Lab C: Chapter 20 - Killing time.
John flexes each hand, and lightning crackles over his knuckles.
Dr. Tesla looks down at the impossible thing, and up to John who doesn’t look that worried about it. John notices him, and nods, smiling at Dr. Tesla.
“How’d your guy come to be, you never finished your story.”
“Oh, yeah, uhm, my boss forced me to over dose them with magic mushrooms, to try and kill them. However, their life cycles are so short and the dose was so high that they just kept passing the psilocybin molecules from generation to generation, and it’s like, super nutritious for them now I guess? But uhm, ok, so they very quickly formed a hive mind consciousness, since they were just re-eating and remaking themselves with their own flesh and poop as food. Yeah, that whole, pass on the nutrients thing adapted them to have these massive stomachs that far out last them. So they’re just, so nutritious that they can just keep going. I have no idea how to test for that.”
“Did you try catching one fly, and finding out how many calories it is?”
“What? I don’t wanna take energy out of their system.”
John smiles, “Cool. But they’re smart, and funny. I don’t buy that that is the whole reason.”
Dr. Tesla shrugs. “I’m trying okay? It’s like, all I’ve done is study what they have been doing so I have no time to figure out what they really did, and I know, I just know that someone else here is figuring all that out, and I have no way of knowing.”
“What do you think it is then?”
“Ok, so they gain consciousness. They eat a bunch of people. My boss was trapping dudes and getting them eaten while pretending that it wasn’t on purpose or it was an accident. Her ex-husband defended her so god damn much, that none of us could say anything. I swear they were gonna get back together, like each dude she killed and then he defended her honor for, they got so fucking into each other. I am pretty sure they snuck off and had sex during this.
“Oh so she’s like they’re mom.”
Dr. Tesla stop. Blinks a bit.
“Well,” John goes on, “she made them via you. Which, considering the dynamic, the body language must have been obvious for them to read.”
Dr. Tesla is taken a back.
“So they’re like, ah, this is the most important one. Then she’s feeding them. Which according to you looked obvious, so was definitely obvious to them. She was their mom dude.”
“Well… I doubt that.”
“They ate her?”
“Can I tell my story?”
John nods.
“Alright, so they’re boning and stuff until finally it’s just us three.”
John is riveted.
“And I trip, and her husband trips, and she can only save one of us. She screams, “I’m sorry babe! I have to! Down with the patriarchy!!” and fucking cuts his arm off so that The Swarm gets him and not us.”
John laughs. Dr. Tesla smiles.
“This fucking woman turns to me as we’re running, shrugs and says “What? I make more than him. I’m not about to pay alimony.”
“Then The Swarm ate her?”
“Then, she kicks me, leaving me for dead and The Swarm rushes by me and ate her. Not only did it let me live, it took human-ish shape and tried to shake my hand.”
“Holy shit dude. That’s wild.” John is genuinely surprised. He’s gotta shake it off a little bit. Then it hits him, “Oh! Oh they thought she was god, and that you were them. The flies think you’re a giant fly.”
“I don’t, what? No. That’s stupid.” Dr. Tesla says trying not be offended. “They love me and that’s that.”
“Yeah but why? That’s the entire question.”
Dr. Tesla squints, “Because I’m funny?”
“You’ve never intentionally made a joke.”
“I’m processing trauma, fuck you.”
John laughs, “See, not a single intentional one.”
“That’s cause I’m a natural. Now, can you please, if we have time, explain some stuff to me?”
“It’s better if I don’t. You’re more likely to believe stuff if it just keeps happening. If you have to explain everything, you’ll never have time to explain the important things.”
“Cool. But,” Dr. Tesla has to square up to ask this with all seriousness, “I’ve only found one bathroom, except no one told me about it and I just stumbled in there. Are there other bathrooms?”
John matches his seriousness, “Ok. That’s fair. We have time for that,” John adjusts and moves out his stiffness, having not left his fighting stance this whole conversation. He tilts his head over but keeps his eyes down the way. “There is two in every hallway.”
“Like for each gender?”
“That doesn’t really matter down here.”
Dr. Tesla nods, “sure, that’s great. However, I only walk down one hallway, and I walk down it for about 2000 steps before I get to The Swarm. That is the only place I’ve walked and I’ve not seen another.”
“Right, but surely, you noticed, sometimes, the hall way is a bit of a different hallway. You may not have made any turns, but there are distinctly different sections in some way. Right?”
Dr. Tesla nods.
“No, I don’t think you know. I mean like, sometimes it will look identical for miles however, the experiments are all like, gaseous or probably not from this planet.”
Dr. Tesla’s eyes narrow. “What?”
“Sometimes it’s stupid, like it’ll be 20 exhibits in a row of things that have a middle initial that’s worth 5 points in scrabble.”
“No. No that can’t really be a category, is it?”
John shrugs, “Well, that’s just an example. If you figure out a hallway section, then that section will have one bathroom on each side towards the like, the 25% and 75% mark. Like if you drew a line from the middle to each end, it would be in the middle of that line.”
Dr. Tesla looks to his empty hand, “Of course.” He looks to John. “It’s not like it doesn’t make sense when you say it. It just feels so uncomplicated now.”
”You didn’t find any.”
“What?”
“You didn’t find any other bathrooms, right?”
Dr. Tesla tilts his head, John starts “Buddy, I don’t know how long you’ve been here, but in that time, you did not find another single bathroom. It is not obvious, is it? Just because you know the information now, does not mean it wasn’t obfuscated as hell. No, it is complicated to simply “know” something. You can’t just “know” something without first having received that information. Truly being able to just discern new information- AH fuck they’re here.” John side steps in front of Dr. Tesla and suddenly his knee pads and shin guards are glowing with bright blue runes, the billow out just a little bit of fire.
Dr. Tesla looks at him surprised, then down the empty quiet hallway. He listens really hard for like 6 seconds, then, only after that, is he able to hear the faintest of buzzing sounds. “How, how the fuck,” then Chuck SCREAMS and there’s an explosion shock wave that stops a dozen feet in front of them, Dr. looks back at John astonished, “how could you have know? That’s, what? That’s ridiculous. How did you know?”
John looks back with a creepy smile, “My dead dog tells me.”
“Like… it’s ghost?”
John’s face drops, “Never fucking say that again. She’s in my mind and a hallucination. Does that make sense now that you know it?”
Dr. Tesla raises an eyebrow and nods, before he does, John is already looking back towards the other end of the hall way where he sees Lily standing up, looking bored down the hall.
“Yours can definitely kill both of us by the way.”
Dr. Tesla looks almost ashamed. “Well, one of us maybe.”
Lily growls the growl of a dog who never saw a single fight in it’s previous life.
“Guess we’re even then.” John says, affirming his stance.
