is where I came into her story.

There was much we did not know. Were there any other civilians yet in the building? How many other Museum employees and/or volunteers were still in the building? How many gun men were there in total? We didn't know. There was much we didn't know about our current situation and that was a concern.

My mobile communications device had no signal in this part of the building. Ms. Chapman's mobcomm was in her purse, which was in the offices on the ground floor of the Museum. Similarly, Larry had left his mobcomm in their truck, not expecting to need it. Harry had his mobcomm with him and had a signal but had some issues with the device. He wasn't confident that he could successfully make a call. The history behind these issues soon became clear as he nervously fumbled with the device, dropped it, thanked Larry for picking it up, looked puzzled when it didn't work, finally realized the battery had fallen off, reattached the battery, restarted the device, dialed 911, and the battery ran out of charge. We were returned to square one.

Forward is Sometimes Backward

At the foot of the escalator that was normally the 'down' escalator from the third floor to the second, she stopped me. “Why?”

I sought to keep her quiet. “I'm hoping to confuse them,” I whispered.

“It's already working on me,” she noted. However, she did head up the steps once she'd thrown my hand back to me.

Once upstairs, I confused her further by heading towards Morocco. She stopped me when we were barely in Africa. “Look, I appreciate your help but I don't know why I should be following you right now. Or at all.”

I put on my friendliest smile and extended my hand in greeting. “Patrick Thompson, volunteer and trouble-getter-into-er.”

She looked at my hand, apparently uninterested in touching it again. “Diana Chapman. I'm a curator in the Egyptology department.” She gave me a stern look made more effective by the fact that we were in the light and I could see it. “I'd have more confidence if you identified yourself as someone who gets out of trouble rather than into it.”

“Point well made,” I agreed. “Consider it changed.”

I turned towards Morocco again but this caused further speech. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

Before I could answer, Harry came from around the corner, looking rather cross. “Could you two please be quiet? You are affecting our equipment.”

His appearance made Diana no happier. “Who is this now?”

Harry put on the charm again. “Harold Norville at your service, ma'am.” Upon hearing of Diana's role at the Museum, he grew quite nervous, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. Chuckling nervously, he noted “We were just leaving you know. Nearly done with our readings. Plenty of numbers to crunch.”

Larry now joined us, also looking quite cross. “Can you keep it down? If we're going to be here all night, I need to rest.” Having made his statement, Larry walked off. Harry winced before smiling and trying to chuckle this away.

It didn't work.

This Isn't Going to End Well

I don't care much for guns. They can be such casual weapons. Some of the people that choose to wield them seem to do so without regard for the consequences. Honestly though, I think what I really dislike is having guns pointed at me as this one was soon to be. It's not a very entertaining way to spend an evening. Therefore, finding a way to prevent this gun from being pointed at me was a priority in my mind.

Thankfully panic didn't cause me to freeze, it gave me a plan. It might have been a crazy plan, but it was a plan. As the suited man crept forward, unsure as to my location, I worked to fold up the nearby chair into attack mode. Under the best circumstances, folding chairs aren't made to be silent as they transform and this chair proved to be no different in these somewhat unique circumstances. It squeaked and squawked a bit. While this did something to identify my location, it must also have sounded a bit odd to someone not expecting this noise in the dark as the man paused for an eternity, looking only vaguely in my direction.

I was moving, my heart pounding furiously. There are only a few sections of solid wall to the design around the Pow-Wow diorama and he was approaching the angled wall nearest me. Chair in hands, I flattened myself to the small piece of wall around the corner, waiting for him to appear and hoping I had something in my chair-swinging ability that would make El Hombre de Silla proud.

Waiting like that is horrible. Every second becomes a minute. Every minute a day. There's no sound apart from the sound of your own heartbeat. Please tell me he hadn't backed up and was going around the exhibit the other way. What was taking him so long? He'd seen me move, hadn't he? I should sneak back to the opening and look for him. No, that was stupid. Except, where was he then if he hadn't spotted me and changed course? Wait, is that the barrel of his gun?

Everything went from slow-motion to fast-forward. His next step made him visible to me. I swatted him in the face with the folding chair, knocking him down, his gun sliding away into the darkness. Chair still in hand, I ran the long way around the exhibit, hoping to confuse the other gunman a little. When I reached the area in front of the 'Jewels' exhibit, he was on the ground, clutching at his groin. I must have looked surprised as the lady commented “I'm not helpless you know.”

“Who said you were? Come on, this is the part where we run.” When she didn't immediately agree, I grabbed her by the hand and dragged her on.

As we went past the man I'd hit, he was starting to rise. I cracked him again with the chair as we ran past, returning him to the floor. Funny how casual violence becomes in situations like this.

Oh. Great.

The power was also out on the escalator. This was a relatively minor issue as an escalator without power is merely a stairwell. The limited light reflected off the shiny metal sides of the escalator, making it easy to see where my feet should go. I was concerned that the power would flick back on, as it had done with the lights, and throw my balance off. I kept my hands on the rails, just in case.

Once on the second floor, I took a moment. I knew exactly where I was and where I was going but the light levels were different from the escalator and I didn't want to stagger into a display if I could help it. Many of them in the area were at that sensitive upper thigh level. It would have been unpleasant.

The second floor was strangely quiet. I had expected a certain amount of hustling and bustling, people grumbling to depart in the limited lighting. There was nothing. With the diorama and display sounds off, any little sound would echo around the halls. Once I arrived to the Museum early in the morning. I was in the Rain Forest exhibit before the sounds were on. You couldn't help but hear the other people also in attendance. At least the lights were on then. When the sounds came on, it was suddenly, nothing and then all. I jumped in surprise and scurried from the exhibit to catch my breath.

Good times.

The path from one down escalator to the next was not complicated; a right turn, a hallway of displays, and a right turn. On my left was the Bison Hunt and Pow-Wow dioramas. Thankfully, the turntable that rotated the dancers in the Pow-Wow was off. The 'thump-thump' of the turntable as well as the motion would be rather eerie in the low light. It was off and everything was quiet.

Or rather, everything had been quiet.

Much like the sudden light had attacked my eyes earlier, this outbreak of noise assaulted my ears. I jumped in surprise, not unlike that time in the Rain Forest, and hid by the Pow-Wow diorama. Instinctively hiding felt like the right thing to do, at least until these loud voices better identified themselves.

I had positioned myself well. I've never been all that good at picking up the direction of sounds but they had been echoing from the up escalator on the other side of the hall and the circular Pow-Wow diorama was largely see-through. Shadowy figures emerged from the escalator area and moved to their left, towards the locked entrance to the 'Jewels of the Nile' exhibit. Where I was crouching was in the remnants of an exhibitor area that had been less diligent than we had about picking up after themselves. Folding chairs and tables surrounded me. Carefully I adjusted my position to better see what was going on.

Nearer the door they were now in the beam of one of the active lights. There were two men in dark suits as well as a lady in glasses and a sharp blue dress. They didn't all seem to be friends. “Look,” one man explained to the lady, “we already said we'd keep things to a minimum if you cooperated, didn't we? So be a nice gal and open the door, huh?”

“I've had a chance to think about it further and I've realized that you can't really do anything to me,” replied the lady. “I have the code so you can't hurt me and still get what you want.”

“We ain't gotta hurt you.”

I shifted my weight slightly and accidentally brushed against a folding chair enough to make it clatter.

Both suited men whirled around. After a quiet moment where their eyes searched the darkness around them, the talkative one spoke further. “Go check that out.”

“Right boss.” His hand dipped into his suit and emerged with a gun.

I knew something wasn't quite normal about all this. Sometimes I really hate being right.

Would Rather Be Whistling in the Dark

There's being in the dark and there's being in the dark.

For a moment, everything was pitch black. At least it seemed pitch black. The lighting changed faster than my eyes could adjust. I could see nothing. Then hints of faint hallway lighting seeped around the corner from behind me, offering just enough light for me to hazily make out my surroundings. It felt more like sonar might be like than actual vision. It was as if I sensed what was around me more than I could see it.

This made me uncomfortable. I didn't like not being able to see where I was. As well as I felt I knew the Museum, wandering around it in the dark wouldn't be the same as wandering around my house in the dark. I'm home a lot. I know where everything is located. There it feels silly to have the shadows be creepy. For some reason, it felt perfectly natural for the shadows to be filled with trouble here. Why had the lights gone out? They couldn't have expected us all be gone already. And what about the tables? They still needed collecting. This just didn't feel right.

I stepped back and whirled around. There seemed to be an emergency light near the entryway to the African hall to my left. Due to its positioning, little of its light was making its way towards us. There was a faint glow off to the right, probably where the animal dioramas change, around the curve. Carefully I stepped forward, trying to discern where the 'work in progress' barrier was so that I didn't trip over it.

The lights in Morocco suddenly snapped on.

I'm not proud of my reaction to this lighting change. I squeaked in surprise. I jumped. I bumped into something and that surprise made me squeak again. 'Something' turned out to be Larry. He flipped on a flashlight, allowing me to see his calm expression. “Motion sensors.” When this didn't immediately slow my heart rate back to normal, he spoke further. “Motion sensors lit up the case.”

I laughed, at myself more than anything else. “Yes, of course.” One quiet afternoon I'd walked the Museum with a friend, approached a display case that wasn't lit and, as I commented on how that shouldn't be, tripped the sensor to reactivate it. It was an impressive piece of timing.

Returned to the hallway, it was time for decisions. What was next? Just head for the exit? Say something to a guard about Larry and Harry? See why the lighting had gone out so soon? Wait to help with the table collection? If they were really keen to have us leave the building, wouldn't they have said something over the loudspeaker system? Something just seemed odd.

My pondering ceased as the lights suddenly came back on at full intensity. It was blinding. Blinking back tears, I struggled to watch as the lights flicked on and off. The loudspeaker system crackled to life. There was some thumping as the microphone was adjusted. “At this time the Museum is closed. Please exit the Museum. Thank you.” There was some further microphone adjusting before the sound stopped again.

I've been politely encouraged to leave the Museum before. I can't tell you that I have that speech memorized or anything like that. What I can tell you is that the speech I heard didn't sound right. At the same time, it was accurate; it was time to leave.

The lights had been left off once the flicking ceased. “I'd guess you've got fifteen minutes before they'll come looking for you.”

Larry blinked at me. “You don't care if we continue?”

“Why should I? Besides, if you leave before they lock up, what have you done wrong? Nothing.” I smiled at him through the gloom. “I hope you find what you're looking for.” He smiled, we shook hands, and I headed off for the escalator.

On my way there, I passed Harry, who was returning to Morocco. While he greeted me cheerfully, he was clearly distracted by his trouser leg, the cuff of which looked wet. I must have observed it for a moment longer than I thought as Harry nervously chuckled to distract me from it. “I had some slight difficulty with my hiding place,” he explained.

“Were you in The Living Seas exhibit?” I asked, teasing.

He frowned briefly, as if questioning my sanity, before his genial smile returned. “That was it precisely sir.”

With that level of understanding reached, we continued on our separate ways.