Sulphur on 9/8/2017 at 17:55
I wrote this to distract myself today. Didn't put much effort into aesthetics, so it's a bit rough. Apart from that, apologies are in order for two reasons: one, for this actually being a short story, and two, for the clichés .
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Salman studies the scene before him with knitted brow.
'I don't...' he begins, then stops.
'I have...' he tries again, but that doesn't do it either. He sighs. 'Fine, I give up. What the hell am I looking at?'
Vivek smiles, teeth shellaced from the waxy apple he half-scarfed before abandoning it... somewhere. Salman can't see it now, but the evidence of it remains. Flecks of red speckle the borders where his teeth meet his gums. 'Is it not obvious?' he asks.
'Um. No?'
'Fine. Let me answer this way, then. Where are we?'
'We are here. In your backyard. At your house.'
'Do you remember me calling you here, Salman? Do you remember getting "here"?'
Salman thinks. 'No, you didn't call me. I just dropped by on the way from... well, I can't recall, but it was somebody's house.'
Vivek's smile broadens into a grin. 'Look closer then.' He indicates the scene before them with a broad sweep of his hand. 'Go on.'
Salman walks towards the spectacle. Ribbons of shivered light hang in the air, wrapped around a fantastical diorama that looks like a thousand exploded mirrors, all moving towards and away from each other at the same time. He sees hundreds of smaller versions of himself flickering in each shard, all of them moving independently -- walking, talking, staring back, and it is impossible to focus on just one. Vivek taps him on the shoulder and guides his eyes towards a jagged piece of reality, rainbow-edged light sluicing down its frame.
Salman looks closer. He sees himself, driving from this place, taking a bend in the road... but no, it isn't a bend in the road, it's a bend in... 'Wait,' he says. 'The car, it's disappeared. Where did it go?'
'Is that the right question? Where did it go, or where will it go?'
Salman feels a chill travel down his spine. 'The Bottle... we did it?'
'Yes. And it worked beyond our wildest dreams. The three mad mathematicians were right.'
Salman whoops and laughs, hugs Vivek then stops, grabs his arm. 'We're going to be famous!' he yells. A smaller voice inside him whispers, 'You're going to be famous.'
Vivek smiles, then shakes his head. 'Salman. It worked, yes. But we made a mistake. Possibly the worst one. The Bottle... I realised something was off with the geometry. Someone modified it, you see, so that in space-time, it still intersects with itself. The moment of its creation is also the moment of its undoing. When you asked me to trigger the sequence I saw it only after it was too late. The Bottle... it is, well, broken.' Vivek indicates the shard Salman was looking at. 'See for yourself.'
The car is back. But something is different. Salman sees himself park the car and get out. He sees himself walking towards a house and ringing the doorbell.
Realisation comes to him in a sickening wave of vertigo, and he knows what is about to happen next. He does not stay to see it. He is running now, running out of the backyard and towards his car, fumbling for the keys in his pocket. His hands are clammy as he turns the key in the ignition. He looks out the window, sees Vivek still gazing at the twisting knot of fractured space in front of him. He doesn't seem to hear Salman pull out of the driveway.
The wind whips in Salman's face as he guns the engine and makes for home. Tears stream from his eyes as he bites down on his knuckles hard enough that the skin ruptures, and the blood flows freely.
Salman doesn't look out the window, doesn't notice the subtle fracture in the sky that he is barrelling towards, doesn't notice that, for all the world, as it splits the setting sun behind him, that the light warps and shivers in his rear-view mirror like it is bending in on itself, just before the car vanishes completely.
...
No point waiting any more, Salman thinks as he gets into the car. It's now or never. The wind picks up, carrying the scent of possibility with it. He takes his phone out, taps a message to Vivek and Carla to begin the Klein sequence. As he returns the phone to his pocket, his hand brushes against the Webley's seven hundred grams of cold steel tucked into his waistband. Its weight is a silent comfort, and he smiles.
'It is going to be a beautiful day,' Salman says to himself as he revs the engine.
No one responds, but as the wind roars in his ears, Salman knows that the universe agrees with him.
Kolya on 9/8/2017 at 21:50
A nicely described loop. I didn't get the part about "the bottle" or anything about how they did it, who they are, etc. Maybe I'm too stupid, or maybe it needs a bit of extending, but what's there is great.
SubJeff on 9/8/2017 at 23:09
Nice Sulphur, nice.
Sulphur on 10/8/2017 at 05:23
Thanks, guys. I agree it needs more detail (character and everything else, really). It's a ham-fisted thought experiment at visualising a Klein bottle in spacetime, minus a bunch of things that may actually happen instead -- if it were physically possible, which it isn't. Not for us, anyway. God may have the last word on implementing n-dimensional non-orientable surfaces.
SubJeff on 10/8/2017 at 22:35
Sunday afternoon and we're all in shop. Bits of this is legit but as like most Sundays most of it is chop. It's the best day to be on ‘cause the pay is much better, naturally. Overtime on a non-legit? Yeah, that's got to get in the coin or why else would you really do it? Everybody does but if you're going to work here at all you've got to be all in sometimes. No weak links in the chain if and when... well, you know.
This is what happened.
Just after three this bald guy in a suit rolls in, all smooth like. Not his manner; he was actually smooth. Head like cue ball and so clean shaven I though he had one of those hair-losing diseases until I noticed his little eyebrows. This guy rocked up in a light grey suit that was slightly too short in the leg, with black shoes and a dark blue crisscross patterned cotton shirt. He had those tiny round glasses like you see on German officers in WW2 films, or that general dude who burned his hand in the snow in Indian Jones. The money was there, the matching wasn't.
So anyway, he stands in the middle of the shop and clicks his fingers, loud. Everyone stopped to look at this out of place, short, skinny, shiny intruder with his bad dress sense and art house glasses. This is what he said.
“A man I've never met, whose location and contact details I know nothing about, sent a timed email 5 hours ago. It won't be delivered until Wednesday. He knows who I am, what I look like and he's tracking me with an app on my phone. He'll meet me between now and Wednesday but I don't know where. I'm just going to go about my business, or not, as the case may be.”
He paused. Pauly looked like he was about to say something but just then this moleman from the offices started again.
“If I don't get what I need I'm a dead man anyway so killing me now will make no difference. However, if I do get what I want that email will be recalled. That email, fellas, contains the pictures, names, dates of birth, passport numbers, addresses, contact details, car registration numbers, resumes and a whole lot more about all of you, your spouses, your parents and your kids. One of you has stolen something from my employer's employer and if that email arrives everyone in it will dead by Saturday.”
He paused and looked around, at our faces.
“If you return what was stolen when the man I've never met sees me, sometime between now and Wednesday, I'll pass it on and email will be recalled. So you see fellas, at least one of you has a big confession to make and something to give me. I'm going to sit in your office. I'd love a coffee. I'll be here for ten minutes.”
He walked into Jimmy's office.
That was 20 days ago. I'm still on the run.
Sulphur on 11/8/2017 at 05:48
Nice. Very Black Mirror. I like the colloquial touch to the narration, too, seems a bit nadsat, a bit everyday.
Aja on 18/8/2017 at 08:38
I'll read the new stories a bit later on, but I just wanted to say how surprised I was to see this thread crop up and how I had almost entirely forgotten writing it.
Sulphur on 18/8/2017 at 13:55
A good surprise, I hope. I just remembered it the other day and decided, 'Well hell, why not?' Reanimation is one of my other on-again off-again pastimes.
Tocky on 19/8/2017 at 03:45
When I saw this I winced thinking "oh hell what did I post" but I kind of like the ones I did. They have a deeper layer and a top one that is amusing.
demagogue on 19/8/2017 at 10:36
Archibald fervently peered through the telescope, then down at his charts, taking frenzied notes in the margins.
It was a new celestial object to be sure, but what to make of it?
It was hardly a pin prick, even through the telescope, and could easily have gone unnoticed if the world hadn't had someone as disciplined as he was in his nightly accounting of the sky against the old charts.
He was sure it was not there the night before.
For a brief second he allowed himself to feel vindicated for his tireless work, but quickly returned to the crisis at hand.
He thought the phenomenon may have been described before, but where to look?
He ran to the shelves and pulled the dusty old tomes of the charts going back far into the past, and poured through them, looking for any hint. He noticed the new objects added to the charts as the telescopes gained power. But were any of them completely new objects? How could he know for sure? There was nothing special about them now, save their dimness and small size.
But this object -- he peered again into the telescope to see it still there -- was something else entirely!
He ran to the door and pounded his fists.
"Who is out there tonight?! You must listen to me! There's an object! An object in the sky!"
He pounded and wouldn't let up until the tiny iron window was pushed open.
"Quiet down! Quiet down! It's me, Mortimax. What's this about an object? You must settle down."
"An object in the sky! Look here..." He held the latest chart up to the tiny window and pointed to an empty space in the Raven's constellation.
"It's here! It's here! Look, what do you see?!"
"I see nothing. What am I looking at?"
He pulled out his pencil and began circling the empty space.
"Here! There is an object here! And what do you see?"
"I see nothing. You are circling empty space."
"But it isn't empty. You must look into the telescope and see!"
"Go to sleep, Archibald."
He slammed the little iron window shut with a crack.
Archibald would not be deterred. He began to pound on the door.
"You must see it! You must see it!" he shouted, his voice cracking with desperation.
He finally heard the familiar clacking of the key unlocking the door, and he felt the swell of relief that only comes to the man whose life's work is so long confined to the shadows and finally recognized by the world.
The door was thrust open, throwing Archibald back.
Mortimax walked in and grabbed him by the throat, pushing him to the bed.
He towered over the old man and his giant hands easily wrapped around Archibald's neck like a twig, his trunk-sized biceps rippling.
"You were told not to scream at night, were you not?"
The shock and the burly grasp around his throat left Archibald speechless.
"You were told what was expected as appropriate behavior if you were to be left alone, were you not? Is this appropriate behavior, Archibald?"
Mortimax pushed Archibald to the bed and pinned him down as he pulled the leather straps over his body, tightening each one and fastening them as Archibald wrestled against the inevitable in futility.
"But the object! Ugh! You must see the object! It doesn't belong there!! Uggghhh!"
When Mortimax had the man strapped down, he walked stridently outside and quickly returned with the old leather mask.
"Nooo... Please. Just look. The telescope is right there... I'll be quiet. Just look." Archibald hushed to a whimper.
"You were told, Archibald."
Mortimax pushed the mask over Archibald's face, the rubber knob forcing itself into his mouth and muffling even the hushed whimpers to a murmur. Archibald's writhing slowed and looked at Mortimax with pleading eyes.
Mortimax stood up, looked at the telescope, looked at Archibald, and gave an impatient huff.
He walked over to the telescope and ran his fingers down its stretch. From across the room Archibald's eyes plead.
Mortimax picked the telescope up, a giant hand on each end, then flexed his trunks until the telescope snapped in two.
He dropped the pieces on the stone floor and they clanged like broken midnight bells.
He quickly walked out, muttering only "You were told, Archibald."
Archibald was left strapped in his bed the next day as punishment, only let out every few hours for feedings and sanitary matters.
The day after that, finally freed from the bed, he took to mending his telescope. He drew his instructions for casting the new pieces and handed them to the next day's guard, Johannes. But he knew it would be some time before they would bother getting around to his request. It would certainly not be to please him, but the family had made some kind of minimal promise to his wife and children, when they were still alive, that he would be treated humanely, left to conduct his studies in peace and not mistreated, apparently except as called for. That left him with a certain very small amount of leverage he knew to save for important requests like this.
But he couldn't wait for the new pieces. He needed to advance his studies this very night.
He wound a cloth around the breach of the broken telescope and asked for some plaster to seal it.
It was essential that no light leak through.
Thank goodness the lenses were not cracked.
When the stars began to emerge, he aimed his mended contraption at the location he had so fervently circled in the chart.
It was still there, but something was different.
He brought up the filters. Sure enough, while still small, its apparent magnitude had almost doubled in the time since he had last seen it.
He double checked his notes.
Surely that could not be an artifact of his repair job?
He looked again. Over the course of several hours, he almost convinced himself it was growing brighter and larger as he watched it.
He didn't know what to make of it, but it looked like it was getting closer.
