Originally hosted on https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

Siamu Faraz double-checked that the door locks were programmed with the correct codes and that no alarm had gone off before activating his hand-held scanner and venturing further into the building. Theoretically, no one should be able to tell that anyone had even opened the door as long as a quick scan bounced back the right codes and that should buy him enough time to examine the place and leave without anyone the wiser. Technically, even to private investigators like himself, this building was off limits. Unexplained happenings and disappearances tended to attract high level government attention and that attention had resulted in an immediate and severe lockdown on any information related this place. Luckily, Siamu’s contacts had come through for him and, due to one of them, he now had blueprints from as recent as two years ago. That was ancient information for this part of town since constant construction and remodeling changed its face almost on a daily basis, but it would have to do.

He kept the blueprints up on his holotablet as he walked through the empty corridors only lit by dim emergency lighting. Luckily, the walls were cheaply enough made that his scanner could penetrate right through them into the rooms on either side. It would take more time than he had to fully search the building and the clock was running. He was sure his hack would cover him all the way till morning when the next round of agents showed up, but Siamu never took chances like that. He had three hours and that was it. In and out as fast as possible. If he didn’t get any good data, he might try again another night, but only after he had a chance to make sure his trip tonight had gone undetected.

So far the blueprints had matched the building so his tension eased a bit and he picked up his pace, angling to reach an area he had marked red on the third subfloor. Rumors passed along by some of his contacts indicated that something had occurred in that area, but none could pinpoint exactly what that might be. Only that it was weird and weird equaled opportunity. He could smell it.

No, really. He could smell something. Right as he stepped out of the stairwell onto the third subfloor (the lifts having been turned off for the night), he nearly sneezed at the smell. Siamu scooted over to a darker corner, flipped up a mask over his mouth and nose, and switched his scanner for an analyzer. A few seconds later the analyzer returned ‘Substance unknown. No toxin detected.’ He relaxed and put it back in his bag, but he kept the mask half up on his face as a precaution. The scanner showed nothing unusual or organic in the surrounding 20 meters so he pulled up the holo blueprint again and rechecked his bearings. On the map the marked red area lay not too far down a corridor which branched off quite a few meters to his left.

Goal in sight, Siamu slowed down his pace even further and carefully scanned everything within 20 meters of his position. He could extend the scanner’s detection range further but only if he sacrificed detail and this near the marked area he didn’t want to risk it. But it detected nothing aside from furniture and other equipment. As the ratio of equipment to normal furniture increased, he wondered if this area had held a secret lab. There were no records indicating such a thing existed, but that was only in the public sector files. The actual records might be locked away already by the government and its minions. He kicked himself mentally. The government agencies weren’t all bad and they did work for the good of the planet, but he held a grudge at how hard they made it to dig out the information he needed as a P.I. Clients paid him to find information, not to try and fail.

The smell grew stronger as he approached the middle area of the red zone. It danced in his nose with sharp little jabs and he had to concentrate very carefully on not sneezing. He had the feeling that once he gave in, the sneezing would not relent until he retreated from the area. The analyzer buzzed in his bag and, once he retrieved it, the screen read ‘Organic substance detected. Non-toxic.’

What a relief, Siamu thought sarcastically. If it had been toxic, at this level of concentration he was sure he would have already been dead. He stuffed the analyzer back into his bag and pulled the mask over his nose once more. The sensation of his nose being jabbed reduced enough to allow him to concentrate once more upon his task. A quick check of the time showed that he was fast approaching the two-hour mark. There were only twenty more minutes before he needed to head back up to the surface.

Nothing interesting had turned up yet so the P.I. used his nose instead of the map to guide him. A result was a result and perhaps the source of the smell could be sampled and sold to the right person. Consumers liked the oddest smells for perfumes or air fresheners. His nose led him through a maze of corridors and several open doors. That struck him as unusual, the open doors that is. Almost every other door in the place had been closed if not locked, but these were open? A jauntiness from anticipation crept into his walk as the smell grew steadily stronger.

At last a light broke into the dimness. It outlined a door which was only partially ajar and Siamu felt it beckoning him to enter. His heart sped up and he stowed the holotablet before aiming the scanner directly at the glowing crack. There was something inside, but the scanner couldn’t identify it as organic or non-organic. The lines on the graph fluctuated even as he watched, refusing to settle down to a single result. Deeming the scanner useless, he steeled himself and slowly pushed the door open.

His first thought was that the normal lighting hadn’t been shut off in this room. The smooth polished gray walls bounced the light around so much that it took him several minutes to find the source after his eyes adjusted. And that was when the bottom dropped out his stomach. Floating in the middle of the room hung a glowing…thing. The light was too bright for him to make out any details, but the general outline of it constantly morphed into new shapes. Whatever this thing was, it had no fixed form. Occasionally it cast off tendrils of light, as a star sends out flares, and light would crackle and dance over the surface of whatever it touched in the room. It was almost like electricity but softer and more liquid.

Before Siamu realized it, he found himself inside the room, the door wide open, with a tendril of light reaching out towards him. Hurriedly, he stepped back trying to avoid contact, but his left arm also swung up in front of him in a vain gesture to ward it off. These conflicting motions resulted in his body being untouched, but the tendril of light wrapped lightly around his left hand instead.

Light flashed in his eyes and he saw the room filled with figures made from light. The vision was of the same room, and people in lab coats darted around in fast forward. Silently they yelled and tried to stop some kind of chain reaction in a test, but they failed and all were consumed in the resultant blinding flash of light. All that remained after the flash was a tiny ball of liquid light no bigger than a child’s fist which pulsed like a heart.

Then the room returned to normal and the tendril of light wrapped around his hand faded. He felt no different aside from a sudden chill due to sweat. Hastily he checked his scanner once again. It still could not produce a conclusive result. Then he backed out of the room and closed the door all the way. He made it all the way back to the turn in the corridor before he looked back.

The door was slightly ajar once more. He ran.

Later, Siamu had no idea how he’d gotten back to the room he rented for his office. He didn’t even know if he’d locked the door again with the proper codes. It didn’t matter. He was not going back there ever again. Let the government agents deal with whatever the blazes that was in there. He would have to write up some kind of report for his client later, but even he knew to keep that…thing out of it. He prided himself on not being stupid after all.

Once he calmed down enough to move his mind onto thinking about his other assignments, Siamu brought up the particulars on his holotablet. He would spend a few hours planning what to do next before getting some much needed sleep to dispel the shock from that evening’s misadventure.

Before starting, he hauled himself out of his chair and rooted around for materials to make coffee with. The light in his “refreshment cabinet”, as he liked to call it, flicked on and then off again as it was notorious for doing, so he couldn’t quite see which jar had the coffee he wanted. He rooted around in the cabinet with both hands for a while without success and suddenly his left hand hurt. Quickly, he withdrew his hand and shook it.

Ouch. Must have stubbed it on something.

Another sharp shake and he went back to hunting for the coffee jar. It wasn’t so hard to find now that the light was working again. He pulled the jar out, and then promptly dropped it on the floor.

The tip of his left index finger was glowing.

END

Author's Note:

I tried to get another story done in time for this month, but it needed lots more work so you get a story I wrote for a magazine submission back in May. I think I'll polish it up some more before I submit it to another magazine though. Would you like to see more of the glowing PI Siamu in future stories? Let me know in the comments below!

Comments, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below!

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