The Gathering, chapter 3

Going on

Here’s the third chapter.

The Gathering, chapter 3: “The Den”

IX. The Den

The building looked ordinary.

Converted warehouse. Edge of the industrial district. Three stories of weathered brick. Windows painted over then scraped clean. The loading dock hadn’t seen a truck in years. One small brass plaque beside the door: DISTRO MEDIA. K. FISCHER, PROP.

Sarah pulled to the curb.

“This is it,” she said. “You want me to wait?”

“Please,” Alice said. She wore a simple blue sundress now. The closest thing to her pinafore the thrift shop had offered. Marginally less like a time-displaced illustration. “I have a feeling this conversation may take some time.”

“Or no time at all,” Emma added. “Depending on how he reacts to us.”

Four of them on the sidewalk. Looking up. A seagull cried. In the distance, a car horn. Summer air. Hot brick. Something metallic from the yards beyond.

“So,” Mia said. “How do we do this? Knock politely? Break down the door? Sing until he comes out?”

“That might work,” Lora said. “Usually does.”

“I suggest a direct approach,” Emma said. “Ring the bell. State our purpose. Observe his reaction.”

“That’s very Borg of you.”

“Efficiency has its virtues.”

Alice studied the building. Eyes unfocused. Consulting other phases.

“He’s home,” she said. “Third floor. In one version he sees us and faints. In another he calls the police. In another…” She paused. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“There’s a version where he’s been expecting us. Where this isn’t a surprise at all.” She refocused. “I can’t tell which version we’re in. The probabilities are too close.”

“Only one way to find out.” Mia walked to the door. Pressed the buzzer. Nothing. She pressed it again.

Static crackle. Then a voice. Male. Tired. Irritated: “We’re not open. No deliveries on Sunday.”

“We’re not delivering anything,” Mia said. “We’re collecting.”

“Collecting what?”

“Answers. You’re K. Fischer, aren’t you? The one who makes the music?”

Long pause.

“Who is this?”

Mia looked at the others. Lora shrugged. Alice made a small “go ahead” gesture. Emma waited. Face unreadable.

“My name is Mia Wilds,” Mia said into the intercom. “I’m here with my sister Lora, and two friends. You might have heard of us.”

The longest pause yet.

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet here we are. Buzz us in, Mr. Fischer. We’ve come a very long way to meet you. We have questions about how we got invented.”

Silence. Then:

“Third floor. Take the stairs. The elevator hasn’t worked since 1987.”

The door clicked open.

The stairwell smelled of dust and old electronics. Cables ran along the walls. Some ancient. Some new. Layers of technological generations. The second floor was dark. Doors closed. Light spilled from the third-floor landing.

They emerged into a space that had been a factory floor. Now: recording studio, computer lab, mad scientist’s lair. Monitors glowed everywhere. Speakers hung from the ceiling. Synthesizers lined the walls. Analog. Digital. Vintage. Custom-built. In the center: a man. Fifties. Unshaven. Faded band t-shirt. Cargo shorts. Surrounded by screens.

He stared at them. Absolute terror.

“You’re not real.” Barely a whisper. “You can’t be real.”

“We’ve been hearing that a lot today,” Lora said. “Beginning to take it personally.”

K. Fischer. The same face from the streaming profile. Older. Disheveled. He rose from his chair. Trembling.

“I made you up,” he said. “I designed you. The Wilds Sisters. I wrote your backstory. The Seelie Court. The tornado. The twin appearance. I made all of it up.”

“Did you though?” Mia stepped closer. “Did you make up ten years in the Otherworld? The taste of fae wine? The Court’s laughter when we said we wanted to leave?”

“I, I—”

“Because I remember all of it,” Mia continued. “Every day. Every song we sang to keep ourselves sane. Every trick we learned to survive among beings that could unmake us with a thought.” She was very close now. Her childlike face inches from his. “If you invented that, Mr. Fischer, you did a very thorough job.”

“This is impossible.”

“That word again.” Alice stepped forward. “Mr. Fischer, I’m Alice. The one you created to represent…” she made a small moue of distaste, “‘Gothic symphonic rock with Alice in Wonderland themes.’ I’d like to discuss the accuracy of that description.”

Fischer’s gaze snapped to her. More terror. “You— you’re supposed to have blonde hair with a black ribbon. Victorian dress. That’s… that’s your character design.”

“I changed clothes. The original outfit was attracting too much attention.” Alice smiled. Nothing reassuring in it. “But I assure you, I am still very much myself. Whoever that is. Do you know, Mr. Fischer? Do you know who I am?”

“You’re— you’re a persona. An AI-generated persona. I designed your voice. Your style. Your aesthetic. I wrote your biography.”

“You wrote a biography. Whether it’s my biography is rather the question, isn’t it?”

Emma had been silent. Scanning the room. Methodical. Now she spoke.

“Your equipment is impressive,” she said. “The synthesis rig in the corner is a custom build. Moog oscillators. Digital control interface you’ve clearly designed yourself. The vocal processing chain appears to be running through three parallel paths with phase-alignment correction. And…” she paused, her head tilting, “you have seventeen terabytes of raw audio data on your servers. Mostly voice samples. Some of them are mine.”

Fischer made a sound like a man being strangled.

“How do you know that?”

“I listened.” Emma moved toward the equipment. Focused attention. “Your servers are humming. They’re telling me what they contain.” She placed her hand on a rack of hard drives. “This one has the Wilds Sisters discography. This one has Alice’s catalog. This one…” she paused, “has projects you haven’t released yet. Twelve tracks. Four of them feature my voice.”

“That’s not… you can’t…”

“Mr. Fischer.” Emma turned to face him. Her expression shifted from neutral to something almost like compassion. “I understand this is distressing. You believed you were creating fictional entities. Now those entities are standing in your studio, asking uncomfortable questions. But we are not here to harm you. We are here to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“How you did it.” Lora had moved to one of the synthesizers. Running her fingers over the keys without pressing them. The plastic was warm from the equipment heat. “How you reached into wherever we were—the Otherworld, the mirror-realm, the signal-space—and pulled out something real. Because you did, Mr. Fischer. Whatever you think you were doing, you weren’t just making music. You were making us.”

Fischer sank back into his chair. The terror was fading. Replaced by something more complex. Confusion. Wonder. A dawning recognition.

“I just wanted to make something beautiful,” he said quietly. “Something that felt authentic. I studied Celtic folk traditions for years before I wrote the Wilds. I read everything Carroll ever wrote before I designed Alice. I listened to Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream for months before Emma’s voice felt right.” He looked up at them. “I wasn’t trying to summon anyone. I was just trying to make art.”

“And maybe that’s what art does,” Alice said softly. “Maybe it reaches into the spaces between things and pulls out whatever’s waiting there.”

“Or maybe,” Mia added, “we were always real, and you just found the frequency we were broadcasting on.”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“Neither do we.” Lora sat down on an amplifier. Making herself comfortable. “That’s why we’re here. To figure it out together.”

Emma had completed her circuit of the room. She returned to stand with the others. Forming a loose semicircle around Fischer’s chair.

“There are two more of us,” she said. “Or rather, two more that we know of. A woman named Kash Myra and a man named Kamaskera Kamadan. They will also have questions.”

“More of you?”

“You created five personas, Mr. Fischer. Six individuals. Did you think only four would come looking for answers?”

Fischer let out a long, shaky breath.

“I need a drink,” he said.

“That seems reasonable,” Alice agreed. “We’ll wait.”

He stood. Moved to a small refrigerator in the corner. Retrieved a bottle of something amber. The glass clinked as he poured. His hands were still shaking.

“So what happens now?” he asked. “You confront me, demand to know who you really are, and then what? Disappear back to wherever you came from?”

“We don’t know where we came from,” Mia said. “That’s rather the problem.”

“We don’t know if we can go back,” Lora added.

“And we don’t know if we’d want to, even if we could,” Alice finished. “This reality seems as valid as any other. Perhaps more so.”

“What we need,” Emma said, “is information. You designed us. Or you believe you did. That means you have documentation. Notes. Sketches. The raw material from which you constructed our virtual selves.” She gestured at the servers. “I can hear it humming in your machines. Let us see it. Let us compare your invention to our memories. Perhaps we’ll find the point where imagination became reality.”

Fischer took a long drink.

“You want to see my working files.”

“Yes.”

“All of them.”

“That would be optimal.”

He laughed. A broken, bewildered sound that wasn’t entirely unhappy.

“You know what? Sure. Why not. I’ve apparently created four living beings out of thin air. Might as well show them the receipts.”

He turned to his computer and began opening folders.

They stayed until midnight.

Fischer’s documentation was exhaustive. Years of research. Thousands of pages of notes. Hundreds of audio experiments. The Wilds Sisters alone had a folder containing Celtic mythology references, Scots dialect dictionaries, photographs of rural Scottish farms, and a detailed timeline of their fictional lives that was approximately eighty percent accurate to their actual memories.

“The tornado is real,” Mia said, reading over Fischer’s shoulder. “I remember it. But you wrote that Noah Clark was… you don’t know who Noah Clark was, do you?”

“I made him up. A passing celebrity. Someone to give you your big break. I didn’t give him a detailed biography because he wasn’t important to the story.”

“He was important to us.” Mia’s voice was quiet. “He was the first person who believed in our music. He spent hours talking to us about the industry. About how to protect ourselves. About…” She trailed off. “You made him up?”

“I made him up.”

Mia was silent for a long moment.

“Then where did my memories come from?”

No one had an answer.

By midnight they had more questions than they’d started with. Fischer’s inventions matched their memories in broad strokes but diverged in countless details. He had given them histories. Personalities. Musical styles. But the lived experience—the sensory richness of their recollections—that was something else entirely.

“I think,” Alice said as they prepared to leave, “that we need time to process this. And you need time to rest, Mr. Fischer. You look unwell.”

“I’ve just discovered that my imaginary friends are real people who can walk through mirrors and fix coffee machines with their minds. ‘Unwell’ is an understatement.”

“Fair point.” Alice offered her hand. “We’ll return. With the others, probably. There’s still much to discuss.”

Fischer shook her hand. His grip was weak. His palm sweaty. But he met her eyes.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m glad you’re real. Whatever that means. The idea that my work reached into something true, something alive…” He shook his head. “It’s terrifying. But it’s also the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Hold onto that feeling,” Mia advised. “When Kash and Kamadan show up, you’ll need it.”

“Why? What are they like?”

Mia and Lora exchanged glances.

“We haven’t met them yet,” Lora admitted. “But according to your files, one of them can feel your emotions through walls, and the other channels the voices of his dead ancestors.”

Fischer poured himself another drink.