Yallery Brown watched a solitary seagull fly across the blackest sky his world had ever known. It navigated with ease across the sky using the noise of the night as its only guide. The seagull flew into a colorful area just off the shore. A high razor wire fence closed off the area. Inside were a few tall buildings. The place looked like a maximum-security prison, or perhaps an asylum. Although despite its intimidating structure, it was used for neither. Once over the huge security gate the seagull made straight for an intentionally open window knowing exactly where to go and who to look for.
The seagull was the last of the seagull army. A solitary survivor performing, Yallery suspected a final duty. The bird looked as sad as a seagull could look as he prepared to carry out the Duchess's final order. Slowly, he came to land on a windowsill on the top floor of the crumbling office block. The black paint around the window frame peeling away bit by bit, much like the world they were placed in. The floor was covered with an old carpet that had been soaked in dirt time and time again, and the room was deserted except for a single office desk and Yallery the lone figure sat at that desk. It was rare for a member of the seagull army to venture this far from the Duchess's sand castle. The emergency button must have truly been hit. This could mean what Yallery hoped it meant. If it did, then the sky turning black signaled that the seagull army was already on borrowed time. This was the end of an era and perhaps the beginning of a new one.
"Yallery Brown sir, I must speak with you on a matter of some urgency," the seagull squawked a little too fast.
At the opposite end of the long room, Yallery's hunched figure sat silently by the desk. He was a short man with skin of the colour of mustard. His scraggly white beard was badly unkempt and he wore a suit two sizes too big for his body. His eyes looked glazed and his expression was vague. Oddly, he was focussing more on the corner of the room. Yallery's eyes then moved to watch the seagull fly through the window but he did not react.
"I know," Yallery replied softly.
"I saw the black sky rolling in. The duchess has fallen, has she not?"
"She has," the seagull replied.
"Defeated at her own game and then left her castle and her post. Just abdicated, ran off with some bus driver. She always had the hots for him.”
Yallery tilted his head and half smiled.
“You see, he was a very miserable man and she was a very miserable woman. So together they make a very miserable couple," the seagull explained.
Despite the seagull’s sorrowed tone, Yallery could not hold back his excitement. A full smile emerged on his unwashed face, and he let out an excited squeak. Now he knew for sure what this meant. If the duchess was gone, the land, he and the seagull lived in was vanishing. Everything he knew would be gone in a matter of hours. Despite the danger of non-existence, all he could feel was excitement. He knew, that, now was his only chance to play the role he had always wanted to play. The compare to the crowning of a new ruler, the host to a new era- an era where Yallery would be transported from the bottom of the chain to an important figure right at the very top. It's the way it always worked. Once a ruler was gone, their land was wiped clean. The dark sky was the disinfectant and Yallery alone had the tools to rewrite the land. All his planning and research had led to today and the news he had just received this very moment. It was time to put all the theory into practice.
So, for the first time, in many years, the usually hunchbacked Yallery stood up straight with so much force that the chair behind him smashed against the wall. The seagull flapped back making sure to be well out of chair shot range. Yallery walked to the other side of the room and back again and for a while, the sound of the heavy rain outside and the sound of his footsteps provided the only noise.
"How much has gone?" Yallery demanded.
"There is only blackness south of the owl hotel," the seagull replied.
Yallery found himself smiling again. He paced around his desk finding the microphone.
"Could you all engage the firewall please, and start the reboot process. I assure you this is not a drill." Yallery gave the order cheerfully before turning his attention back to the Seagull.
"I had better get more information out of you then hadn't I? Tell me, who defeated the Duchess? If I am to reboot this place under a new ruler this information is important to me."
"A group of children Yallery," The seagull answered shaking his head and looking more sorrowful than before.
“Outsiders, you will likely never see them again.”
“Oh but I will, I must,” Yallery responded quickly.
He meant his words too. To be successful those children were needed. They were like an ingredient in a well-balanced recipe, vital to not only his success but also his survival.
Yallery began jumping up and down on the spot. It was something he did to aid this thought when he was too excited to think properly. As he had been seated for much of the past few years, it felt good. He suddenly felt so much energy running through his body. The thought of it, children defeated the Duchess. This was going to be easier than he could have ever imagined. He now lived in a land without a ruler. There were no rules, no order, just chaos. It could not stay that way. A new ruler would be crowned and if everything worked right, Yallery planned to cement his place in history.
"What of the new ruler?" Yallery asked.
"Count Douglass is on his way to meet us right now. As the designated new ruler he will wait here behind your firewall until such a time as the reboot is successful."
By the rules set by the Duchess brave Count Douglass would do battle with whoever defeated the old ruler. That would be the children the seagull spoke off. Because the children were outsiders, Douglass would feel he should be the new ruler automatically. The reboot wouldn't work that way, and besides Yallery had other plans. Plans he chose to keep to himself for now.
Yallery stroked his bearded chin. "The reboot yes," he mumbled.
"How do you plan on making it happen?" The seagull asked.
Yallery stopped jumping and once again began pacing the room; he was so excited he was unable to keep still.
There was a loud rumble of thunder from outside. Yallery waited for it to pass before he spoke.
“You know, I detect a little skepticism in your voice. You don't believe I can reboot everything to how it was?”
The seagull got no chance to argue.
“You won't be around long enough to see it but you have my assurances, my guarantee in fact it will happen. All I need to start with is an effective connection and that is happening right now. We, my feathered friend are being beamed into the head of those responsible for defeating the Duchess.”
Then Yallery got close to the Seagull, He exhaled twice and his breath made the Seagulls feathers move. The seagull waddled backwards.
“I never did like seagulls. Never saw the Duchess's reason in choosing you," Yallery told the bird.
"Now Yallery," the seagull scolded.
Then the seagull looked vacant. The bird stopped talking, in fact, as Yallery had expected the seagull would not talk ever again.
“Why will you never talk again?” Yallery asked aloud, and then answered his own question despite was no one around to hear him.
"Because seagulls don't talk." He said gleefully.
The seagulls purpose was to serve the ruler. With no ruler and no more orders to follow, the seagull was back to being a regular, normal, everyday seagull.
"To reboot I need the children that defeated the Duchess. It is after all a natural succession. The new ruler or at least contender to be the new ruler is the person that defeated the last ruler."
Yallery picked the seagull up and walked across to the window, then he let go and watched the bird fly away into the night sky. The seagull would have more adventures all right but none would involve the Duchess.
Yallery put his chair back into place and sat back into it enjoying the comfort. He shuffled a few papers about then looked towards
a corner of the room with a vacant stare. He began talking to a seemingly invisible figure in the corner of the room.
"I know you are there. You have been listening to all of that haven't you?"
The black whiskers twitched around Yallery's nose and his slightly twisted smile returned as his eyes focused more intently on the corner of the room.
The speakers of the microphone he had given orders on earlier buzzed into life.
An alternated voice spoke “Connection has been established.”
"You were supposed to hear my chat with that seagull. That was my design. I know you can hear me Tommy. My name is Yallery Brown and I will be your host, your guide and your compare.”
He sat by the almost clear desk with his hands folded under his chin and his head tilted to the right, squinting as though trying to make something out in the distance.
“We will meet soon enough Tommy. But for now the connection is closing. That means it is time to wake up. Wake up Tommy. Did you hear me? It's time to wake up."
"Wake up Tommy," it was Tommy's mothers voice, always a sign he had slept over the alarm.
“I am up mum,” Tommy lied quickly picking up the notepad from his bedside table. By the time he had the pen in his hand, the dream had fragmented into a million broken pieces. Tommy vaguely remembered a man with a scraggly white beard, twitchy black whiskers and mustard yellow skin.
“You told me to wake you up a bit earlier because you are helping Mr. Huntington with his loft today remember?”
Tommy hadn't remembered but was heading to Geoff's anyway today so going earlier would not make the world of difference.
He was about to get up when he looked at the notebook. He had written one word.
Reboot
Now why would he have written that?
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