When a snake eats its tail

When a snake eats its tail



Prologue

Adrian looked around the room in amazement. A couple of seconds ago he was in his lab, fixing the homemade experimental particle accelerator, when the walls had dissolved into nothingness. Many people had told him particle accelerators were complex, and needed proper construction to work, but he'd shut them up. After all, nothing says 'wrong' like a Nobel Prize. He tried to shake the new environment out of his vision, but it continued to exist, much to Adrian's horror.

The room was like his lab, but much, much cleaner. In it were several people, dressed in lab coats and carrying on with their tasks, totally oblivious to his presence. He stood, unsure of what to do; he began to lean over the workbench in a lazy manner. His hand slipped and propelled an empty vial of glass onto the floor, smashing it instantly. Adrian stared at the floor, and then at the scientists who now looked his way. But they didn’t look at him, they looked at the glass. Apparently, they didn’t notice him. One signaled towards another scientist to clean the mess up, he walked towards Adrian, picking up a dustpan and brush. He swept the mess up hastily, and dumped it out of the window. Adrian scratched his head and looked towards the empty bin.

Thoroughly confused, he tried to tap the man on the shoulder, but failed as his hand went through it instead. Adrian snatched his hand back and began to examine it; it was still there, but it was glowing a little, a curious glow, which spread up his arm. Adrian gasped and tried to wave the glow off, flapping his hand to each side until his eyes couldn’t properly track its movements. He slowed it down to see if the glow persisted and realized his hand wasn’t there. He tried to touch it but couldn't, instead, the other hand began to glow as it entered the space where the limb should be. He noticed the glow beginning to spread. Moving his wrist towards his eyes could see his blood pumping into unseen arteries, used blood coming back from its journey through blue veins.

Adrian screamed. He screamed at the people around him as they continued to deny him attention, and he screamed at his body to stop disappearing, he screamed until his head too, disappeared.



Chapter one

Then he gasped for breath.

Adrian noticed he was whole again as he instinctively put his hands to his knees, panting heavily, trying to reconcile his relationship with his lungs. He looked himself over again, paying particular attention to his hands, making sure no blood had leaked during his ethereal experience. Satisfied, he looked over to the machine he'd been trying to fix, ignored it, and went to bed.

In the morning, Adrian walked into the lab whistling Popeye, saw his particle accelerator and almost stopped himself fully, with his leg still in the air; it didn't look different, but it felt different. Adrian scolded himself for taking his dream seriously. He pressed the activation button, in response, it did nothing. He rolled his eyes at his own stupidity; it was broken, of course. Sighing, he got out his wrench, putting it to a loose nut and ignoring the fact that the on button was fully pressed in. He couldn't ignore it for long though, as the machine started a heavy hum and started to spit blue sparks. But Adrian was ignorant to this; he carried on tightening the nut even when a small piece of red hot metal landed on his hand. It sizzled and sent up smoke. That and a smell of cooking roast. But Adrian continued to work.

Then he looked up, no longer alone, the same people as in his dream walked around doing their individual tasks and again ignoring Adrian, who now noticed the disturbingly delicious smell coming from the back of his hand. But fear stopped him from comforting the wound, the very same fear that stopped him from doing anything.

He noticed strange equipment on the workbenches, very strange equipment indeed. One was a small obelisk that emitted a tiny laser; a scientist used the beam to cut a piece of metal, using a ruler to measure when he should stop. After he was done, he pressed a button on the edge and the light stopped. Adrian ignored the other machines and walked forward, he inspected it, replacing terror with curiosity, he pressed the button. The beam started again, without the obstruction of metal, it hit a mirror system at literally the speed of light, forming a triangle of red laser. Adrian thought about his old high school band, the triangle indeed. He moved his head closer to the mirrors, looking in awe. The scientist jolted his head back, and shifted his eyes around, looking for the idiot who plays with precision lasers. He continued his stare around the room as he switched it back off.

Adrian turned it back on, smiling a little despite himself. The man, mid stride, darted his head back and narrowed his eyes accusingly at a scientist the other end of the room. He turned it off. Adrian turned it on and giggled like a schoolgirl.

"Someone sort out the lasers; they're acting nutty." he turned it back off, only to have it turn itself back on. He swore under his breath and turned it off, in doing so his hand passed through Adrian’s. Adrian looked at himself as he began to glow a familiar glow. He sighed and started to disappear, closing his eyes to save himself a peek of his digestive system.



Back at his lab, Adrian checked to make sure his limbs were still there. He rubbed his fingers one at a time; and frowned as his joints demanded attention. He cracked every finger in order, from left to right, wincing in discomfort as he did.

He took a pencil out of his lab coat, and reached for the well-used notepad on the table beside him. Ignoring the graffiti and ramblings, turned to a mostly clear page and began to write, his words bending around a large ink circle in the middle of the pad.

'Either time travel, or different realities,' he wrote in his scrawl, 'one thing's for sure, it demands further research.' he peeked over his shoulder at the machine, and remembered the burn. His hand instantly appeared between his lips as the pain remembered once more.



Adrian sat down in his luxurious kitchen, eating a serving of steak on his lonesome. He was always on his own. He had a huge mansion, and several miles of land to himself, and an electrified gate to make sure it stayed that way; people annoyed him. And with his money, who cares what he does? No one, that's who. He put the fork up to his mouth and took the steak, chewing silently as he pondered the machine.

It couldn't be time travel, the land was his and his for eternity; the electrified gate would make sure of that. That and the landmines. So it couldn't be time travel. But what could it be? He chewed slowly and deliberately in deep thought. The next time he would try to take something back with him, something small, like a pen. Satisfied with his simple plan, he sped up the chewing and enjoyed the remainder of his meal.

In the lab, Adrian tried to remember the exact things that led up to event. He turned the machine on and started to tighten the same bolt. This time dodging the stray piece of fiery metal. He watched the walls melt down around him and replace themselves with cleaner ones, it worked. He was in the same room as before, his room, or his old room. The scientists were still using strange machinery; one took a small machine and placed it under a tap; he turned the machine and tap on. The water rushed into the small machine, but didn't rush out; it seemed to pour endlessly into the hole in the top. Adrian stared for minutes as many liters of water poured into the container, several times the volume of the machine. The man turned the tap off, and casually tipped the machine upside down, catching a beautiful ball of what seemed like diamond in the palm of his hand, about the same size of a tennis ball.

Adrian’s jaw dropped, fuck a ‘pen' he wanted that machine. The man put it down next to the tap, attached the 'diamond' to a clamp and hit it with a laser; the light fractured and lit up the room. Adrian needed that machine. Water into diamond, impossible? Yes. But who cares about technicalities when bottomless wealth lay before you? He walked towards the machine and laid both his hands on it. It was a simple gray metal box with a hole on the top, nothing spectacular. Holding it with one hand, he reached out and swiped at a scientist with his other, making it glow its eerie glow. But before he could fully disappear, he spotted something much more worthy than the one he held. From his position in the room, he could see a device interlocked into the wall. It was behind safety glass, and looked strangely out of place to the other technology in the room. It was a ball of silver, seemingly floating in mid air without support, and changing general shape all the time. To the sides were metal, which glowed white-hot. If this was a power source, it would rebuild the shambles that the world had gotten itself into, for it looked like it needed no fuel. Adrian looked for a means of removal, and saw it was screwed into the wall. He put the remainder of his hands without tips of fingers to the sides of it and tired to turn it clockwise, it shifted obediently and strangely easily. As it moved about, alarm bells started to ring in his ears. The scientists all looked startled and in his direction, the alarms and fluorescent lighting in the room extinguished themselves as he turned the machine again. Grunting with the effort, it came loose, and he finally disappeared.

In his own filthy lab, Adrian fell to the floor with the weight of the object in his hands. It crashed loudly, but continued to glow and fluctuate. Apparently, it was self-sustaining. Out of the captivity of the wall, it was shaped like a giant light bulb, but that would soon change, it would be back in its old position, and it would provide power to the entire mansion. No more dealing with those electricity fools. Adrian smiled to himself as he exited the lab and began to look for a tape measure.



Part two: 20 years later

Adrian sat in his magnificent kitchen eating a steak, only this time he wasn't alone. With him sat the President of the United States of America, and the Prime Minister of England. The two superpowers that also enjoyed their steaks. Adrian smiled politely and chewed his food. They were trying to convince him to invent a more stable version of his power source, to be fit in cars instead of oil, and to be put in power plants instead of uranium. How could he explain to them that he had no idea how it worked? He couldn't, so he bluffed, 'refusing' due to the impossible nature of the task, which was actually partially true. But still they always came, offered ridiculous amounts of money, and left. Every four years or so, a different couple of men. And every time a steak is served and politely eaten.

"Thank you for your time, I regret we cannot come to an agreement," said the prime minister, after both men had put their cutlery on their plates.

"Of course, if I could do what you asked, I would, Sirs." Adrian replied in his usual way, shaking their hands in turn.

They walked out the front door and Adrian turned off the automated defenses. After all, he valued having a corporal structure, and murdering the two most powerful men in the world wouldn't help him keep it. He set the timer to two hours, the decided time that the governments abided by, and turned towards his bedroom, the mansion lonely once more.



The government agent smashed the glass window leading to the labs; he knocked out loose pieces before placing his forearm on the window and dragging himself up. He and three co-workers had 120 minutes to get in, research the mans notes and equipment, and get out. If they missed their target, he heard the man’s security system was extensive.

He helped the others up, catching each of their hands and pulling them towards the opening. Soon they all stood in the lab; and gazed lovingly at the remarkable source of power that Adrian refused to share. Although the urge to steal it was there, any disruptions in the circuit would cause an explosion of untold magnitude, and due to the self-sustaining nature of the device, would such an explosion ever stop? They quickly got back to work, the work they abandoned four years earlier.

He stripped off his camouflage and put on a lab coat, the other men did the same, perhaps to fool other people looking in? Maybe, but to what purpose? Everyone was in favor of the operation.

He began to work; using Adrian’s newly invented and almost alien equipment on various objects, trying to reproduce the power source.

But then something happened, a glass smashed onto the floor, causing all heads to spin around, but nothing had caused it. Well, maybe the wind. He motioned for his accomplice to clean it up.

He continued the research, ignoring the small box that, apparently, turned water to crystal. He turned on the laser to cut a piece of metal. It cut nicely; he turned it off to continue his experiments. But the laser turned itself back on, he turned it off again, and then it turned back on...



End.