by RJ Johnson
Alex laughed, “You’re the man with the saw. Get cutting.”
“It’s a friggin’ laser. Get it right, man.”
“Whatever. Get cutting.”
Scott turned his attention to the machine in front of him. After a few last-minute adjustments on the dials, Scott looked at Alex, who nodded. As Scott started typing furiously, the machine began to whir quietly in the sparsely lit laboratory.
“What’s going on?” Alex asked, alarmed by whine emanating from the machine.
“Don’t worry,” Scott yelled over the increasingly loud noise, “The laser’s just charging right now. This is totally normal.”
The hum grew louder, and lights began to dim in the lab. Finally, a precise beam full of high-energy particles headed towards the stone at the speed of light. The reaction was immediate.
The overgrown table saw began to protest violently as smoke and sparks of lightning began to shoot wildly out of the stone. Alex and Scott threw up their arms, protecting their eyes.
“What’s happening?” Alex yelled over the din.
“The laser is feeding back on itself!” Scott yelled, desperately hitting the keys on the screen attached to the machine. “This isn’t supposed to even be theoretically possible.”
“Turn it off, Scott!”
“I mean really, space had to just turn into like 24 different dimensions to do this.” Scott said excitedly, “This is incredible!”
His excitement was short-lived, as the power that had been used to drill into the stone finally overloaded the transformer in the lab. The machine sparked, and Alex threw up his hands, shielding his eyes from the bright glow.
Electricity popped and shot out from the control panel, electrocuting Scott and throwing him across the room.
“Scott!” Alex yelled as he watched his best friend fly through the air and slam against the wall, his body falling in a heap on the ground. Alex turned back towards the stone caught in the screaming piece of machinery. He needed to get that thing out if he was going to have any chance at saving Scott’s life.
Alex peeked out from behind the counter he was using as cover, checked the dark welder’s goggles on his face, and took a moment to study the laser and the stone.
Incredibly, the stone was floating upwards, away from the table mount Scott had set it on. The power from the laser beam cutting into the stone was creating a feedback loop. Swirling up and around the stone like great arcs of plasma surrounding the sun, the energy shot towards anything that might ground the current. The stone, absorbing the heat and energy from the laser, paused momentarily as it charged.
“Oh–” was all that Alex got out as he darted away from the counter. A thunderous roar crashed behind him as a large bolt of energy split the air molecules above his head.
Scrambling for cover, Alex paused to catch his breath. The stone began to absorb more energy from the laser drill. The intervals the stone took to charge were getting shorter.
Alex crouched on the floor, his back to the cabinet as he wildly tried to think of an idea. Without the protection of the stone, Alex and Scott would likely be incinerated in the blast if — or when? — the laser exploded. Alex swore, making a mental note to slap Scott around in the afterlife for suggesting such a stupid idea. He peeked over the counter, trying to get a bead on the laser and his stone.
What he saw wasn’t pretty; random bolts of energy had already scorched most of the lab. Spotting a pair of heavy work gloves on the table in front of him, he shoved his hands into them as he edged himself around the corner of the table. He lowered his belly to the floor.
“All right, God,” Alex yelled, his eyes pointing towards the ceiling, “I promise I won’t do anything stupid for at least twenty seconds if I get to live through this. Deal?” He waited for an answer. Hearing nothing, he continued shouting at the ceiling anyway. “I’ll take your silence as a ringing endorsement of the stupidity of this stunt!”
The laser might have been an engineering marvel that Scott was proud of, but it had to run off of some sort of power. Among the many hoses, and cords attached to the lathe, his mind began to race. Which cord should he pull? He might only get one shot at this.
“Ahh, hell,” Alex whispered to himself. Taking a deep breath, he counted down from three and dashed out from behind Scott’s worktable towards the dying machine. Just then, his stone discharged brilliantly, sending multiple bolts of lightning across the lab, the flashes blinding him the second he stepped out from behind the desk. Unable to see where he was going, he tripped and fell onto his stomach. Fortunately for him, falling as he did, he missed a bolt of lightning that nearly toasted his head.
Sliding across the slippery linoleum flooring, Alex let his momentum carry him across the lab towards the dying laser drill. Holding out his hands in the direction of where he last remembered seeing the cords, he felt something whip into his hands. He tightened his grip and yanked as hard as he could.
The laser drill whined to a stop, and the lights in the lab returned to normal. The damage was extensive, especially to Scott’s shiniest piece of equipment, which had been reduced to a smoking heap of ruined electronics and metal.
Alex ignored it as he ran to the stone, grabbing it quickly off the table with his bare hands, then dropping to the floor just as fast. The stone still glowed with the residual heat from the laser drill, and was quite hot. Grabbing some tongs off of Scott’s lab table, he picked the stone back up and dropped it into a free standing beaker. He turned to the sink, hurriedly filling the beaker, the water hissing on contact.
He poured the water out and grabbed the stone, running towards where his friend had fallen. The stone was still warm to the touch, but clearly not dangerous any longer.
“Come on Scott, stay with me!” Alex pleaded as he leaned his face against his friend’s, hoping he could still feel Scott’s breathing. He grabbed the stone tightly in his right fist, his left hand grasping Scott’s.
At first, nothing happened. Alex looked at the stone and again at his friend, holding his hand tightly, “Come on, dammit!” he screamed in frustration. Perhaps the laser had damaged it beyond repair.
The stone glowed faintly, the power seemingly weaker. The healing wasn’t instantaneous like it had been in the past, but, as Scott coughed, and began breathing much-needed oxygen back into his lungs, Alex was relieved it worked at all.
“You OK, buddy?” Alex asked.
Coughing violently, Scott shook his head, and sat up.
“Next time you bring me some strange otherworldly piece of archeology, try a little harder to dissuade me from doing a stupid test like that.” Scott said, woefully looking at his prized laser drill. “I wonder if they’re gonna deduct that outta my paycheck.”
“Hey if they didn’t want you blowing stuff up, they wouldn’t have put you deep inside a mountain.” Alex said, a smile returning to his face.
Scott groaned, “Well, it’s only a three-million-dollar laser. Maybe Wal-Mart has ‘em on sale.”
Alex laughed in relief, “I think Costco’s your best bet. You can buy in bulk there.” The laser drill sparked menacingly, making both of them wince. “Which you clearly need.”
Scott laughed, and groaned, as his injuries still hadn’t healed quite one hundred percent yet. Alex touched his friend’s arm. The healing blue glow extended back over his friend’s body, more quickly this time, touching up any injuries.
Alex and Scott watched the glowing laser cool as Scott was healed back to normal. “Sorry about your friggin’ laser thingy.” Alex said sympathetically. Scott waved him off.
“Well, it doesn’t look like we can analyze a small piece of it, so it’s not likely we’ll be able to exactly figure out how it works,” Scott said as he watched the stone from afar in his friend’s palm. He turned his head, glancing once again at the broken laser in front of him. He stood up and approached it, looking it over, seeing if there was anything he could salvage.
Alex let himself relax. Scott was back. Alex opened his fi
st, looking at the stone in the palm of his hand. Where the laser drill had attempted to cut into it, there was a large white gash that was slowly knitting back together.
“Fascinating,” Alex said to himself.
“What is?” Scott asked, his back to Alex as he picked through the wreckage of his former laser drill.
“The stone is healing itself.” Alex watched as the last of the white gash sealed itself shut.
Scott ran his fingers through the soot in awe. “I built this cutter to get through ten inches of titanium steel without breaking a sweat.” Scott said in awe shaking his head, “It not only resisted that laser, it destroyed it.”
“I hesitate to even ask,” Alex said over his shoulder as they both examined the ruins, “but do you have anything else that might be slightly less invasive?”
Scott, still testing his repaired shoulder, moved over to another machine in his lab.
“Well, I guess a mass spectral analysis could work, but it won’t tell us much about its capabilities.” Scott held out a tray expectantly. “But at least, we can find out what elements we’re dealing with.”
Alex clutched the stone tighter in response. He trusted Scott, but the last five minutes hadn’t exactly filled him with confidence.
“Relax,” Scott said, “This time, we’re not cutting into it, we’re seeing what radiates offa it when we shine light on it. It’s harmless…”
Alex raised an eyebrow at this and glanced at the scattered pieces of Scott's laser scattered around the lab.
Scott swallowed heavily, “Well, at least, it should be harmless.”
“Oh good, I’m glad we started with THAT test over there first instead of the non-invasive, non-life threatening test,” Alex said sarcastically, still clutching the stone possessively.
Scott cleared his throat, his hand still extended for the stone. Alex sighed and handed the stone over to Scott. He turned, slid the tray into something that resembled a small and squat microwave, and punched a few buttons.
The machine whirred as it spun the stone around, measuring the various weights and reactions to frequencies of light. Scott busied himself over the machine, anxiously waiting for any indication that the stone would go haywire again, destroying another one of his precious devices.
Alex cleared his throat uncomfortably and finally asked the question Scott had been expecting all night.
“You talk to Emily much anymore?” Alex tried to say it casually, but the catch in his throat betrayed everything.
Scott sighed. He knew this was going to come up sooner or later; he just didn’t expect it so soon after they survived an industrial accident. Not looking at Alex, he concentrated on the stone sitting in the spectral analysis machine.
“We exchange Christmas cards, go to lunch when she’s in town on business, that sort of thing, but…” Scott paused as he struggled to find the right thing to say. What do you say to a man who disappeared after his failed relationship? After an awkward moment, the truth seemed to be the only option. “She’s good, Alex, really good right now.”
Alex looked away, his fingers lightly feeling the broken pieces of Scott’s laser. Lost in thought about his former love, he found himself wondering what she was doing, and where she was. It was a question that came often to him, usually while he was alone, with nothing but his own thoughts for company.
Scott, watching his friend go through the memories in his head, clearly choked up.
“She missed you. We all missed you, you know. Her, me...” Scott almost didn’t say it, it felt wrong somehow so soon after his death, but Alex needed to hear it: “Your dad…”
Alex’s shoulder’s slunk lower, and he didn’t respond to Scott. He just stared at the broken bits of machinery in front of him, wondering exactly how things went so wrong.
“You get what you leaving did to us? All of us?” Scott’s anger grew palpable. “I had nightmares, man. You dead somewhere, where I couldn’t help, where...” Scott calmed himself down and raised his head. “Where I had lost my best friend.”
“I…” Alex whipped around angrily. But Scott stared him down. He shook his head; he knew Scott was right. This was the time to explain. He owed his best friend that much.
“I don’t regret leaving when I did,” Alex replied forcefully his voice thick with guilt. “I knew it was wrong of me to cut my family and friends out from everything, but I didn’t care. Believe it or not, Scott, there was a point when I didn’t know where or who I was in this world…. I… I needed time to figure that out. Took me six years…” Alex’s voice cracked. “…And that’s time I’ll never have back to spend with you, or my father.
“I did what I needed to do to survive after me and Emily broke up. I loved her, Scott.” Alex was clearly emotional now, his eyes shining in the dim emergency lighting. “I loved her so much, I didn’t know how to stop. When it was over, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next, or where to go in life without her. She was supposed to be there for the entire journey, Scott, and I screwed it up.” Alex’s voice was barely a whisper now as he looked his friend in the eye.
“I left because if I stayed, I wouldn’t have lasted another week.” Alex swallowed. “Every single day for the last six years, I’ve thought about her. Usually it’s some special memory that would make us both happy, as if she ever thought about such things…
“But there would be times when I would swear I was going insane. I would be out, in the middle of nowhere, some city in some country no one could find on a map. A flash of recognition out of the corner of my eye, some shapely brunette, some of her hair falling just so across her face, and suddenly there she was. Live, and in person. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear I would see her there. Standing in front of me, sitting at the bar, or checking fruit next to me in whatever market I would find myself in. In one schoolhouse outside of Kandahar, I would swear on a stack of bibles I saw her one day teaching young Afghani students how to read.” Alex looked down, and back at his friend. “Scott, it was so real. Every time, she would be so real to me.
“But none of the women I saw were ever Emily. They were figments of my subconscious, projecting what I wanted on similar-looking women, and my guilt surfacing because of what I did to her.”
“Did to her?” Scott scoffed, “You treated that girl like a princess.”
Alex shook his head. “I tried to be good, but…we were young, and when you’re young — I didn’t know this at the time, but… you just don’t understand love.
“Sure, you know you’re in love; you might even be vaguely aware of how you got there. But turning that love into a long-lasting relationship is like trying to cage a wild animal. After the shiny parts of our new relationship wore off and we began living together, things weren’t as easy, and we fought. For the most part, it started with little things. Then, as time went on, it steadily got worse; imagined slights, petty jealousies. Eventually, things got out of hand. We said things we didn’t mean, pushed each other’s nuclear buttons, knowing exactly where to turn the knife, and then after we both exhausted every ounce of ammunition, we went past our breaking points. She left.”
Scott sat in silence. He had never heard exactly what had occurred to end Alex and Emily’s tumultuous relationship. She had never been forthcoming about the details, and Scott had never pressed, scared that if he had, she would leave, thus removing one more reminder Scott had had of his best friend. After the initial shock of his friend’s sudden disappearance, Scott plunged himself into his schoolwork, hoping to make himself so busy that he might manage to forget about the whys and hows of Alex’s death. And as the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years, Scott faded into his new life, and Emily did as well. Eventually, the once-close pair of friends, who shared an almost sibling-like relationship, devolved into one where the two rarely spoke to one other anymore. Scott had created a new family for himself. His new friends, new co-workers, and new life had become all he knew. Until Alex had rung the doorbell a few hours ago, he hadn’t thou
ght of his childhood friend in nearly two years.
Alex set down the broken piece of metal that he had been fingering absentmindedly and continued with his story.
“After the night she left me, I sat there in the dark, silently, processing what had happened between us. I laid down, and prayed for sleep, hoping that when I woke up, our fight would all be one big dream, with her again lying beside me. But, when I woke back up, and the bed was empty, I stared at the ceiling and made my decision. I wanted my life to count for something. I thought my life would be defined through my love with Emily. At that moment, that dream was gone. So, right, wrong, whatever it was, I gathered my things, wrote that note to you, and left.”
“The Army,” Scott said slowly. “Your dad said they sent a letter saying you were killed in some sort of training exercise.”
Alex’s shoulders slumped even lower to the ground. That was a topic he was not ready to get into.
Fortunately for Alex, it was at that moment that the spectral analysis machine decided it had finished learning all it could from the mysterious artifact and dinged, announcing the analysis was complete.
The two stared at one another, and Scott decided to save the rest of Alex’s story for another time.
“Saved by the bell,” Scott stated.
Alex nodded; he knew his friend wouldn’t press the issue now. For that, he was grateful.
Quickly looking for a change in topic, Alex reached over to where the printout had fallen into its tray, narrowly beating his friend. Alex grasped the sheet of paper, his eyes narrowing as he attempted to decipher the data.
Unfortunately, the numbers, charts, and graphs all read like gibberish to Alex. He turned it upside down, looking at the various symbols on the printout. Annoyed, Scott cleared his throat. Alex looked up sheepishly as Scott took it away, like he would from an impertinent child.
“I’m the scientist. I get to read the results,” Scott said authoritatively.
Alex’s voice turned to a high pitch, and he waved his hands as he mocked his friend. “Ooooh, I’m the scientist, I’m blah blah blah, I never get laid, I…oof!”