"I name you Mary!" Glass said to the doll, still hoping.
It really did nothing. The board didn’t react. Mary was written there, like a doll, dead, shining out at them.
Glass
took the doll she had made to the board, brought it up close. She
pressed the board, pressed it with the doll, put it down and walked
away—no matter what, it did nothing.
Song tilted their head. “You still believe in that plan of yours?”
“Something must be broken. Or wrong. We’re not done yet. This was not the full plan,” she said in response.
Some of the others groaned. Naturally.
“Why would it be at all? Why are you so sure?” Cometh said.
“Because she heard it too,” From said, from afar, “the shouting. The wanting of The Noise.”
“And you heard it too, you say?”
“Yeah. Although, I’m not certain it and the board is connected—even though both do seem to come from above.”
“Right?”
Glass said. “Why wouldn’t they be connected—the Noise has been getting
louder, the board has gotten more active. There’s obviously correlations
between them.”
As she said so, another name dropped down. They were
on at least four a day now. It was about to be so high they needed to
climb up the tower to see it.
“Correlation does not mean causation.”
“No,
but then they’re both caused by the same thing. Or whatever,” Glass
said with a frown. “I’m not saying I understand it yet. I’m saying
because we don’t understand it, shouldn’t we try to?”
Song peeped their voice up again. “It’s not the only thing, though.”
The
others glared curiously, and then Song told about the secret tunnels,
the hidden pathway behind the Up Above, and how it led down to her room,
how it seemed there were many more ways to many other hidden things.
This,
they all bit on immediately. This wasn’t the unclear goals of Glass, it
wasn’t the ominous calling of The Noise—no this was answers hidden
behind their very walls. This wasn’t the dangerous, loud catwalks of the
Up Above, no this was fascinating, dark, and new.
A lot of them left
the board hall and followed Song back to the only entrance they knew so
far, and soon, they would discover many others—to their own rooms, to
other halls, to other parts of the Up Above, and to places they had
never been and didn’t know where was in relation to the rest.
Meanwhile,
Glass sat next to the board, staring at her doll. Staring at her
creation, which she was so sure would work. Which she was still so sure
was the right thing. She had created a doll. Now, why wouldn’t the board
be satisfied? Why wasn’t The Noise satisfied?
What was she missing?
What was it she wasn’t seeing?
Meanwhile,
From stumbled into a room where all Noise ceased; a room where there
was no sound at all—instead, there were screens. Tons and tons of
screens.