discombobulate
verb (used with object), dis·com·bob·u·lat·ed, dis·com·bob·u·lat·ing.
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Ben was confused. So confused that he had taken some pain killers to deal with the headache that still thumped against the inside of his skull. His eyes glazed over as they went over the things again. He still had no idea what they were, or how they had gotten there. They had simply appeared on his desk without warning. Not even a small popping sound had accompanied their appearance.
They were small glass-like objects that had some kind of swirling, color shifting light inside them. Each one was no bigger than his thumbnail, and all were uneven and irregularly shaped. He did not even know what they were made of. When he picked one up, all his senses told him they were glass. But something deep inside of him told him they were not. How could his mind be so at odds with the rest of him? It was just so frustrating.
He picked up two of the objects and held them close to each other, occasionally turning one or the other over. He could almost make out something not unlike a pattern. The two objects, if positioned perfectly, might be able to fit together like puzzle pieces. Ben tried.
They fit. They fit perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that he could not tell where one ended and the other began. And it did not take him long to find the reason for this was not the perfect fit. They actually had become one piece. The material flowed and merged, fusing the two pieces together, forming one.
Ben set the slightly larger object down and looked at the rest of them. He was now a little less confused in some ways. A lot more confused in others, but baby steps were needed here. He had figured out what they were. At least, at their most basic descriptor. These were puzzle pieces. A large 3-D puzzle made of…something. Now he just had to put them together. With no picture. And no clues as to how the pieces fit.
Ben’s headache went from a dull thumping to a full-blown drum solo. He rubbed his pounding head in an attempt to get it to calm down. He needed to think. He needed to focus. This was a horrible, confusing, frustrating jumble of things, but at least he had something to go off of now. It was more than he had before.
He picked up two pieces, and quickly discarded them when he saw they would never fit, no matter how he put them together. He then found two pieces who looked like they would work, and clicked them together. Nothing happened. Nothing he did would get them to fuse. He looked carefully at the bumps and spikes in the two. They matched perfectly, and yet they did not work. Ben felt his eye start to twitch as he set them down and moved to another pair.
None of them worked. He tried dozens of combinations, and none of them fit together like the first two did. He knew they would. He had seen them fusing. He slumped back in his seat and rubbed his temples. He took a deep breath and looked at the glowing, irregular puzzle pieces. There had to be a way to get them to fit together. And he would find it eventually. He cracked his neck, then his knuckles, and got to work.
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I'd give up pretty quickly. I'm no good at regular jigsaw puzzles, let alone the 3-D variety. I'd never be able to figure this out.
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