88 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
88 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Untitled Short Story"
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date: 2024-08-01T20:31:18-07:00
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draft: true
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type: thevoid
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---
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> I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and\
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> _borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties_
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The {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}} was first discovered at a children's birthday party.
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Among the laughter, shouting, and alluring warbling of an arcade, a party was preparing to take their seats at a well-worn table. The food was primarily french fries, mediocre cheese pizza, and hamburgers; the sort of diet that would be frowned upon at home, and as a result was now highly coveted. The main event, however, turned out to be the self-serve soda machine. It provided unlimited amounts of sugary beverages at the slightest provocation, which was evidenced by the sticky layer of dried drinks that covered the table.
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It was an unusual sight: such machines were still somewhat rare in those days. Soon, the children were drunk on Coca-Cola and power. Cups were filled, emptied, spilled, dropped on the floor, and used as musical instruments all while the group crowded around the soda dispenser. The birthday girl, displaying the same ingenuity that usually let her command the attention of her peers, soon found a new dimension along which the machine could be abused. One cup needed not contain a single drink.
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This new discovery reignited the drinking frenzy. Sensible combinations soon gave way to outrageous mixes. Drinks were paired up, tripled, quadrupled. Soon, everyone was rushing to mix every flavor together, and stories were told of a chemical reaction that would occur when they were combined with precise proportions. No such reaction came.
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True to their age, the children were not satisfied with this conclusion. They continued their search for the missing ingredient. Having exhausted the products of the soda machine, they had to broaden their horizons. Ketchup and mustard were the first additions to their repertoire. The boys made shows of tasting and being revolted by their mustard-root-cola, while the girls squealed with disapproval and laughter. Having still failed to perform their act of alchemy, the kids braved yet further frontiers, dropping leftover pieces of cheese and torn fragments of napkins into their cup-cauldrons.
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Then, it worked.
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When one of the children looked back at his cup, having been distracted by another's exaggerated gagging, he found it to contain a uniformily black fluid. This intrigued the boy; he went to prod it with his fork, but it never reached the side of the cup. Startled, he dropped the utensil, and watched it sink out of sight. This too was intriguing: the fork was noticeably longer than the container.
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The others soon crowded around him to examine what was later understood to be the first instance of the {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}}. They dropped straws, arcade tickets, cheap toys (purchased with arcade tickets), and coins into the cup, all of which disappeared without a sound. The boy found himself to be the new center of attention, and took great pleasure in recounting his latest recipe. Soon, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was replicated in the cups of everyone in the party.
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---
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During the first week after that incident, teachers and janitors had a particularly difficult time. Various quantities of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} were smuggled into schools. When the staff caught on to peculiarly black water bottles, smugglers switched to more creative techniques involving Ziploc bags and photographic film tubes. Like crystals around an impurity, crowded islands formed at lunch tables with {{< thevoid "Void" >}} at their centers. The featureless and endless substance drew all attention away from civil wars, derivatives, and Steinbeck novels.
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Only, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was not entirely featureless and endless. As kids spent entire lunch breaks gazing into the darkness of the fluid, some thought they saw something. At first, the thought was explained away; anything starts to appear odd after you’ve looked at it for too long. Yet as more took on the arduous task of sitting perfectly still and staring into space, it became clear that this was no mere trick of the mind.
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With time, a light show emerged from the emptiness of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}. It was not unlike pressing down on one’s eyes: colorful particles swirled in the darkness forming spirals and fractals. These would gradually change colors, appearing at times red-and-beige, at times blue-and-green, and everything in-between.
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The display was polarizing. Swaths of children, though initially enthralled by the mysterious properties of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}, were not sufficiently re-captured by some flashing colors. In the latter parts of the week, they would leave lunch halls early to study, practice, or socialize. There were, they thought, better, more normal things to do. A minority, however, only grew more obsessed with their philosopher's stones.
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---
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Like alchemists of the past, many of the remaining experimenters had a tendency to obsess. Even as the world --- with its track meets, birthday parties, and dances --- went on around them, they continued their close observation of the mysterious substance. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} proved worthy of this sustained attention. The patterns that swirled in its depths were not entirely random; they seemed to respond, reluctantly and sluggishly, to the observer's mind. Anger and frustration tended to produce redder hues; sadness manifested in as a snotty shade of green. Focusing on a particular color made it more likely to appear, as well. Following its own peculiar kind of intuition, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} responded faster when more individuals were present.
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Other promising avenues of research also grew in popularity over the following days and weeks. The precise recipe for the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was not, it turned out, very strict. Though soda and fast food remained a constant fixture, the precise ingredients could be substituted for alternates. Pieces of swiss cheese worked just as well as cheddar. A fragment of a turkey patty replaced the traditional 100% Angus beef in a pinch. The resulting substance was as opaque and inscrutable as ever.
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Following much trial error, adolescent adventurers mapped the frontiers of {{< thevoid "Void" >}} synthesis. Though the full specification is not particularly relevant, of note was the requirement for the base to be made of a mixture of sodas, and another for the final mixture to contain at least two sandwich ingredients. Orange juice, though sweet and liquid, did not catalyze the reaction, though Orange Fanta did, even if it was completely flat.
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---
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If all properties hereto described were the only notable aspects of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}, it would have been a mere curiosity. Late-night History Channel shows might have shown it along theories of ancient aliens or telepath, filling inattentive viewers' dimly lit homes with comfortable background noise. The substance, however, had one final, crucial aspect. The discovery was made -- as is often the case -- in the midst of conflict.
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The two parties could not be more different. One group consistent of the boys from Mr. Thompson's physics class. They were skinny, bespectacled, and dressed in graphic t-shirts and jeans. The other group was made up up the boys from Mrs. Leonard's biology class; they were skinny, bespectacled, and dressed in graphic t-shirts and jeans. Naturally, the two factions were sworn enemies.
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One rainy West Coast day, the two groups were engaging in customary lunch-break {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-viewing. By then, participants in the activity were relegated to the floors of a hallway in the back of the school, their sustain interested in staring-into-space taking on toll on their reputation. They were making use of advanced techniques; by then, experts were able to influence the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} not only to change color, but to form into shimmering images. The Thompsonians were constructing an image of a Christmas tree; the Leonardese were working on The Funniest Image Image to Ever Exist (something phallic).
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Neither group was having much luck. The tree's trunk was consistently much too short, and its bottom too curvy. The phallus, conversely, was quite sharp and somehow sickly looking. Each side mocked the other relentlessly. It took the insult-hurlers from the two camps several back-and-forth trips to realize the images they were ridiculing and the images their friends were conjuring were one and the same.
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---
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The {{< thevoid "Void" >}}'s interconnectedness led to a renaissance of sorts. By sticking to a specific and precise recipe, one could reliably come back over and over to the same "place" in the infinite blackness. Painstakingly painted pictures persisted into the next day, and anyone with the same recipe could tune in to see. Enthusiaests rushed to claim recipes most affordable on modest allowances. Registries of locations and ingredients were posted on bulletin boards, written in bathroom stalls, tossed around as crumpled paper balls in class. Even those who had previously shunned the alchemists were drawn back into the fold by the promise of conjuring images of their own for others to see.
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---
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It was not until weeks later that the first glimpses of a post-{{< thevoid "Void" >}} future revealed themselves, to no one's attention or particular interest. A groggy, not-yet-caffeinated Mrs. Leonard walking into class one day to find a sea of red fabric. Nearly every girl in the morning section showed up to class that day waring a red dress ~~all of a similar style~~. Not a single one of the students could provide a concrete method by which they chose the day's wardrobe; feelings, whims, and even coin-flipping were cited as reasons for wearing the outfit. What's more, the same happened in Mr. Thompson's class, and in a number of scattered schools throughout the country.
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Being a scientist at heart, and rejecting wholeheartedly the possibility of coincidence of paranormal involvement, Mrs. Leonard spent the rest of the day distractedly overcorrecting for her earlier lack of coffee. At lunch she pondered about mass hysteria; while grading papers she envisioned a convert mind-control test by some three-letter agency. Nevertheless, a satisfying answer eluded her, and she came home jittery and defeated. Walking past her son's room she noted that he was indulging in his habitual {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-gazing. In the depths of the pitch-black bowl, the glimpsed swirls of that very same shade of red.
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---
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The mechanism that precipitated the red-dress curiosity was not all that sinister. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}}, it seemed, was not unlike an ocean. In hot weather, it absorbed the heat, and cooled the surroundings. In cold weather, it released the stored heat to mitigate the chill. After a day in which red was prevalent in the collective thoughts of {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-viewers, the color dissipated like heat through the material of the dark realm, was stirred somehow by the convection of its hidden currents, and re-entered the minds of practitioners in its altered form. They averted their gazes and went to put on red clothes.
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---
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{{< todo >}}
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Unused text below here.
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{{< /todo >}}
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All influences on a particular recipe of the Void, all shifts in color and mood, were interconnected for any given recipe.
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Another property of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was discovered shortly thereafter, when a particularly brave adventurer attempted to get a closer look at the patterns by dipping his head in an entire bowl of the stuff. Almost immediately, he recoiled, shouting. Just above his eyebrow were four small wounds, arranged in a neat line. They had been left by the fork from the arcade.
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The precise definition of what constituted a "sandwich" briefly created a deep schism among the alchemists. Was a grilled cheese sandwich __really__ a sandwich?
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