Gallery

Ivan stopped his dusting, tilted his head, and listened. In his fourty-seven years of keeping the collection he had yet to hear anything besides himself here. Well, himself or those few who he let in on collection business.

The area in question was a massive underground vault used to house his employers collection. The collection itself was more valuable than any known vault could keep safe, even this one. Secrecy and an extremely agressive security system were all that kept the collection, and the citizens of the world, safe. The items themselves had been gathered meticulously over the past two hundred years. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the world.

Ivan held his breath and listened, already having decided that any curiosity of intrusion or, perish the thought...escape, was enough to invite investigation. The direction was the question. Or not. When in doubt, check The Black Room.

Ivan removed the drape from over his shoulder and draped it over the Medusa's Head. Removing the blind from his eyes he watched in ill humor as the shape beneath the clothe writhed. Shaking his head with a smile he tucked the feather duster into his back pocket and started off.

This wasn't just a job for Ivan. This was a legacy. The position of guardian, curator, whatever it was like to be called these days had been passed down from father to son for generations. Alexander himself had begun the collection in 320 B.C., and a trusted friend had been given the job of keeping it safe. The collection had started then with four items of rumored power and mystery. The collection was now in the thousands.

Even Ivan didn't know who actually funded the protection of the collection these days, or who was doing the collecting. That was not his concern. His role was to see to it that the gallery remained in the gallery.

The next isle over was segregated every three feet by a wide red stripe painted onto the floor. When one walked down this isle it was required that you pause for a minimum of five seconds on each painted line. Both feet must be together on the line and your hands to your sides. To do otherwise was to invite the security system to enact a violent and messy counter-measure. He had never seen it in use, and hoped not to. The explanation he had been given had included laser beams and gas and very, very sharp wire. He hoped he never had to hurry down this particular isle.

In the middle of this aisle was a long hallway leading to the black room. Dotted with niches every few feet this was where the smaller items in the collection were kept. On a pedastal in each niche was a wooden or steel box the size of a hefty grapefruit that held a trinket, jewelry, a bauble of some kind. The first, on his left, was a ring that was so sacred to the Pharoahs of old that they had swallowed it anew daily. The catalogue entry for it was vague at best. Do Not Wear, it said.

None of these items had he ever lain eyes upon, and dusting them was a tiresome task indeed. This walk was like the "light at the end of the tunnle" so many TV movies had tried to get right. The hallway was dim but the room at the end shone brightly. The door was always open.

The Black Room, as it is known, has four featureless white walls, much like the room Ivan had lived in while a child. A few distinguishing features broke the monotony of the plain white features.

One was a smooth black keypad on the face of the doorway. The keypad was much like that on the face of a microwave, but this has no buttons, it was simply on or off, changed by touch. A red light shone from behind the touchpad, this meant the emergency system was off. These touchpads were on each wall of the room as well.
The second was a plain grey romanesque pedastal on which a plastic spray bottle sat. The bottle was filled with water.
The third and most important feature, the feature for which the room was named, was a ten foot tall rectangle of glistening black rock. It reminded Ivan of the black sand he'd seen in Hawaii how many years ago?

Ivan smiled and stretched, remembering for a moment-- the girl, the beach, and the violent storm that had driven them inside their rented hut, when he heard another click. This time however it seemed alot more like a crack.

Ivan's eyes grew huge, his heart skipped a beat, his mouth went dry, and he froze in place. He was the only living soul allowed this deep into the collection, and a noise was unwelcome at best. In this room, it was terrifying. He knew his job though, and lived to perform.

Hand over his mouth, Ivan walked a circle around the monolith, looking for a crack. When he didn't find one, he breathed a huge sigh of relief and shook his head at his own fool self. Must have been my hip, he thought. When he was younger, and spry, he had taken a sound thrashing at the hands of bully and had suffered a broken hip. It had never really been the same. Stopping at the door he turned back to the room almost forgetting the most important part.

Ivan took the spray bottle in hand, gave it a few preperatory squeezes at the floor and pointed it directly at the slab. A quick squeeze was mimicked by the squeeze his chest felt when the water hit the stone face, and hissed. The rock was hot. Very, very hot.

A sharp crack split the air like a bone snapping. Ivan lost control of his bowels and shat himself like a baby at midnight. He watched a kitten size chunk of black stone tumble free from the side of the block and fall maliciously, if a rock can do so, to the floor.

It didn't bounce, or click, or crack, or spin, it stuck, magnetic almost. He wasted no time praying, watching his life flash, regretting, or begging for his life as he turned to his left and slammed his fist against the smooth black plastic pad on the wall. This was his duty.

A solid block of rune etched steel slammed down in the entranceway with such force that the air rushing out from under forced Ivan backwards into the stone. The shoulder of his coat burst into flames. Though the air around the stone was cool the rock itself was like crytal fire.

Batting at his arms and tears streaming down his face Ivan looked up and watched as the ceiling turned from a dull grey, to a brown, to a glowing neon orange. The counter-measure in this room included melting the twenty tons of nickle that the cieling was made of, letting it drop down into the room and encase the stone before it cracked asunder. Surprising how quickly it worked.

The hope was that the metal would melt, fall, and cool before the demon trapped within the stone could break free. Nobody really knew what to do if it didn't work. Besides die.

Ivan had lived a good life and as his hair burst into flame he found time for a final prayer.