Saturday, May 4, 2024
Stone Gathering Pt. 1
He could not return home. He knew by opening that door and stepping inside, he was allowing himself a front row seat to the chaos of his own reasoning. A world which up to this point had been sensible, rational, even with the myriad of human activities that seemed base and banal, there was a negative space to which logic and rules loomed over, not allowing anything into the world that was not first tested by them. But now….beyond that, insinuated a different object–or objects.
He shivered at the thought as he paced through the narrow passage. The alley was beaten. Dark crimson flares illuminated by dark charcoal paint engrossed the outer walls. Its reflection of light on the now, very far back entry and exit points approached concave, as if it was coloring a translucent sphere. His vision was telescopic as Mr. Dargon approached a tall, thin led barrel in the passage’s center.
He hadn't known this barrel was here, or what was contained inside. It was more than foreign to him. Yet it gave the impression of being deliberately set up.
He looked around, hoping to find any evidence as to what was inside the cylindrical chamber, or at the very least, something to pacify his nerves. But all he could think about was that report, the..….other evidence. How could it possibly be? His mind once again sank into his appendages at the thought.
The barrel, still, unopened and mute, stood with massive weight, one you could see without touching. He returned his attention to the object after seeing nothing except for an un-menacing orb of red light, probably the end spectrays of a blocked off exit sign in the next building. He had the thought of leaving entirely, when a noise cut him off. He shot back around, nearly jumping in instinctual fear, but saw no change in the scene. He relaxed. It was only upon looking back at his entry point, and noticing the shift in the spherical transparency of the passageway, that he could tell the barrel had left a parallel circular mark in the floor next to it. It had moved!
He stood as motionless as the now motion-potential thin, led barrel. Nothing was making sense. Where was he? What was he doing? What were these dream-like phantasms? He decided to leave all together, the report and now this, he had no time to be messing around with lonesome barrels in even lonelier alleyways. Elsewhere, yes, elsewhere…
But the red orb, in the top corner of the concave, blackened wall hauled the light of thousands of worlds stacked with vibrant, multi-array archaic fractals ; expressing universal knowledge as they extended outward into a column of colorful infinity. It descended upon the hard, sharp ground with blinding color as it breached the threshold of Mr. Dargon’s awareness for the most momentary of seconds.
And then there was… Nothing.
2
Nothingness can be a concealer of Being for most things, an artifice that longs to represent the negatives of the world in favor of the Being given to them. His sleep felt like it was partaking in universal Nothingness. Awaking was the first step in the cycle.
When he did become cognizant, he first could only notice the ringing in his head, that terrible screeching he had never experienced before. But when it at last ceded and he came to his bearings, he felt the hard, cold concrete on which he lay. A torn, brick wall towered above him into its longed effects of collapse. The sun was its nemesis but the mark was obvious. His skin warmed with relief. He had been here the night before. He must have been knocked out by hitting the wall upon exiting and then lay here all night before finally waking up. As he calmly stood and grabbed the papers that fell from his coat, he faintly remembered the scene in the strange alleyway, the barrel and even the red light before it descended. But as he collected the memories he was faced with a blank stone wall in replacement of the original setting. There was no longer an entry. It was just the mangeled brick wall and the stone wall to its left where the alley had been.
Confusion struck him as he intently and implicitly reasoned it all must have been one peculiar dream caused by the head trauma of running into the brick wall. An imaginary alteration of the events beforehand would make some sense. But then again, he encountered something terribly novel that felt uncommon to even dreams.
He let the thought escape him as he gathered the stamina to walk the 9-something blocks of concrete landscape to his house. He remembered the location so that he wouldn't make the same mistake of walking to this dead end again, and without recourse to the night prior, started to his destination.
It took him a minute to realize the significance of today. Meandering in his home, lost in thought and pain, he stumbled and swayed through the smooth leather furniture, dazedly landing on a bulbous wood edged desk. He grasped his head with an approaching ache and stared into a self-created focal point.
The walk had done him in good. After succeeding the escapade, he had grown dizzy, becoming amplified by a magnificent desire to eat. But nothing satiated. He rummaged through his fridge, took out a myriad of food groups–vegetables, meat, baked goods, dairy products, etc, but nothing stuck. He would put the nutrition in his mouth, taste nothing, swallow, and feel no more satisfied than the moment before. It didn't matter how much he ate, the outcome was the same. The remaining loot was nearly empty. He was fading out of the world into one which his consciousness would not allow immediate access to. In a panic of precluding fear that had been rising and climaxing into the focal point, he regained a sense of clarity and figured that these must be the dreadful effects of crashing into the brick wall. He needed to call a doctor, and immediately, before the head trauma could cause any more possibly irreparable damage. As approaching a near blinding state, with shock waves of static shadowing the extremities of Dargon’s vision, he reached for what he last saw closest to him—a plastic container holding some kind of mint. He instinctually chewed them into his body, hoping numbly , before succumbing to the flash.
Relief washed over him by the millions. The blindness slowly receded, the dreary pain and endless confusion was almost instantly inoculated. He had returned to almost near normal homeostasis as Mr. Dargon—Except for the slightest degree of appetite for more of these mints. Examining them closely for their brand, he found that they weren’t actually mints at all, but antacids.
He was puzzled. What were antacids doing to suppress nearly every symptom of a head trauma? He figured himself grateful for the momentary subcision of pain and reasoned that was sufficient enough to call Swarson and get to the bottom of this injury. But as he picked up the tubular, obsidian black telephone and dialed M.D Swarson, his frequent specialist in all matters diagnostic, he got nothing but noisy static in return. He dialed again, heard two clicks, a return key, and the stratified vocals of M.D Swarson’s voice message box before being once again cut to blank static.
He didn’t know why the stratifications were occurring nor the static. Swarson hadn't been undergoing any kind of mourning to his knowledge and he had just only recently helped him out of a pinch with a rough case of the Mongies, so they certainly weren’t on bad terms. But as another voice stratification occurred as he repeated the cycle of dial and redial, he realized why there was no response.
The machine spoke softly as it trailed back off to redial, “Date, PX 6985, orbit 26.”
Today was Gy-0 Io, or The First Day of Rocks. How could he have forgotten!? He wouldn’t be capable of getting in contact with Swarson, or, for that matter anybody. The glow of sunset glistening into the seams of brown leather, bouncing high into the luminous gold ornamentals of the ceiling indicated that Dr. Swarson and Dargon himself would both within the next few hours be as mute and lifeless as stone, and neither could do anything about it.
3
The second step in the cycle had begun. Time was thinning.
Today, at exactly 10 p, all of the planetary citizens of Triunt would be sent into their yearly week of petrified hibernation. The doctor and Mr. Dargon were mere biological participants in the process, just like everyone else. The Ariela satellite would pass and all biological life on the small but constructive planet, at each night of sleep for a period from orbit 26 to orbit 33, would transmute into a mysterious Calcite based form, no longer resembling the cellular format so commonly associated with
most life forms .
If we were to compare Triunt to our known Earth, we would say they are strikingly similar, other than for the whopping irregularity of the former’s inhabitants whose body is conditioned by the habits of its own moon. They shared many of the same materials, intellectual concepts, and social customs, as well as a similarity in biological construction.
A corporeal life whose form can and must oscillate between two entirely different substances is a rare expression, one even more seldom caused by the interplay of a planet’s satellite.
Mr. Dargon, even in his lassitude, understood the gravity of this. Triunt had, as a plinth of its cultural development, made a pedestal for this week. The act of petrification was more than a simple biological morphism. The spiritual significance of petrified sleep on Triunt harnessed an aura of rebirth for its occupants, as well as a grand herald into the New Era.
He hurriedly gathered the anticipation and thrust it back down into his throat, hoping to find a few minutes, or maybe even an hour to prepare for the First Night. Anxiety was an evident understatement. The notion that now he would be incapable of finding a doctor at the present moment, at least not until tomorrow morning, caused immense strain to his thinking. Moreover, he would have to undergo the First Night of Rocks with a supposed head trauma.
Inasmuch as Mr. Dargon knew there was no documentation thus far on Trinut for cases of incomplete petrification caused by physical maladies. Sure, there were cases of permanent petrification on Triunt, but the effects were typically benign–prolonged restlessness, or in extremely rare cases, a permanently petrified toe. But the relation between a head bash and an interference of the petrification process seemed incredibly unlikely, even by Dargon’s standards.
The hunger returned in mild form. He ate two more antacids and let the dusty air course through his body, building and releasing tension in sporadic intervals. He jumped as he heard three dull clicks, followed by the swift excretion of paper being hoarsely advanced through a machine. He knew the noise. It was his portable work printer releasing a faxed document. He scurried over to the entryway of his small laboratory where a collection of computer devices were stacked with obsessive precision and grabbed the paper that had fallen on one of the silver rebooters. His hands shook as he glossed over the first page.
REPORT 468: CLASSIFIED: MODE 6-1: IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED
FLUKE
Authorizer: Henl Dargon
The physcial structure that held his cranium bent into the thought as he rolled backward into his memory. It was the Report! It had been sent back to him! He remembered all over again the terror of infinite solitude that he initially felt. They had declined him, thrown him out of the loop, designated himself as an underling. There were no planets out there–No spherical objects. But the Divarication radar had not yet been incorrect. A fluke! That's what they were calling it. The readings were clear, the data impeccably relatable, it was the only conclusion to draw, and a fluke was not it.
He crumpled the papers. His stiff hands tossed the scards aside recklessly, not daring to reread another word. The remaining material slipped through his hands, contorted like molten lead, then fell back to bits of scattered pieces of paper.
He hardly noticed.
Dusk had set. The only remaining warmth of light was filtered by two darkened lampshades, abreast two irregularly shaped ovals. Corners of shadow enveloped furniture and glass, bringing a comforting, yet ominous golden haze to compliment dusk's arrival. The streets were empty, a small collection of coral-like houses had shown from his living room window the similar internal afflictions of radiance.
Mr. Dargon performed his nightly routine with this in view, hoping to succeed in a solution to his immediate problem, but the only one he had come up with was to wait. His body demanded in harmony with the planet’s only moon, that he be augmented in pure rest and therefore had to begin removing himself from all things practical. He reassured himself that he could deal with the issues of the Report and the head incident tomorrow so far as the symptoms do not escalate. And for now, the antacids were putting in good work as a short-term solution for hunger and dizziness.
He was now prepared. Lastly, to refrain from being dehydrated, which was the cause for most anomalous cases of permanent petrification, he poured out a whole pitcher's worth of water and took it to his room into a glass carafe on his bedside table. The room was dark, occupying a stillness that pillowed off the silky draperies. An oil lamp lit a portion of the room with a caramel brown desk falling with low sunken red sheets near a half-lit bed frame. He was now prepared.
The time according to the fire marker in the oil lamp, read, 90_8. It was glowing a sheepish blue with tints of golden flakes. Every cycle, when the air pressure changes and the Ariela Satellite begins its renunciation cycle, the flame will spark into a bright seafoam hue, and remain so until awakening and depetrifying the mysterious rock back into the cells of a Triunite body.
After removing himself of all garments, equipping his mattress with a specialized covering that would stabilize his Petrified Form into a near weightless state, he lay calm, watching the swirls of blue and yellow dance in the flame’s outer rim, anticipating the dramatic change into that beloved seafoam color. At that point, it would begin, and he would slip into his second form; a form that allowed all absence and craving to collapse into an undifferentiated plenum.
It was about to begin. He could see the yellow flares retreating, followed by a sequence of The Red Notes. This was the final change in air pressure before petrification. He watched, waiting like a stone. The Red Notes ending their chorus…
But the Red Notes did not stop. They Flashed. Again. Again. Again.
A horrible feeling washed over him as he stayed cellular. The notes continued their now-haunting dance of crimson, mocking him. But before he could craft an explanation, they circled parallel, jumped as if splitting into a hundred pieces, and fell into a singular magenta dot. It hovered without attachment to the rest of the flame and its source.
Henl Dargon starred in bewilderment. He had never seen anything like this before in a fire marker, nor likely had any other Truinite. The spectacle he watched was profoundly beautiful , the magenta dot bouncing to and fro, changing in pitches of intensity, but there remained a sinking undertone of suspicion; as well as his primordial fear of still being cellular. It was dormant, he thought, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to break into….
He was cut off. The magenta dot swooped low, sliced into fragmented rainbows, and carved out the outer extremities of a nose; followed by the contour of a mouth, then an eye, then a forehead. They transitioned from one to the next, always evaporating the last contour before moving to the next. Waves of magenta motion shook the pieces of the Gestalt, having the objects slide around on their three dimensional axis within the flame until it collided. Dargon’s face was now directly to the oil lamp, watching with horror as the fire created its own countenance. The only thing he could do was painstakingly observe, waiting for the slightest notion that this terrifying scene would morph back into the one with the seafoam and the rocks.
Instead, the freakishly smooth face half-materialized into purple frays, a red orb growing in its mouth. Dragon hadn't the slightest moment to react, to throw himself somewhere else before the orb ascended, blossoming outward to beautiful pedals of polished green stone. Then there was a brief second of timelessness, where all conceptual content was suspended in the mind of Henl Dargon.
A judge without any laws, he was free to see without eyes; The veil of concept wholly absent from consciousness of-
The immaculate emerald stone pedals then dropped out of the world, time returned, and an endless column of stacked translucent color marked by helical symbols fanned out, reaching to what looked like no end point.
Dragon gasped and with the final remaining insight into conscious experience, hoped with dread that the menacing grin of the purple flame had only been an indication of his stony slumber, and that at last he would be petrified.
4
The human psychologist Jean Jaques Lacan, thousands of years before the petrification processes’ morphism on Truint, had professed a theory of Being that oscillated any intelligent organism between two extremes. A profound absence, or lack, and a complete fulfillment. It was his belief that all intelligent, time-conscious life forms must transfer on a pendulum between the extremities of these two states due to their origination from voidness into awareness. Pre-birth had to have had both extremes contained within. The extreme of absence was the primordial lack, and the extreme of repletion was object a: or, the object that would complete all, Modes of everyday comportment were angles of these two pinnacles, giving consciousness direction to the latter, hoping to stray from nothingness, balancing closer to the edge until….
Object a was completion, finalization. It was that which the womb supplied before intelligence, concepts, and feeling-tones fractured the world into inharmonious subsections. A body, a subjective mind distinguished from the Being of other entities had no way of accessing such an object. It was the unrequited pursuit of every being that felt an issue of its own existence. Even as a well-documented chimera, an infinite trust that blanketed the foundation of Being held steadfast to its pursuit and attainment.
Although knowing nothing of the affairs of Earth, the Truinites certainly had the intuition of object a. In fact, it would be fair to say that the state of Petrification was synonymous with object a. For them, it was no chimera. That night, on the First Day of Rocks, the pendulum swung through the abyss of space, landed on Triunt, stuttered on the rim of satisfaction’s extreme, and struck it violently.
Henl Dargon would be the only life form who had dodged its massive impact. Object a would be a distant relative, throwing him a bone of negligence to something else.
The moon stirred with brilliant clarity as Dargon felt the weightlessness of waking up. A bright, milky white light seeped into the interior of his bedroom, interacting in small bursts with the now-seafoam green dancing flame in the oil lamp. He had never seen the Ariela satellite before, he had always been Stone-Made before its zenith. It was massive in the background of the charcoal sky. Although perverse and taboo beyond belief, he had no reaction to its appearance.
He was vividly awake, but not entirely there. . Embodied in a realm of thoughts, every idea, every sensation, had the character of being stacked, and it was as if he could directly perceive these stacked rows of visible information. They had no quality of corresponding pain or pleasure. It was epistemic knowledge like he had never seen it, floating and absolute beyond belief. It had no particulars. There was not one reference in this spider web of associations to any singular entity. It was as though a glass door had opened and objects of all kinds slammed into it, each being barred except for the immaterial conditions that then left the entity empty on the other side, incapable of piercing the thin glass.
There was no fear; yet Dargon was scarcely aware of an incomprehensible absence that stretched to his fringes. He mechanically arose, draped himself in attire and proceeded in just as monotonous a pace as his gesticulations to the front door. He finished off the plastic pack of antacids with a satisfied gulp, threw them to the side, opened the door and walked out onto a planet in which he was the only cellular inhabitant.
The night was as still as any planet would be with only inanimate matter. The Ariela Satellite perched above, reliving its luminous sequence again and again, giving back not animation, but a passageway to object a. Henl was not in that same passageway.
He wandered through the empty streets, seeing no soul of any kind. Every building he saw, all irregularly shaped and curved, emitted a shed of that same coy seafoam green radiance, organizing into transparent puddles on the obsidian ground as he walked through them.
The thoughts grew larger in his head, occupying a space that seemed impossibly large . Yet they continued to float, offering no direct access to the situation at hand. His body was clear as glass, no sensation had aroused him other than an overwhelming hunger for, what seemed like, hunger. He could not place his finger on the loop of backward logic..
He proceeded up a large embankment of shops with colorful produce earmarked to outside shoppers, which tonight, the shopkeeper did not have to put away. After all, who would still be awake?
Henl did not feel the difference between the two streets when they changed. The street inched from rough, unrepaired cobble to smooth, crestfallen slabs; nor did he notice where he was going. Instead he twirled his silky black hair into a perfect little ring around his finger, tightened it, and loosened as a corresponding Column of thought was built in its image, replacing the physical movement of his finger.
He neared a desolate intersection. Moving silently along the pavement, although capable of being as loud as ever, he approached a glossy neighborhood monument. On it was scribed the carved letters of the community’s title name.
The houses on both sides of the slabbed street began quaint. They increased in size and precision as he went deeper into the residential area. With a hypersensitivity to the atmosphere’s stillness of no breathing organisms, he could hear the radiant hum of the surrounding streetlights.
There he was, climbing a geometrically rigorous gate that led to one of the house’s back courtyards. The abode was massive. Three large white pillars formed the basis of the house, having them connect in roundabout ways, eventually leading to a hollowed out globular center with the main living area. All of this he could see from behind the last row of tall flora, on the outer rim of the garden. Between him and the innards of this fantastic dwelling was a shallow blue pool, lined with grassy patterns. He paced alongside it, inching carelessly. His heart was heavy with empty anticipation as he was now face to face with the amber window panes. He could peer inside with vivid clarity.
The marrow of the interior was fruitful. Expensive fine fabric couches, beautiful chairs and lamps near them. Large but sporadic pieces of art lined the walls in every medium one could imagine on Truint. The main room organized itself into a sort of chrysanthemum. Smaller recedes of artifacts sat on the room's lip, running inward to the elaborate furnishings before meeting the center, the focal point of Dargon’s vision. In the room's flower-like ovule, an assemblage of thin, massive body-formed sculptures intertwined with one another. Each statue, three times the size of a normal Triunite body, expressed a frame of utter strain in the visage of its occupant.
One face cried toward the heavens, agony written into the deep, hollow eyes, its arm stuck in the tight grip of another. He could see the strain in the legs as the figure tried to hold his bodyweight against the odds of gravity. The body holding the twisted arm grinned with malicious appeasement as its rocky, puffed out hair gave way to a teasing slip of tongue. Childlike cruelty set in its eyes as it looked down at the pained arm. Observing the scene with hesitant unease, the last statue sat in a sort of naked tranquility, backed away from the rest, fearful with shame, yet a stark emotion of indifference wiped across its face as its finger sat loosely on the edge of its mouth. It was biting itself.
The stillness of the rockalade scene was the first to jump Dargon into kickstart. In a single flash, an atavistic impulse of fear bubbled up and collapsed into his throat. His face flushed as his stomach sank to oblivion.
He was awake
; deathly awake
. The thought pulled him away from generalization for the first time, he was viewing a particular house, individual statues in a parceled world. The Thought Columns that had up to this point encased him in quasi-unconsciousness, dropped away and he now viewed the world fearfully,divided. He could sense the resurgence of his fractured emotions dance and fray as if in water.
He had not slept! He was living petrification. Where in god's name was he? Had he been sleep walking? If so, why was he not asleep? The moon's bright milky glow indicated that the First Night of Rocks was not over.
Awake! It had not happened. He was cellular! He looked down at his body, scanning for even the slightest sign of petrification. Half relieved, half terrified, he saw none. He was flesh and blood, entirely. He had to leave. He had to find a way to petrify. This was horribly wrong.
The stone figure through the amber glass, with those shameful eyes, biting the edge of his knuckle, ogled at Dargon. They locked eyes, Dragon’s senses flushed, and a moment of timelessness returned.
He ached, grasping to the thing’s eyes, locking in, realizing that another column was being constructed. His body felt weightless. A feather growing from his legs upward. Rapidly, the eyes lost the individual pupils, the still face and bony finger now enveloped in a haze.
Then, poof, the statue(s) was gone.
Not gone in the regular sense of the word. It existed, per se, it had substance. It was as if its essence, composed of solidity and physical attributes, had been washed off clean by a slate of strict definition. That definition professed nothing of the statue’s individual features. He certainly perceived the statue, but it was not through the sight, taste and feel that he was used to. It now had its own subsistence that took no credit of physicality. A myriad of mental relations augmented the form out of its tomb and into a Column, the only expression of appeared physicality. Everything was built of these Columns. He perceived through them. They branched, overlapped at various intersections, one absolute theme eclipsing another. It was meaning and sight like he had never seen it. There was a pervading sense of wholeness to it all.
Weightless, he was imbued inside the innumerate Thought Columns, themselves stacked and organized into a bright architectural masterpiece. His body was somehow inside the design, including all its emotional connotations, appearing now as indifferent spectrums of novel color.
A momentum of force then tottered and flipped him, sending the scattered, yet whole pieces of Henl Dargon deeper into the columned temple’s abyss.
“Here”, the thought muzzled out from his being as he echoed down the infinite hallways of magnificently carved blocks, colors and amorphous patterns dancing everywhere as he fell.
Other than this thought, he had forgotten everything of Truinite consciousness. It even lapsed from his mind an occupation before birth, where he was but a speck of potential. Nothingness with possibility. This too was abhorrently wrong. Affairs as anything other than the embodiment of these Columns made no sense.
His awareness faded, becoming more and more intertwined with the unlocalized structure. Darkness approached as a milky jet of sea-foam green bled from one of the distant Columns.
It grew larger, seeping out in directions only metaphorical.
Out.Down. Through.
The faint murmur of another’s voice sounded his last wavering impulse.
Inside…..?
5
He dreamed of one massive stone slab, orbiting around Ariela. As it did, pieces of the moon evaporated, flying off its surface into the growing slab. Its proportion now larger than its parasitic feed on the satellite. A single eye sat in its ovaled center. Triunt was a mere shadow of rock in the distance.
A beam of dust originated from the slab, oscillating, glowing, it shot back a trajectory to Triunt. The three objects were a smooth, harmonious triangle in contrast to the vast unconnected space. From a speck on Truint, a beige construction began. Ambiguous, then clear,it was the foundation of a ravishing temple.
The third transformation had begun.
He awoke. A dull thud in his jaw ached. The sea-foam green fire marker in the oil lamp had faded, replaced by the normalcy of Truint’s reddish-blue tint.
He scanned his body. He felt complete. There was no urgency of gaps, or desire that cut off events as insufficient or fragmentary. Each sensation filled its own Gestalt, not requiring a connection to other concepts that could placate its resolution. The mark of a healthy petrification.
The remote memories of the night before had seemed all a blur. Remnants of a blue square, a purple face, a biting finger, and a whisper were all that remained. They must have been mere phantasms caused by the deepest stage of Petrification, OTY, where peculiar dreams often occur, perhaps lasting effects of stone transforming back into cell.
He maneuvered to his kitchen, preparing breakfast while organizing and justifying residual cognition from the night prior. He was calm in his reflection. The head trauma had to be dealt with, but it did permeate to a feeling of being wrong. He had undergone the First Night of Rocks so far as he could tell, which meant he could continue through the week without fear. Yet he still wanted to deal with the incident as soon as possible. He just had to get into contact with Swarson before the Second Night began.
As he was eating, however, he realized he actually had not been hungry. The food seemed to go through him and he had no desire either for yesterday's peculiar craving for antacids. This too must have been an effect of the First Night.
He picked up the circular obsidian dial and hit the key pound for M.D Swarson. Seconds of silence proceeded until the friendly, yet apprehensive unstratified voice of Swarson pulled through the receiver.
Dargon told him about the night before last, the smashing of his head into the wall, the cognitive haze and blurriness, his consumption of antacids.
Satisfied, he ended the call after setting up an appointment for later that same day, hours before dusk. He had not told Swarson about the dreams of last night nor the peculiar fear of being unable to be petrified. He thought them pointless to a medical professional.
Swarson’s office was more like a set of cubicles than an earthlings doctor’s office. Each patient had been sectioned off in the tall, tall rooms. Dragon walked down the barren hallway, neat and cozy according to Truint standards, but it gave Dargon a blurry edge of which he could not place. It seemed provocatively liminal, as if a soul was not actually here. But he knew it was custom for some individuals on Truint to meet with their local medical professional after the First Night of Rocks, if there had been any strange lingering effects. Almost always, it was benign and unnecessary. Nevertheless, today the place seemed absolutely empty. The entryways to each vague cubicle had the same no-person quality to them when we peered through.
He veered around a corner, an orderly by his side. As she gestured to him to continue to the last door on the left, and proceeded to walk away, he saw a slip of light expand from one of the cracked cubicle doorways. As he passed, he caught the slightest glimpse of what was inside. A jagged, gray stony face peered back at him. A blank threat filtered through its mouth as it bit the knuckle of its finger. He shuddered. It was certainly the most extreme case of permanent petrification he had ever seen. Poor fellow, he thought. It reminded him of something, but he couldn't quite place it……
He now sat impatiently in the examination room, awaiting M.D Swarson. His hands fiddled as he tried to recall the reference to the metamorphous face in the previous room. Why had it seemed so damn familiar?
The cushioned table on which he laid was soft and cold. The Atonement of last night’s petrification process had worn off by now, leaving him anxious and frustrated. The world around him, the tall ceilings, the sanitized lighting, the bone-dry medical equipment, it all had an aura of incomparable cleanliness. One which his inner being was a juxtaposition to. The stony face in the nearby room made that readily apparent. He had the inclination to go peek again, tease his curiosities, maybe even inquire, but as he stood, the door clicked open and Dr. Swarson’s tall, slender frame entered the room.
“Ah. The Dargon Henl”, Swarson said with a rather sullen, but amused expression. He was looking down at the sheetboard he held in his hand. Watchful, blue innocent eyes shot through a sagging face. “It's been some time. I hope those Mongies haven't bit you again.”
“No. No'', Dargon played, “If anything, it would be you who bites.” Both smiling, the tension he felt prior to the doctor’s entrance seemed to release. He felt cordial with them, as if they were the longest of acquaintances.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you in sooner. Last night's incident has left a mark on many of my clients. Most of them are anxious for tonight's second slumber, asking for answers, honestly I thought that’s why you were calling,” Swarson said, returning to professionalism. Dragon didn't know what he was talking about but let him finish. “But when you told me about what happened it certainly didn’t sound related. I thought about your symptoms for some time. You said you fell unconscious after running into a brick wall and that later, when you woke up and returned home, you became dizzy and confused, then consumed antacids? And after eating them, the previous symptoms disappeared. I certainly found it odd that antacids would help at all. Most antacids are made of magnesium hydroxide, something that would in theory deprecate oxygen levels in the brain. They shouldn't help, but should actually make things much worse. But I'll give it to you that all head traumas are indeed idiosyncratic in their own right. Our phone call was brief so perhaps you could explain your symptoms with more detail so I can have a more elaborate picture.”
Dargon patiently rehashed last night's experience of waking up from hitting the wall, of being unable to satisfy his appetite with food, fading in and out of consciousness; and consuming the antacids as a last resort. All of this with strictly clear brevity, filling in gaps he missed on the call. He then asked, “What was the incident you mentioned? I haven’t heard anything.”
Swarson seemed taken back, almost dazed. “What? You haven’t? It’s all over the Tele. Someone out in the Kinop area went missing last night. They petrified through the first night, woke up and nobody has heard from or seen him since. His car was also missing so the current theory is that he left in a haste after becoming disfigured by a bad case of permanent petrification”, he told him. “But who really knows, there are a myriad of reasons one might leave their life behind to start a new one.”
“How do they know that he left this morning and not last night?” Dargon responded, curious but not taking too much interest.
“There were impressions made on his bed’s jyng. Those things don’t lie, you know,” Swarson said, "Showed in outlines exactly where his Petrified Form had been.”
“Wow. I’m assuming that’s why people are so scared of tonight, they don’t want to become deformed.”
“That’s right. A completely rational fear . But I do think the case was anomalous for many reasons, but all in all I really do not think you have anything to worry about”, Swarson said, trying to smooth out a fear that he’d been receiving all day.
Something about it made Dargon wary. He wanted to ask about the petrified face he had seen in the room near him. Obviously that was another case of this permanation, seemingly not anomalous.
“But let’s return to your symptoms. I'm getting carried away. We can talk about this another time”, Swarson said, smiling with the same air of professionalism he carried himself with. “The dizziness, the blackouts,the confused cognition, the depletion of an instinctual behavior such as eating. These all add up with various symptoms of cranial damage. But of course I won’t pin it down until we run a CRE head scan , get some fluid work, and maybe even have you perform some cognitive tasks to assess any intellectual change. How does that sound?”
“That sounds like what I need”, Dargon replied, thinking about something else.
Swarson began fingering for instruments in a large silver container. An orderly brought in a tray after a quick dispatch by the doctor. On it were small glass vials and a single thin tube placed neatly across. The anterior of his arm’s elbow was punctured, bringing the blood through the tube and into its new home in the vials. Swarson had a fidget to his usually calm demeanor, having an object in his hand slip a time or two. His long, thin arm held the bottom of Dargon’s arm as a beam of support, gripping it tightly for intended pressure.
“So”, he started, staring attentively, still focused on the punctured area, “you mentioned that the hunger preceded your blurriness.”
“Yes,” Dargon replied, looking intently at the hold.
“Had you taken any medication earlier in the day or the night previous?”
“No. Only vitamins. ”
“Any symptoms today?”
“No.”
“Hmm” Swarson said slowly, “and you said last night that the antacids satisfied your hunger?”
“They did, ” he said. “Almost immediately.”
“Do you happen to have the pack with you?”
Dargon shifted, “I woke up this morning and they were empty. I assumed I ate the remainder in a daze last night before Ariela came.” Swarson pulled the needle from his arm, capped off the vial, and doused his arm with a disinfectant. He sat back in his chair on the adjacent wall, rifled through the papers on his sheetboard, and began filling in occasional marks with his pen.
“Perhaps you could swing by the empty pack tomorrow, I’d like to see the brand. It might have no significance but still, I'm rather curious. I'd also like for you to come in for a CRE scan tomorrow to assess any internal brain changes. I think that'd give us a good understanding of what’s going on, if anything. Meanwhile we will run some fluid diagnostics with your blood.”
Swarson picked up the last object on the table, a thin black rod, and shone a light from it into Dargon’s eyes, checking his pupils for dilation. They made brief eye contact, Swarson’s deep face rummaging past Dargon, his light blue eyes widened, immediately changing his entire affect. His hands began shaking with the thin rod as he hastily put it away, proceeding to quickly grab the rest of his belongings.
“Um..well.. We will..”, he stammered, “g..get..started with those fluid tests right away.” He wiped his forehead, hands fidgeting, collected himself, and gave Dargon an apprehensive smile, clicking the door open. But Dargon caught him with the question he'd been reserving since he first saw Swarson. “Have you any cases of permanent petrification with your other clients?”
Swarson’s face hardened, revealing a blank, emotionless expression , then immediately returned to a smile, “None so far. I am hoping it stays that way. But don't worry yourself. Sleep tight and don't let those Mongies bite. I'll send a prescription out to deal with those headaches in case they return. An orderly will be in soon to take you back to the main area. Gooday Henl.”
The door shut behind him. Dargon sat in silence. He heard rapid, thudding footsteps echo down the hallway before a distant slam. He got up quickly, cracked the door open to where his head could fit through, and peered down the hallway. All the entryways had been closed. Even the door which had peered through earlier. Only the murky light and shadows that seeped out from the bottom slit were visible.
The doctor must just now be seeing the stonfied figure. He must have not known he was there yet, Dargon thought. It was hard to completely justify the claim, but he dropped the issue regardless. But why had he been so adamant to leave? It was as if he remembered something shocking that he had to attend to while he was examining the eyes. Had he gotten a reminder of something important or was wrong with his brain? Dargon worried that he might have seen no reaction in his pupils to the light source, no waiver of dilation that indicated normal functioning brain activity. He was almost in a panic when the oderely came in to take him back to the waiting area. She could tell his state, gave him a cup of liquid and told him to drink. “Lots of patients end their session with some anxiety, so we offer them this to calm their nerves. It’s just a mild beta blocker,” she said.
He inspected the cup and drank the ocean blue fluid in one big sip as he felt the smooth liquid warm his esophagus, then followed the orderly out of the room. On his way out, he passed by the closed door of the room where the stony face had been and saw the light pouring from underneath. He listened intently to the hushed murmuring coming through. One voice, then two, then three. No distinct words…
The orderly touched his arm, sending him with a gesture to proceed to the exit.
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