7.1 KiB
| title | date | draft | type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Untitled Short Story | 2024-08-01T20:31:18-07:00 | true | thevoid |
I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and
borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties
The {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}} was first discovered at a children's birthday party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Then, it worked.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The precise definition of what constituted a "sandwich" briefly created a deep schism among the alchemists. Was a grilled cheese sandwich really a sandwich?
{{< todo >}} Unused text below here. {{< /todo >}}
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.