The Atrocity of a Sunken Mind

by Angus Burge
 

The lab felt arid, modestly dry. An indescribable weight filled the air. A crisp sterilization was the general environment that I subjected myself to. The circulation of the room was what kept my blood flowing while working. I’d often end up cooped inside for hours, getting brutally obsessed with my experiments. What kept my creative drive was the free will and sheer power of bending the elements to my will. It was the only thing that I had held control over; the only thing that kept me in control of myself. I waded slowly between each desk of the E.C.D (Environmental Chemistry Dome). There were airlocks that sprayed the lengthy hallways with disinfectant prior to the entry of the center dome wing; my office. My lab was the epitome of loneliness and solitude. The dome didn’t open on the top. There was no sky, just a ceiling that concaved up with those damned lights that made the continuous buzz while in operation. It had been 3 months since I last spoke to someone, and that was over the phone with an upper representative. That was what I was to them, a tool. Something that withholds their distinguished obsession with me as their lapdog. I confided my secrets to my curiosities. However, this morning was a different experience. They’d often ship me “unstable” materials for me to inspect and come up with diagnostics. The performance of most materials usually had to do with melting/boiling points, and useless color changes. 

Tuesday morning, by then, the package had made it down my Supply Chute: a conveyor belt that had sprayers of isopropyl alcohol to ensure sterilization prior to its arrival into the E.C.D. Materials were held within an encasing that was properly wrapped and ensured safety from mold, breakage, and so on. After the first wrapping process, came the orthodox cardboard box wrapped in duct tape on its seams to keep its shape. Generally, the cardboard would come out a little damp, after the alcohol spray that was. But something was different this time. After the box slowly lowered itself into my quarters, I couldn’t help but notice large patches of dampness around the box. The small splotches of varying wetness slowly bled out into the surrounding textures within a 2-inch radius of the center of the box. The parts that were not the large dark brown indents were dry. After atoning to my natural curiosity, I went ahead and tested the pools of dampness. 85.7% isopropyl alcohol. It seemed that the disinfectant had a strong factor that compelled it to pool. Thinking upon a quick hypothesis, this could be a present format of radiation. Just then, I felt my heartbeat rise as my adrenaline pumped. They had subjected me to radiated objects before, and by then I should have been confident in my ability to work. When it came to radiation, it was required that I wear a suit that dumbed down the fluctuations of rads coming from specific objects. Although, the troubling portion of this problem was the fact that I hadn’t prepped my lab for radiated experiments. I’d never worked with something of this variation; for there was nothing within my lab that I could use to test the output and effects of radiation. In my prior studies, I learned about the common invention for any aspiring chemist: the Cloud Chamber. I rummaged through the cupboards, investigating each of them thoroughly. Unfortunately, I was lacking most materials necessary to construct one. I would have to instead work towards creating a vessel for the object while I waited for my supply requests to come through. Which usually took a week per shipment of material. Abandoned to my chambers, I’d have to work in here with radiation present. I’d have to sleep in here, eat in here, relieve myself in here with an unstable substance. What a sick joke. The company, being so unforgiving, destroyed my mentality most of the time. Waking up and looping through the isolation was more than enough to bring me down. Often times, I felt like a small piece of something larger that I would have no possibility of control over. One piece in a one-thousand-part puzzle, and even with that, I wasn’t even a corner piece. I always found myself promising that I would stand up for my mistreatment. Often though, through my binds of money and responsibility, I’d never follow through. 

I picked up my box cutter from the drawer under the main desk that the package was sitting on and placed it delicately onto the counter. The smell of layered latex and rubber from the suit permeated my nostrils with each breath. The multithreaded plastic on the faceplate of the suit was so blurry. Regardless of the outside temperature, my forehead released sweat. The cotton, nylon, and boron layer that provided resistance to the gamma rays would always create the feeling of claustrophobia. I hated the suits, infuriatingly uncomfortable, but that was the least of my worries at that moment. I picked up the box cutter and extended the blade out. I took a deep sigh and cocked my head up towards the ceiling to close my eyes and exhale. I felt my breath against the face panel of the suit flood back towards my chin. I then opened my eyes, still looking up towards the ceiling and pressing my gaze against the buzzing photons in the air as I shifted my neck back down to the matter at hand. I clenched my right hand and concisely slit each crease of duct tape. The already heavy oxygen had dropped a little bit more as I cracked the box. The alcohol-damped flaps were now wide open. Even though I disliked the suit, it helped in blocking out the stenches. After cutting my way through the many layers of protection, there it lay. 

It was almost glowing, but not in an example of bioluminescence and instead an output of immense energy being dispersed into the textures around it. The object resembled a pinkish quartz, crystallized into an odd fungal pattern, layered as if it were a living plant. I am not a professor in Botany, but I am an environmental chemist. There were odd caps that grew out of the crystal in a sordid fungal pattern. Fascinatingly cruel, it was pulsating. Barely nearing this object forced my brain to feel weightless. Lightheaded, I walked to the other side of the lab and deemed that I must build a stronger capsule to hold the object without obstructing my view of its state of matter. 

It was approximately two days later. I could feel the beginnings of what is called the prodromal stage; common symptoms of acute radiation exposure would present themselves. Nausea, diarrhea, a cough, etc. There was a noticeable scrape against my throat each time I swallowed my courage. In realistic terms, I had dealt with similar circumstances, but none of this variety and strength. By this time, I had finished construction on the plastic legs that forked out and would plant themselves onto the table of the far-right side of the lab. I was now waiting impatiently for the shipping request of my borosilicate glass mixture. I stopped counting the hours I spent during the process of construction. I spent my spare time mindlessly washing every square centimeter of my flesh, feeling weak while my skin itches. I’m a shred of bamboo with no grounds of strength. The worst part about it? I strongly felt that they knew what they were doing to me! My body ached, it hurt not only from the sickness of the object but from the exhaustion of this death loop. Everything hurt. And to think they didn’t even bear that thought to cross their mind. It disgusted me to the furthest depth of my soul. It left a taste on the bed of my tongue that was so putrid and pungent I winced like a newborn. The taste of spite. I spit that taste down upon the running water dispersing itself round the metallic bowl of the sink as it ran to the drain. Whilst the object still lay in the box across the room. Still pulsating, still glowing. Surely those fungal caps were still branching off. Even though by then I was consistently at least 50 feet from it, my head still felt light, and my mind still fogged. I cleansed the sweat from my brow and prepared to wait in my chambers until the glass came. I had a small bunk bed in the corner of my lab quarters. Isn’t that ironic? A bunk bed? A complete solitude of a man doomed for the rest of his days, and they drew the idea from their hand that they should give him a bunk bed. Absolutely ridiculous. Here I was overthinking it all when it could have just been all they had on hand. But no, I disagreed. I think they did it on purpose. No one was here to experience the detriment with me. No one was here to expand on our troubles together. As much as I would fantasize about that and yearn for some interaction from time to time, I would always end up cowardly crawling into my BUNK bed. Shutting off the lights and draping my eyes to a rest as I was now. 

It had been six days, roughly eight days since the arrival of the object. I had abandoned the suit by then. It was painfully uncomfortable, and I couldn’t work efficiently. Considering the glass mixture arrived yesterday and I was now finished constructing the vessel for the specimen. It stood there now three-legged, with a ring that held the glass cylinder sustained in air. It mocked me there. My symptoms had subsided. Though, I wasn’t sure if I was experiencing the early latent stage or if my storage system of the object was just that clever. All that mattered was the increase in my mood and morale which enabled my eager construction on the cloud chamber. Operating from a dense concentration of alcoholic vapors within a glass container, cloud chambers have a high-voltage potential to activate alpha or beta particles. Those particles knock electrons around the liquid, appearing as small shooting stars in the vapor, revealing what is hidden. I started to thrall over the construction. It felt pleasant to use my bare hands to create something so technical. I had piped the gas throughput system poetically. It was abruptly interrupted by my need for more materials. Once again, another waiting game was ahead of me, and I had to wallow in this torturous process. I felt my heart catch up with my body and it stuck to my ribcage, holding on and praying that it would never let go.  A man of science never asked to the lord. But, in this time of stress, it was impossible not to look for hope. Hope that was not there. “I should be fine”, I said out loud, followed by a sigh. If I weren’t in the latent stage, my side effects would be short-lived, just like my worries. But if I was in the latent stage, a new kind of hell would be born right here in this room. I had to wait 6 more days until my requests were filled. “Pull through!” I’d bellow to myself with false confidence as I set down my glasses and crawled into those sheets once more. 

It had been five days since the start of my waiting game, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. "Tomorrow-- tomorrow my materials will arrive," I’d whisper to myself, staring blankly into the sink again. I would wet my hands and brush my fingers against the jagged endings of my skin cells and the stubble of my cheeks. I’d then clasp my fingers into themselves and create two fists which I would press against my watered eyes. I’d look up into the mirror and stare into the gaping maw of my iris and then shift to look at the object across the lab.  “Hopefully, in the morning some of my symptoms will abate." I thought to myself as I crawled back into bed, bloodshot. 

You couldn’t ask me how, but it was three days since that night just then. I was losing my grasp on time. I was almost finished with construction and back to vomiting, as I had been now since the chambers’ materials arrived. There was a sting in my belches, and I didn’t have much doubt in my head about when my next hurl would be. It was most certainly the latent phase I had experienced those days ago. Or— weeks ago? Wait, no, that’s right, three days as I just said. Goodness, I’m losing my mind. I’d look up at the clock and squinted my eyes as I read, “4:12 AM”. I couldn’t believe it; I had been awake for 48 hours straight? I didn’t trust myself even though I knew I was right. Why would they send me this? I have not much of a choice but it’s cruel. They probably sent me the item to kill me. It would be easier on them, wouldn’t it? To have me perish, after all, I am disposable; I'm probably a replacement of the last that they had before me, I’m sure. My stomach clenches within me and I begin to gag again. The manifest illness stage was upon me. Symptoms often worsen. I can feel my fate solid, same as the aggressive rashes and marks on my shoulders and legs. God, how it itched. All the difficult parts of the construction were over. All I had to do was layer the glass atop the chamber and acquire a sample of the object to place inside. I began latching down the glass, the smell of alcohol stung my cortex. I looked to the object across the room, mocking me again. I’d look back at the chamber and speak to myself. “I’m okay. It’s okay. I can handle it all.”. Every time I shifted my gaze from the object, it called out to me and asked me to look again. With my will frail as it always has been, I would look up at the object again. Oh, how it glowed. So wonderful. It called out to me. I began losing feeling in my arms, I had one more glass panel to ply down. As an unconscious motive, I felt myself getting up from my stool in a hurry, knocking it down as I stood. My breaths drew latent and my exhales were rasp. The object was screaming now. It glowed brighter than I had ever seen it from across the room all those nights. Waking up and hurling. I felt my foot reluctantly but ultimately stab itself into the tile like a syringe. I had no words, but my mind was racing. I would try to scream but all that came out was my breath. “Inhale.... Exhale.... Inhale.... Exhale.” I would sluggishly continue rooting my feet forward as I came towards the object. My left arm hung dead, with no feeling and no use. My right arm, on the other hand, would stay cocked up and would press against my neck as my joints locked there and I would continue forward. I met the item and greeted it again. Just at that moment, my purpose for the past month, struck me once more. The Chamber. I must finish it. I let my body move on its own back to the cloud chamber. I looked at the shoddy work. By this time, you could see the electrons bouncing through the cloud chamber. The radiation was dancing, and twisting, and twirling from wall to wall. Except, the key detail was the fact that the object was across the room. And I-- was right there. As I said, the chamber was revealing what was hidden. Then the object called out again. I would walk there next. Back-- and forth. Around in a circle. The object, the chamber. They were both bursting my eardrums. It was an everlasting battle that never had any meaning of an ending.  I was too infatuated with the objectives that I wasn’t paying much attention to my footing. I tripped over myself and flew headfirst into one of the concrete desks. My skull crumbled like brittle. My brain was leaking and oozing out of the cracks of my skull. I could feel my cerebellum leaking out of my ear. That didn’t matter though, all I needed was my hippocampus so that I could remember my purpose. The object, the chamber. I looked down, everything was hazy. I hadn’t noticed before, but those fungal caps were growing out the sides of my lower back. I am now lost. For I am the object, it controls me. My body roams. I have been like this the whole time, but it has never been this apparent. A host for a parasite. A tool for a hand. A skull for a brain. I look up again, to remember my purpose one more time. Do you want to guess what it is? That’s right, the object, the chamber. Beautifully doomed, you now can feel, the atrocity of my Sunken Mind. 

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Edited by Laura Sheikh and Caty Childress