6f726967696e
Legacy Name: 6f726967696e

Johnny_673

Choco

LUCCI

sickestambition

CERN had a secret.

Deep beneath the industrial-gray halls and spotless scientific laboratories, down at a subterranean level forgotten by all but the occasional worm, the only light allowed to penetrate the darkness was the occasional sphere of pale flame flickering at the stem of a black candle.

The scientific minds concerned with interdimensional travel seemed like your average nerds on the surface. They drove electric cars and wore graphic t-shirts with scientific references only someone with a 160+ IQ could understand. They were well-respected pioneers in their respective fields. Published. Lavished with awards. Immortalized on little brass plaques tacked onto the end of university bookshelves.

Harbingers of death.

The girl...what was she? Eighteen? Twenty at the most? She'd never have the chance to taste a real drink, to dance at her sister's wedding or to finish the Multicultural History degree program she'd set her heart on.

No, she'd never have the chance to get drunk...but as the full moon approached zenith, she was higher than the spire of the far-distant Empire State Building.

She was oblivious to the computer terminals, the massive wire coils and the huge glass tubes that crouched in the darkness beyond her line of sight. Her half-lidded eyes saw only a small statue...the goddess in some ancient religion her mind couldn't place. She'd seen the image somewhere. Pale hands as smooth as baby skin nudged her along, keeping her from leaving the path lit by floating candles. They'd paid her well to blow off her roomies and take part in a "little experiment". She'd never spend the money...which had never really been wired.

She knelt when they told her to. They began to chant in a language any credible linguist would've claimed was extinct. She continued to smile her serene smile...

...even when the blade pierced her heart precisely at the center. She never lost that smile, though the room began to blur. She thought of how pretty the lights were, her ex, the last song on the CD that had played in her car on the way up to this bizarre metal dome just off the highway in Switzerland.

She smiled and she thought her useless thoughts and she died.

The seemingly dead equipment came to life with a whine too high-pitched for human ears. They could not hear...but they could feel the tremors, as if the depths of hell had sent an earthquake as reward...or retribution.

The dimensional gate came to life in a flash of white light that left two men blind. Those who weren't too stupid to put their goggles on at the optimal moment were treated to a view of another dimension. They had no words for the shapes and colors flashing at nauseating speed a few billion light years away, yet close enough to reach out a hand and touch. They all flinched back when the first "voyager" burst through the portal with a sound of metal scraping metal.

It was roughly the size of a large dog. It hovered over the dead girl momentarily, then turned its attention to one of the blinded men. He was lying on the floor, moaning and swiping uselessly at the tears streaming down his face. The creature shot a dart-like appendage from its...core? Abdomen? Chest cavity? The thing had an anatomy so alien, there really was no adequate way to describe it...yet.

So much to study. So much to learn.

The blind man was hurled into the portal, choking on an agonized scream. Three dozen tiny silver globes seemed to float out his mouth, transferred to the creature. When the last one passed his lips, the screaming cut off abruptly.

Three more creatures followed in the wake of the first, overloading the circuits of the motherboard and shutting the whole system down. The scientists didn't spare a thought for the $14.6 billion taxpayer dollars they'd just fried. The experiment was a success. They were looking at the world's most prized lab rats.

It could be argued that they weren't total idiots. They had made a study of this particular dimensional space. They had carefully broken down the chemical elements based on a probe that landed there accidentally back in the 1980's. They shot the three smaller "voyagers" with a chemical composition that froze the creatures in place so they could be properly tagged.

The big one took three vials of the stuff before it went down. Its tag read "6f726967696e"...a random series of letters and numbers assigned by a computer. They took to calling it 6F for short.

It was observed that 6F went into a sort of dormant state in most scenarios. Introducing rocks, plants and animals drew no reaction from the mass of...well, it could hardly be called tissue the way it moved all the time. Rawlings coined the term shasma for "shifting plasma" and it stuck.

Then a janitor...a lowly Clearance Level One janitor...bumbled into a lab he had no business cleaning and gave them a whole new realm of possibilities to explore.

The unsuspecting man was sixty-two years old and looking forward to the fat pension coming his way in just a few years. It was the only incentive that could make a man waste twenty years of his life unclogging toilets for a bunch of rich brain-monkeys. Speaking of boldly going where no man has gone before...Professor Gorganthal could make a lethal weapon out of the vapors produced every time he ate a triple-bean burrito.

The janitor didn't even know what hit him. He didn't even manage a dying scream when 6F struck. The creature, as it turned out, could create miniature interdimensional portals of its own, sacrificing its victims into the space/time opening to harvest the life energy that seemed to be its food source. Only one silver orb came out the janitor's mouth. He hadn't even told his wife about the cancer, not yet. Only his doctor knew he had about a year left to live.

The blind man had been much younger. Theories flew through the air and a buzz of excited conversation filled the observation room.

The smaller creatures were no less savage but when they got ahold of prey, they merely ripped it apart and absorbed nutrients through a sort of proboscis, like huge, gooey flies. They were infants to the mature wonder of 6F.

The scientists grew bolder, releasing 6F on unsuspecting labs at night, when casualties could be swept up with minimal fuss. Man or woman seemed to have no affect on 6F's appetite. It did seem to grow more energetic...more violent...when allowed to "feed" on someone young. An absorption of life...perhaps even some kind of time transference.

What could this creature do if left to its own devices in say...a crowd?

They smuggled it out one warm summer night, every bit the fools carrying something deadly from the lab on the tips of their shoes.

The music was blaring. The crowd was chanting along. 6F was going totally berserk, feeding in a shark's frenzy. Two dozen people dropped, their lifespans floating through the air. Idiots a few rows down thought it was some kind of organized thing...like doing the wave, only with lights. They got out their cell phones, lit up the screens and started waving them back and forth, totally unaware that their friends were dying.

It took a full eight vials to get 6F under control and even the unflappable scientists were finding it hard not to flap their lips. Maybe it was time to dial this thing back, just a little...

They were halfway to the nondescript gray van when 6F vanished.

No, vanished wasn't the right word. It reappeared almost instantly, a few feet away. The darts in its shasma clattered harmlessly to the ground and it robbed the lives of a trio of teenagers that had snuck out well past curfew for a night of solid rock.

The scientists looked at each other in dismay. Their creature had learned a new trick.

Bad dog...creature...thing.

They hit it with the mega-dose and finally managed to subdue their runaway monster...for the time being.

A media frenzy followed the mysterious deaths at the concert. The head of CERN brushed off the usual round of accusations flung at his organization by the ignorant masses. In fact, he had no idea that it had been an obscure branch of his organization that were the responsible parties. Plausible deniability.

They tripled the security on 6F.

It wasn't enough.

The sightings...they were never confirmed, of course. Grainy videos on YouTube after some kid was found lying in a ditch not two miles from the main CERN compound. Preposterous sketches of a monster with a hundred eyes as seen in a political comic published when a couple of tourists were found in the alley behind their hotel, all their checks and credit cards still in their wallets, not a sign of any injury or illness. A blurry color photograph that might have been a blob of floating matter...or a clod of dirt some prankster tossed in the air to get his five minutes of fame on the news. Nothing concrete. Nothing that could really be used against CERN.

Three noted entries kept under the highest security encryption known to man, all logged under the dimensional research department's heading.

Three incidents where 6F's supply of "special cocktail" had run out and it had escaped.

Speculation growing. Tourism rates dropping. Two camps flinging insults on the internet; those who believe and those who will refuse belief until they feel the stab of a creature from another dimension.

How long before 6F figures out not only how to increase its skills but also to adapt its body to the one concoction that keeps it (at least marginally) under control?

It is ever evolving, ever learning...

Ever hungry.

Story by Pureflower