ectopic
\ ek-TOP-ik \ , adjective;
1. Occurring in an abnormal position or place; displaced.
It was finished. After months of work, it was finally ready. His newest creation was ready for its first trial. He didn’t actually know what it was going to do, but that was nothing new to him. Greg Sunders did have a very unusual method of invention after all. Most inventors spend months or even years doing research, experimentation, and trial and error getting something right. Greg just put things together, messed around with various parts until he felt it was done, and then hoped for the best. It was a very hit or miss kind of method. When something worked well, it usually went on to be very popular in a select field. But when something went wrong, it went very wrong. Greg’s face and arms bore testament to that fact, being littered with scars and burns of various shapes and sizes (some were very interesting in fact, and served him well as conversation starters).
Like all his other creations, Greg had no idea what this would do when he turned it on, but given the materials and how much time he had put into it, it promised to be spectacular, regardless of whether it was a success or failure. The device was only a foot tall, but it was a complicated mass of wires, tubes, cables, lens of various color and composition, and lasers. At the center of the device was a small, smooth gem, no bigger than a marble, and made of a very rare material of unknown material. Greg had gotten it on a whim, reasoning that all the coolest things were made of some kind of unknown stuff. He had quickly started the device, building it up around the gem.
With
a hopeful gleam in his eyes, Greg tured the device on, keeping his
fingers crossed. Everything worked, or at least seemed to. Beams of
light shot through the lenses into the stone, which seemed eat them
hungrily. A small, high pitched sound come from it and rang out for a
few seconds. Then, nothing. It just stopped. Greg tried to turn it
back on in several ways, but nothing worked. He then went to work on it
again, moving some cables around and adjusting a few lasers, but still
nothing happened. Greg sighed, and walked away, now aware that this was
another failure to be added to the discard pile. And he had such high
hopes for this one too. Maybe he would reuse the various components in
something else next time.
Greg
left his lab, saddened more than he probably should have been at his
failure. After all , this was not the first time one of his inventions
hadn't panned out, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But for some
reason, this one bothered him more than any other. When he emerged into
the rest of his house, there was something off about it. He couldn’t
tell what exactly was wrong, but it didn’t seem the same, even though
everything looked right. It was like everything had been displaced and
then replaced in a slightly different position. But, there was nothing
he could really do about it, and he needed to do something to get his
mind off his most recent project. The only way he knew to do that was
to start a new one. He would go somewhere, probably to the hardware
store and the junkyard (his two favorite places) and pick up a few odds
and ends.
There was just one problem though. His keys were not where they should
have been. As unorganized as he was with his method of invention was,
he was extremely organized and precise in every other part of his life.
He always knew exactly where everything was, because he had a specific
spot for everything. So his keys not being where they should be was, to
him, a big deal. In fact, when he looked around for them, they were
nowhere to be found. It was as if they had just disappeared. Greg had
no explanation to this, but since he couldn’t go anywhere as he wanted,
he settled down to a quiet night doing nothing much at all.
The
day, Greg felt the same thing he had the day before. That there was
something inexplicably wrong with his environment. This fact was
reinforced by more things being missing. There was nothing important; a
pen here, a fork there, his remote control, and a few odds and ends
from his lab. But still, the fact that he couldn’t find them no matter
how hard he look annoyed him. He couldn’t help shake the feeling that
the device was somehow responsible for this. Maybe it hadn’t been such a
failure after all. He went back down to his labs and took a closer
look at the device. Now that he was paying attention to it, he noticed
that there had indeed been a change in the area around the device. The
entire thing looked like it was covered in a thin bubble made of nothing
but air, giving the illusion that it was growing and shrinking tiny
amounts. Maybe it wasn’t even an illusion. Could it actually be
changing sizes? Greg continued to study it, but found himself unable to
touch it. It wasn’t that anything was stopping him, it’s just that
whenever he went to touch it, something inside him told him not to. So
he left it alone, continuing to study it from a distance.
Over
the next several days, Greg’s environment seemed more and more off, and
more and more objects disappeared, and they were getting bigger. A
chair, a lamp, a desk. Even the kitchen sink ended up disappearing
(much to Greg’s chagrin, as the piping attached to the sink had
remained). All the while he continued to study the device however he
could without actually touching it. One day, after finding much of the
contents of his cabinets gone, he decided to buck up and ignore that
little voice inside his head. He needed to know what was going on, and
the only way of doing that was to study the thing up close.
Once in his lab, he stood face to face with the size changing device
(he was now certain it was in fact changing sizes). Whatever force kept
him from touching it again flared up in his mind, but this time he did
everything he could to ignore it. A he got closer, the feeling in him
got stronger. When he was right on top of it, the feeling was almost
painful to ignore, but he managed somehow. He finally held the active
device in his hands. It was heavier than he remembered it being when he built it, and seemed to pulsate with an odd warmth. He immediately started working to figure something out. Suddenly, the device started glowing. No, not glowing. Shining. It emitted light from every surface, not just those designed to do so. Greg felt an odd feeling, as if everything he knew was being peeled away and replaced with something just a tiny bit different. He collapsed, the device clattering to the ground in front of him.
When he woke up, he was very certain things were different. While he couldn’t be sure in the lab, he could feel everything was different. He left that lab and saw just what. Things moved in odd ways. Some were very slow, while others were abnormally fast. Others didn’t move at all. Not to mention all the items he had lost were exactly where they were supposed to be, but seemed to be...brighter somehow. As if there was more to them than everything else. And there was something else. As he looked around he saw things. That was the only way to really describe them, as there was nothing he was able to compare them to. He left his house and saw more of these things moving around, going in between his neighbors, some of whom were speeding around as fast as if they were in cars, others moving at a speed that made snails seem like speed demons.
Then
he saw someone that looked normal, and was moving at the same speed as
Greg was. Greg approached the man, exchanged the necessary greetings,
and asked the most important question: What was happening to him.
The man looked at him knowingly, and smiled at Greg.“New here, eh?” He said “Well then, welcome to perpendicular time.”
*****************************
Muahahahahaha! Fear the cliffhanger! Fear it I say! Oh yeah, I'm using this guy and setting again as soon as the opportunity arises. Until then: fear! Muahahaha, and so on.
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