From Behind The Glass
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The doctor sat wearily at his table, staring at the chasm before him. Who could’ve known that something so dark could fit into such a simple container like this. An inch of glass was the only thing standing between him and the sludge. The sludge with a face. But no, it didn’t have a face. It was just a bit of ooze, the doctor told himself. A dropping of tar with vaguely interesting properties. A sludge with no purpose, with no face. Except for a mouth. And a pair of eyes. Constantly watching him. It could probably even smell him. A dropping of tar that was worth more than his entire life. All his dreams and hopes, they all paled in comparison to this thing that stared back at him. From behind the glass. Right into his soul. He felt that if he stared in too deeply… he would become sludge as well.
“Did you finish up your notes?” a woman suddenly asked from behind, startling the doctor out of his stupor.
“Huh?! Oh, Rebecca, please! Please, girl, you’ve startled me!” the doctor gasped out.
“Girl? Acting like an old man again, Doctor?” the woman laughed softly.
It is true that the doctor was not yet out of his prime, although he could certainly feel it coming. He took off the glasses that were always the wrong size for his head and rubbed on them with his clothing. He never did mind getting himself or his belongings dirty to accomplish a task, however trivial it may be.
“What did you say, my notes? Oh, yes, yes. I was just finishing up.” he said to his assistant.
“Still staring at the thing?” Rebecca asked. “Has it done anything… strange again?”
“No, no! I don’t think… I don’t think so… But as always, it’s...” the doctor said before pausing for a moment.
“Rebecca, I think it sees us. Me. From in there. I think it knows what we’ve done to it.” he spoke.
Rebecca said nothing for a moment, the air filled with tension aboard this dingy little facility in the deep end of the galaxy. One would expect vast arrays of supercomputers, holographic displays and maybe even an army of artificial minds ready to serve. But this really was the deep end of the world. A dingy little place where no one could’ve expected to find such a thing as this. The doctor sighed before getting off his old, rusted chair.
“Ready to begin the transport?” the now anxious Rebecca asked.
“Huh? Oh, yes, yes. Yes, please do. Tell the boys we’re all ready to head out. Soon we’ll be examining this thing under better circumstances. Hopefully with gentler means.” the doctor said.
Only a few moments later, a man walked into the lab room wearing an official looking suit and tie.
“Please, doctor, have you changed your mind yet?” he asked, immediately without waiting for any sort of response or acknowledgment to his presence.
The doctor sighed in exasperation as the man approached him.
“Listen, we’ll give you everything you want. Money, a retirement, a villa in a resort colony. Anything you could ask for! Damn it, we’ll give you a whole cruiser if it’d damn well please you!” the man droned.
The doctor simply looked at him with an uncaring, yet clearly condescending look on his face. His eyebrow raised before speaking up.
“What if I wanted two cruisers?” he mocked.
Rebecca laughed for a moment before attempting to regain her composure and sense of professionalism. Neither she nor the doctor were trying too hard at that, clearly. They had little respect for the one they considered to be a vendor of dark deeds in front of them.
“Alright, fine.” the other man scoffed, darting his eyes around and looking obviously upset.
“You know, we tried to do everything we could to make a bargain with you but clearly you’re too stuck up your own ears to see an opportunity when it’s right in front of you.” he complained. The doctor sighed again.
“Well, you see… I try to remain the least bit respectable when it comes to my career, you know. I can’t just sell off a valuable find such as this to any random person that asks. I’m an official researcher, working on official government projects. What you’re asking me to do would be highly illegal. Not to mention irresponsible.” the doctor replied.
The man in the suit cared little and simply walked away, fury bubbling under the surface, practically midway through the doctor’s words. There would be no deal and that was the end of this debate as far as he was concerned.
“Rude.” Rebecca commented on the man.
“Criminal.” the doctor added.
He sighed again, they both did before going back to their work. They called up a few attendants to begin transporting the specimen to the ship they had chartered. This whole colony felt like it had been built centuries ago. Were it not for the recent construction work ordered by the local officials, it could’ve easily imploded in on itself by now. The air was breathable. That was the only benefit to living in this abandoned place on the far ends of the world. And now that the repairmen would be leaving, he would too. Along with… the specimen.
A few hours had passed and what little remained of the crew working at the research lab, dock workers included, all gathered round in the cargo bay to see the final packaging and preparation of the sample for transport. Everyone darted back and forth taking notes, measurements and running calculations in their head as the glass cylinder was placed into a solid box of metal before being sealed up tight.
Everyone was relieved to have it all finally go away. The last few weeks had been tough, and everyone felt uneasy. Something about that strange, sludge like material had gotten to the last of their nerves. It would all finally leave them in peace so they could go back to studying the usual samples they would acquire in the colony. Far more mundane ones for sure but… none of those other things you could find buried under the dry earth of this land would ever feel so… foreboding.
“All ready for departure.” a dock worker called out from somewhere in the large room as the metal box was loaded onto a platform.
The platform then slowly started to lower into the ground as Rebecca watched on from a bench on the side of the large room. It was a rather large platform for a rather small object. The box wasn’t even the full height of a man. It could just as easily have been filled up with random, meaningless consumer items. The dock in general had never seen much use, nor did the underground tube-tram system used to move things around the colony. The whole lab, and even the whole colony for that matter, felt like such a waste. It had been built for better things that never came to fruition. Explore the world, discover the secrets of the stars. What new elements could we discover, how could mankind expand its wealth of knowledge among the vast reaches of space?
But alas as it turns out… a rock by any other name in any other world…
“Done loading the cargo, sir.” said a dock worker who walked boldly in front of the doctor, the big man that he was. The doctor looked very frail by comparison.
“Good.” the doctor responded.
“Alright, gentlemen, I’m very glad to be able to spend some final moments in the pleasure of your company. For now, I finally leave this wretched place so that I may find my true life’s worth in another, better, run-down government facility! A vast sea of wonders, space is certainly not! But we all do what we must, I suppose.”
The whole dock laughed and muttered various things. A few men even clapped, slowly. Everyone shook their heads before continuing the work. The doctor took off his glasses for cleaning again when he saw something strange in their reflection. It was his face. Well what’s so strange about that, he asked himself.
But then, slowly… things stopped making sense all around him. The room fell silent. There was no movement. No talking. The air was still. His eyes darkened. The doctor looked around him. It was all very blurry, his poor eyesight being what it was. The people were nothing but silhouettes scattered all around him. Empty vessels and smudges where humans once stood. The doctor put on his glasses again and as he did, the smudges all fell away. The room was empty, save for him.
“Coming. Coming. Coming.”
“What?” the doctor asked in confusion, thinking he’d heard a voice.
A voice as non existent as it was rough and pained. The doctor looked around in confusion as the room began losing its light. Losing its place in the known part of existence, barely hovering above the void below. The room began to get smaller all around and all above. Everything slowly got darker and darker until the doctor could see only but a few feet in front of him. In any other situation he might’ve panicked. But he too was slowly losing his will to do anything but simply stand there. Confused. And alone.
Suddenly. A deafeningly loud stream of sounds began rupturing all around him, breaking the silence of the room.
“Here. Here. Coming. Kill.”
The doctor fell to his knees, covering his pained, bleeding ears. He tried so hard to make the sound go away but yet he couldn’t. He could do nothing but lay on the ground with his hands over his head as he desperately tried to regain control of his senses. The noise was beyond terrifying. But soon… It ended.
The doctor clenched his bleeding stomach, his mind being snapped back into reality by the bullet that had been lodged inside of him. He looked around to see a room full of dead people. The workers had been shot, their corpses remained motionless on the ground. Rebecca’s body laid over the platform terminal, its green blinking light being an indication of a successful transfer of the cargo through the underground rails. The box had left.
But the one who had done this stood right in front of the doctor, towering over him. He could not see it very well, his eyesight being what it was. The glasses broken from some alteration or another. The doctor looked up at the smudge above him and simply waited.
For one final bullet.