“I see you’ve located our hidden camera, young man.” The doctor said, kindly.
“It would seem so, but, um…”
“You want to know how things are going with your astronomer friend, correct?” asked the doctor.
“Yes, and a few other things…if that’s possible.”
“Well, I’ll answer what I can, Mr. Summons, but only what I can. Lieutenant Dan is responsible for guarding you while you’re here, and he’s much more of a government man than I am. I’m sure you already know, the government doesn’t relinquish all of its secrets that easily. As far as Mr. Reynolds is concerned, you’ll be seeing him in just a little while. But first,” The doctor looked over Geoffrey like a mortician in some movie or cartoon trying to assess measurements for a custom coffin “we’ll need to get you cleaned up.”
The doctor reached into one of the deep pockets of his white lab coat and produced a white note pad and a small, white pencil. He handed the articles to Geoffrey. “I’m going to show you to the sterilization shower, but first, I need you to write down the size of your clothes. Shirt, pants, shoes, underwear, everything. And be very precise.”
Geoffrey gazed down at the colorless writing material. “Why is everything white here?” he asked, turning the pad and pencil over in his hand.
The doctor sighed lightly. “I just got finished dealing with another Nosey Nancy not too long ago, Mr. Summons. Can’t we get you cleaned up and changed before we begin with the twenty questions routine?”
“What’s the rush? It doesn’t look like I’ll be leaving this place any time soon…if ever. And who was the other guy that had questions?”
“Other young lady.” The doctor corrected. “And a very popular young lady out in the free world, or so I hear. But you need not worry about her, you won’t be making her acquaintance any time soon.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, let’s just say that your astronomer friend is a very important person now, but if he’s important, than this young lady is extremely important.”
Geoffrey could not decipher the doctor’s mysteriously dark assessment and didn’t try. Instead, he said, “Okay, well…why is everything here white?”
“Right,” sighed the doctor, “You’re a persistence one, aren’t you, Mr. Summons? Well, let me try to explain it to you in as much of laymen’s terms as I can.” Geoffrey could easily sense something of the same brand of egotism that he had grown used to in his dealings with Mr. Reynolds, but it didn’t chafe him nearly as much. There were more important things to be concerned with.
“All the lights in this entire facility,” began the doctor, gesturing toward the ceiling, “are virtually identical to the Cleaning Lights in the entranceway, except they are not nearly as powerful. They don’t need to be. As I told you before, the Cleaning Lights that you passed through when you first entered all but completely sterilized your body inside and out, but your body needs a large array of bacteria and other microorganisms to function properly. It is one of the many necessary symbiotic relationships that man has been forced to acquire in order for us to survive our atmosphere.” The doctor paused to give Geoffrey a moment to digest the information. “So, besides acquiring many of these microorganisms from our surroundings, the body itself also produces a number of them. The lights in this room as well as in rest of the facility are to keep these newly-forged microorganisms in check…” The doc glanced down at his watch (also white), “…as is the sterilization shower that I’m supposed to be escorting you to.”
“Right, but you still haven’t told me why everything’s white. Is it to help control these…microorganisms?”
“Yes and no,” answered the doctor cryptically, “The Cleaning Lights are just one variation of this particular technology that we were able to garner from the foreign intelligences we’ve been studying. What you experienced with the fragment, we think, is that technology at full blast. Now, I’m sure you can see why it wouldn’t be very beneficial for us to have much contact with that, don’t you?” Geoffrey nodded solemnly. “Now, what we’ve found,” continued the doctor, “is that if we introduce certain variables into the equation, we can get different applications from that technology. Safer applications.” He glanced down at his watch again. “Well, anyway, we’ve found that certain colors…excite this particular application and increase its power. The only problem with that is that if the Cleaning Lights are too strong, they’ll kill off more of us than just microorganisms. They would start actually soldering organ cells, which means goodbye lungs, heart, brain…you get the point.”
Geoffrey certainly did.
“We’ve found a few colors that cause this reaction, but until we know how every color will affect the lights, we think it’s best just to keep things neutral. We believe that’s why the fragment fell near the research station where you were in the first place. That light was intended to carry the fragment, but the miles and miles of unbroken white landscape in Antarctica most likely altered its application.”
“These lights can kill us?” Geoffrey asked, with some alarm.
“Mr. Summons, if we don’t figure out what’s going on here and how to stop it, the human race is a goner anyway. And besides, like I already told you, we can’t study living alien specimens without them. You take a risk with every breath you draw, Son, that’s just the nature of existence. This is no different.” Geoffrey didn’t ask any further questions, and it likely wouldn’t have mattered if he had, because after the doctor finished talking, he made it clear that Geoffrey was to head to the shower, without further delay. The doctor led Geoffrey through a virtual maze of hallways that were as large as the entranceway corridor but, as the doctor had said, not as brightly lit, until the two of them at last came to the sterilization shower.
The shower was unlike any normal shower Geoffrey had ever seen. He expected as much: This whole fiasco was like a crazy dream and a normal shower would’ve been too close to reality to be properly at home in this dream. The room the doctor led him into was, for all appearances, just like the others, except that the light was of a much different and lesser quality than the rest of the facility. The lights were regular lights and it was amazing how dull and dirty they looked now that Geoffrey’s eyes had grown accustomed to the Cleaning Lights. The difference was so profound that it was almost like stepping out of the noon day sun into relative darkness. When Geoffrey’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw the other obvious difference in the room. The walls and the ceiling, even the floor were all permeated with small, shallow grooves. Geoffrey looked at them closely. He didn’t think they were cameras, but he couldn’t tell what they were.
“All right, Son,” said the doctor, “You will only be in here for about fifteen minutes. Shortly after I leave, you will hear instructions on what you’re supposed to do. I will meet you afterward. I have another patient to attend to.” Geoffrey had the distinct feeling the doctor wasn’t talking about Mr. Reynolds. Before he could ask any further questions, the doctor had closed the door behind him and was gone.
“Right.” Geoffrey whispered to himself. “And so, the fun continues.”
“Geoffrey Summons?” a voice that sounded amazingly close, asked, just then. Geoffrey nearly leapt out of his skin.
“Yes?” he answered tentatively, once he could steady his breathing.
“Disrobe, please.” the voice said blandly. Geoffrey couldn’t tell if it was a woman’s voice, a man’s, or computer generated for that matter. Either way, it sounded devoid of any particular interest. Geoffrey mused to himself that this was probably for his benefit. With the unexpected voice reminding him that he was being watched, he was glad that the person using it wasn’t giving the impression that he, she, or it was enjoying this little moment of voyeurism (especially since he couldn’t tell with any certainty whether or not it was a woman’s voice). Even as he disrobed, he was still uncomfortable. This seemed to be just another link in the chain of unusual things that he had been involved in lately. Geoffrey took off his sh
oes, then his shirt, with the unassailable hesitation of man undressing in front of an audience of strangers for the very first time.
Then, he thought about the aliens the doctor had mentioned studying. How must they feel, being monitored and probed, as Geoffrey was sure they were? Did they feel as humiliated as he did now? Were they able to feel humiliated at all? What did they feel, being in the hands of absurdly foreign entities as human beings (certainly humans were the aliens to them) and that, being endlessly tested upon and perhaps even vivisected, for the sake of furthering knowledge?
“Would you completely disrobe, please?” the voice said, startling Geoffrey a second time. He had been so lost in his own train of thought that he stopped undressing. He looked down. His fingers hovered, frozen, over the buttons of his pants. He finished unbuttoning his pants, slowly lowered them to the floor, then stepped out of them. It was truly unnerving to undress before an audience for the first time, even if that audience was well hidden behind camera lenses somewhere.
He wedged his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs as he had done countless times before and again, he hesitated. He was painfully aware that this was his final article of clothing.
“I assure you, Mr. Summons, that the staff here has no interest in making a peepshow of you. This is nothing more than a necessary procedure and the sooner we begin, the sooner we can finish.” Geoffrey recognized the wisdom of the androgynous voice. It was right, the sooner he got on with this, the sooner it would be over with. The fact that it was confirmed that multiple people were watching didn’t help much, but he couldn’t just stand here forever.
He dropped his briefs and stepped out of them. Slowly. The worst part was over. From behind him, Geoffrey heard a faint whirring of a machine gearing up somewhere behind the walls. He turned toward the sound and saw a small drawer moving away from the wall. The box section extended in increments until it came out about a foot and a half.
“Place your clothing in the receptacle please.” The voice beckoned. Geoffrey dutifully obeyed. Completely naked, he gathered his things up and placed them in the drawer. “Step back please.” Geoffrey did so.
Once he was about twelve feet from the white box, the entire thing slid back into the wall. It was amazing. The movement of the compartment was smoother than anything Geoffrey had ever seen, and once it was flush to the wall, it was virtually impossible to tell that it had ever been there. As Geoffrey gazed on at the spot where the phantom box had been, two things suggested that it had not been a figment of his imagination: The absence of his clothes (which was certainly not just in his head), and the strange transformation that began to take place right before his eyes. The full outer face of the box, now level with the wall, became clear.
The entire side of the compartment facing Geoffrey gradually became transparent, like a white mist dissipating into the open air. Soon, Geoffrey saw his jumbled clothes again in the walled cubicle. Once the area was completely clear—so much so in fact, that it looked like Geoffrey could reach right in and pull his clothes back out if he wanted to—he saw a faint movement at the base of the drawer. His clothes began to move as if they were being agitated from below. A bright white-purple flame, also unlike anything Geoffrey had ever seen before, gathered steadily at the base of the box and then, in a startling instance, rose up and instantaneously reduced his clothes to nothingness. In a flash, the odd flame engulfed the pile of clothes and left nothing, not even ashes, in its wake. Then the wall quickly turned to opaque, and to completely white, just it had been before.
To Geoffrey’s stunned eyes it all happened so fast. Had it even ever been there in the first place? Geoffrey asked himself. Was his mind finally cracking? As he contemplated this possibility, there arose a faint hiss that seemed to come from everywhere in the room and at the same time, mists of water shot out toward Geoffrey from every angle. The mists were so fine and warm that Geoffrey didn’t immediately register he was even getting wet. He was rubbing contemplative circles in his chin when he noticed that his hands felt moist. He pulled his hand away from his face and found small beads of water building steadily on his skin like he was sweating. He felt his face and looked at the rest of his naked body. He found that indeed his entire body was ‘sweating’ as well.
“Okay, maybe I am cracking up.” He whispered absently.
“No, Mr. Summons, you are perfectly sane.” The voice from before asserted. The involuntary jump that Geoffrey gave, jolted more than a few beads of ‘sweat’ from his body. This was the third time whoever was on the other end of this intercom system had startled him nearly senseless.
“Would you stop doing that, please!” he yelled in the heat of his suddenly-risen blood pressure.
“Terribly sorry,” answered the voice “…Is that better?” asked the voice, much slower, and at a considerably lowered volume.
“Yeah, I guess so,” returned Geoffrey, after breathing deep in an effort to re-steady his heart rate.
“Good. We want nothing more but for this transition to be as comfortable as possible.” Geoffrey thought that if someone were, in fact, trying to make this transition comfortable, they were doing a terrible job, but he kept it to himself. “The moisture you feel,” the voice continued, “is purified water. It’s quite harmless, I assure you. It will open the pores of your skin and prepare it for the sterilization shower.”
What kind of shower am I taking, that I need water to prepare me for it? Geoffrey wanted to ask, but again, kept it to himself.
“If you will look behind you and to your far left, you will see a pair of pumice stones. In about five minutes, the water will stop and the room will fill with a chemical mist that may feel a little…disconcerting at first. Please don’t panic. It is a completely safe agent and will not harm you. Once this agent fills the room, you are to use one of the pumice stones to lightly scrub your head, scalp included, and torso. Then you are to use the second stone to scrub your bottom half. I will tell you when to stop and give you further instructions afterward. Before you begin, remember to scrub gently. It is imperative that you do not scrub too harshly. Do you understand what you are to do, Mr. Summons?” the voice concluded.
“I do.” Geoffrey answered. He turned to where the voice indicated and found the two pumice stones. They seemed to be floating in mid-air at the opposite side of the room. He stepped toward them, gliding unclothed through the airborne mist of purified water, and saw that they weren’t floating, as they appeared, but were sitting on a thin, white tray that was jutting away from the wall. With all this white everywhere, Geoffrey felt like he was experiencing snow blindness. He grabbed one of the stones and waited for the mist to subside. It did after a few minutes, and just as the voice had stipulated a colorless and tasteless mist soon rose in its place. This mist was actually vaguely white, but in a white room, he didn’t notice it. The mist was certainly not painless, however. In fact, a few moments had passed since the water dissipation and Geoffrey was just about to ask the faceless voice if something was wrong, when his skin began to tingle as if a thousand small spiders were crawling all over it.
An alarming warmth pervaded him as well. He rightly assumed that this was the sterilization agent that had been spoken of, except that it was a little more than simply disconcerting. It was downright scary. The tingling grew more profound, but the scary part was the heat. If it felt like a thousand spiders were trekking his skin, then the increasing heat was like each spider had a microscopic incinerator attached to each of their legs. It was not like heat from the sun on a hot day or mechanical heater that had been turned up too high. It felt more like completely separate heaters had been implanted in every exposed inch of his flesh, and were being gradually turned higher with each passing moment.
He grabbed a stone and went to work. The sooner he got this over with the better. In his haste, however, he did exactly what the voice had ardently advised against and scrubbed too hard, and it only took a single swipe to remind him, because with that single swipe, which happened to be on h
is upper left arm, the flesh involved screamed—no, roared—its disapproval. It took every ounce of his strength not to buckle to his knees in agony. The harrowing sensation had now found raw flesh, and it was exciting times, to say the least.
“Please, Mr. Summons, gently.” The voice admonished, but Geoffrey needed no reminder now. After this little mishap, he rubbed the stones across his body with much greater care. In the process, he saw something, dirt perhaps, rise from is skin like steam as he lightly rubbed it, and dissipate into the invisible mist. Once he was finished, a large section of the wall slid into itself, and provided an entranceway to an adjoining room. The voice instructed him to enter, and in the room, he found a fresh pair of clothes—everything white, of course.
“Please, just wait where you are, Mr. Summons.” said the voice after he had dressed “Dr. Crangler will be with you shortly.”
“Crangler…so that’s the doctor’s name. With a name like that, guess I wouldn’t tell anyone either.” Geoffrey whispered to himself. After about twenty minutes had passed, Geoffrey began to think that he had been forgotten. “Hello...Hello?” he asked into the air. The voice didn’t answer. “Hello…Hello?” he repeated. Again, no answer. After another twenty minutes passed, Geoffrey decided that he had, indeed, been forgotten. The room he was in was the same as the others except that there were no windows.
“Well, at least there’s a door.” He mused aloud. He walked to it and turned the white knob, certain that it wouldn’t open. Much to his surprise, it opened into a white hallway—big surprise. Geoffrey traveled the hallway, passing the windows of one or two empty rooms, until he came to an inhabited room. In this room, about ten people were sitting in a semicircle, watching a large monitor recessed into the wall.
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