"The largest file size the world could muster was a measly 16 Megabytes."
Jack was alone within the room. He always dreaded these new beginnings. It was always the start of some cacophonous new endeavour, pleasant or short-lived, however it may be, but it was never what he expected it to be. But resolutely, there was no going back. Life did not have an eraser to smooth over the mistakes of the past. A fact of life was sometimes you simply had to deal with the lot you were given, keep your head down and do your best with what you have, not what you wish you had. Jack drank deeply from his cup once more.
Nearly everything in this building had a wood furnish. The floors rapped and snapped when you tip-toed across them, creaking in the right spots, while bleached, weak and weary in others.
Jack noticed the bartender's hands resting upon the dark oak counter. His bony fingers and distended joints, veins and sinews filled Jack with a chilling sense of mortality. Alive though the bartender was, his hands and wrists especially looked sickly. The man was too old to be this skinny, and was surely but a sandwich away from death. Jack distracted himself from the bartender's uncomfortable hands with other finer details of the room.
The lights that hung overhead were dingy. Dusty but luminous at least, with the stray fly buzzing around the halogenic brightness, trying to find a way to peck through the shade and into the inner chamber of the bulb. The walls were much the same wood as the floor, but sturdier, darker, and varnished. Why varnish the walls but not the floors, Jack wondered. Perhaps they had once both been, but people did not walk on walls, and thus the varnish there had not worn out.
Jack was still waiting. For all the time there didn't seem to be in a day, it was doing an awful good job at catching up to him today. A series of rampant all-nighters and hellishly repugnant ordeals full of twisted metal, fire, water, sand and whatever other element that were none to pleasant to be burdened with filled his regular life. Jack could not have caught his breath for five minutes before another troublesome nag arose, but now as he sat alone with a slowly disappearing drink and a humble rabble within the air, he found himself within a very special layer of Hell: The boring one.
It was an entire irksome hour before his consort arrived. A short and rather stout woman in a blaringly obvious white lab coat. She had thin, light brown hair tied in a bun and composed herself with all the confidence of a rabbit.
The woman sat beside Jack, awkwardly resting her briefcase against the legs of the barstool. She didn't make eye-contact with him, but hunched over her back and looked around the tavern.
"Alright, I think we're good." the woman muttered to him, still not looking in his direction. Jack smiled tersely and finished his drink in a few chugs.
The woman turned to look at him now, and looked unsure whether or not she should extend her hand in greeting or just stay as she was.
"H-Hi." she stammered after deciding not to. "My name's Umber. You must be Jack."
"Must I be?" Jack sighed. Umber didn't know how to respond to the question. She looked down and nervously rubbed her hands for a few seconds before continuing.
"The doctor, uh, Doctor Valter." she nodded, staring up at Jack. "He wants to see you."
"You're not Doctor Valter?" Jack asked, turning his body more towards her. His brow sunk and his jaw clenched. Umber's head shook rather incessantly.
"N-No. Sorry, I'm just his assistant. Doctor Valter is, uh-"
Jack cut Umber off by raising his finger. "Doctor Valter wanted to meet with me, yes? He told me to meet him here at 2:00PM sharp, and that he'd have a very promising and very interesting proposition for me. It is now..." Jack glanced to his watch. "3:07. And he sends his assistant to fetch me? Who the hell does this guy think he is?"
Umber tried to stammer out and apology, and began to talk very quickly. "S-Sorry. He's been busy, I mean really busy, like, if I had known this would've happened, of course I would've left sooner, but he just got to me now, and told me "Hey Umber, I need you to meet with this guy", but meanwhile I was like, "Hey, I'm in the middle of something", but he was pretty insistent, so I had to rush over here, and by the time I got here, I uh..."
Jack's hard gaze made her trail off, and she looked down at the floor once more.
"Forget it." Jack said, getting up from the bar stool. Umber audibly gasped, hopping off her bar stool as well.
"Wait! You-You can't leave just yet!"
"Watch me." he grunted, stomping towards the exit.
Umber waddled after him and grabbed his hand before he could leave.
"Jack, really! This is super important, and I mean, if Doctor Valter thinks you're the best man for the job, then there's really no.. ah..."
Jack slowly craned his head to look down upon her. He was close to being a full foot taller than her. Umber shrunk her head into her shoulders, but kept her grip on his hand.
"Let go of me."
Umber shook her head. "You have to help the Doctor! Please?"
"He's an hour late and doesn't even come to meet me himself? He can go to hell for all I care. And so can you!" he tried to tear his hand away from her, but all he did was make her stumble across the floor.
"L-look! Whatever we need to pay you, I'm sure we can work something out. But this is really important to him. He's been working on this project for decades, way before I ever showed up. It can't happen without you!"
Jack squinted. "What project?"
Umber guffawed nervously. "You uh... You're a good finder, right?"
"It's my profession."
"Well... Doctor Valter needs something. Just one tiny thing. Then his project will be completed... I think."
Jack's eye glinted. "What. Project?"
Umber gulped. "Ah... You know... It's some... time metaspace device or something. It's honestly way beyond me, but it's probably childsplay for Doctor Valter because he's such a genius..."
Jack leaned his free hand on one of the tables. "What's it supposed to do?"
"Uh... Conceptualize the... inner machinations of... No, no, it's supposed to uh... parse the individual conceptualizations on a neutron scale... Wait, neutron or neuron scale?" Umber's eyes scrunched tight.
"On second thought, never mind..." Jack sighed, drawing his hand down the side of his face, stretching his lower eyelid in exasperation. "What's this thing I need to find then?"
"It's one of those uh... Rayon Null-Flux Distribution chips, I think. Doctor Valter had one, but he's misplaced it."
Jack retrieved an odd device from his coat pocket. It appeared similar to a pilot joystick without the base, but at the head it had a flat screen where a series of letters and numbers were read out to him. He started entering the name of the object.
Umber leaned closer to have a look. Jack put his hand on her face and pushed her away. She squawked in protest for a moment before composing herself.
"That's hardly nice, you know." she frowned.
"I am not nice." Jack answered, pressing the final button on the device. "I'd still like to actually meet this Doctor Valter. All I've heard about him so far are his many accomplishments and… you know. The usual."
"He's a very impressive man." Umber nodded enthusiastically. "But he's a little... unorthodox."
"Oh gee, who could have seen that coming? The genius scientist has some crazy quirks about him. It's like that's a requirement for being smart: You HAVE to have some kind of weirdness about you."
Umber shrugged. "I think everyone has a certain amount of weirdness to them. People just notice it more in geniuses because they want to emulate them."
Jack squinted at Umber for a moment. "Eh." he shrugged. He turned around and walked out of the tavern.
Umber left the tavern as soon as she'd grabbed her briefcase, and waddled as fast as she could to catch up to Jack. "So you'll do it then?" she panted, following Jack's long strides as best she could.
"Yeah, fine." Jack nodded. "In exchange, you can tell Doctor Valter that he can pay me double."
Umber laughed nervously. "Y-Yeah! I'll uh... I mean, I hope he has that much..."
"So give me a description of the object then." he said, cracking his knuckles.
"Uh... It's a... it's like a rectangle. Small, flat, grey, uh... Like maybe the size of your finger. B-but probably not as long. And it's got little nodes coming out of the sides."
"So like a square centipede?" Jack asked, kicking over a few rocks.
Umber blinked for a moment. "I suppose you could describe it like that... Say, where are we going?"
Jack pointed ahead, down the alley behind a long series of residential buildings. "I've got a feeling we'll find it if we keep heading this way."
"Well, uh, that's kind of convenient. The laboratory is just up ahead anyways."
Jack wandered down the street and Umber tried to keep pace with him.
"Are you, uh, getting closer to finding it?" Umber asked after a few long minutes. Jack shrugged, admiring the cracked corners of one of the houses.
"J-Jack?" she asked. He put his hands in his pocket.
"Tell me, where's that laboratory you were talking about earlier?"
"Hm? Well, it's back there now." she pointed in the direction they'd came from. "But only about a minute or so away."
Jack nodded, thoroughly considering the implications of what Umber had just said, before turning around and walking in that direction.
Umber squinted. "Wait, where are you going?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Jack outstretched his arms without turning around. "I'm going to the laboratory. I want to have a word with this Doctor Valter."
The hair rose up on the back of Umber's neck. "Uh! He, uh, doesn't like to be disturbed, Mister... Uh..." Umber couldn't remember his last name for the life of her.
"Just call me Jack." he said, tucking his hands once more into his pocket. He gazed at the skyline and tried to figure out which building was the laboratory.
"Jack, he doesn't like strangers coming into his lab. Whenever a stranger visits him there, something always goes wrong. Why do you need to see him anyway?"
Jack shrugged innocently. "I just want to talk to him. If I do that, I'll have a better clue of what to look for."
Umber knitted her fingers uncomfortably. "I don't know..."
"Just introduce me to him, we'll be fine." Jack said, raising his eyebrow at her. "I'm sure if it's coming from his trusted lab assistant, he wouldn't mind too much."
Umber looked away. "Well... If you insist. It's one of the smaller buildings around here. He has his own private lab where he spends most of his time, in addition to working out of the professional one."
"Busy man." Jack nodded. "Have to wonder when he sleeps."
Umber shrugged. "Every week or so."
She counted up on the numbers of the buildings down the street, until she stopped at one that looked like an abandoned motel. "This one. Number 2454."
"What, this place? This is his lab?" Jack covered his mouth with his fist. "It's not very impressive."
"Well, this is the entrance at least. Come on." Umber gestured him towards the entrance. There was a payphone mounted besides the locked door. She placed her briefcase down and clicked the latches, opening it up.
Jack crossed his arms and observed as she took a plastic card out of the briefcase and fed it into the slot on the payphone. She picked up the phone and listened for something, punching a long series of numbers into the dial pad, until the door clicked loudly.
"That seems elaborate." Jack noted as Umber pulled open the door.
"Doctor Valter is very insistent on keeping people out. The only other person besides me he lets into his personal laboratory is Doctor Madaras."
Jack took the door from Umber and stepped into the building. "And who would that be?"
"I haven't met him myself, but Doctor Valter tells me he's an old friend from their university."
It was very apparent the interior of the building was not regularly maintained. Stains upon the walls trickled from the ceiling, while dust and cobwebs covered every corner, every window and nearly every inch of space within the decrepit establishment.
"Some lab." Jack snickered, following Umber through a few rooms. Umber shot him a strange look. "This isn't his lab. I told you, it's just the entrance. We have to go down. Here's the elevator." Umber pointed to the nearby wall.
"So the elevator's just here then?" Jack asked, crossing his arms. "What's to stop someone from just breaking in and taking the elevator down to Valter's precious lab?"
"Proximity system." Umber noted, pressing the "Call Elevator" button. "If you try to break in, you're going to have a bad time."
"Oh? And how bad of a time are we talking here?"
"About two to four weeks in the hospital, minimum."
Jack grimaced. "He really does not like people in his lab, huh?"
"That is correct."
Jack spent a few moments staring around the room for any signs of security devices that descend from the ceiling and ruin his day.
"Suddenly, I feel a lot more uneasy about being a surprise guest."
"I'm sure he won't mind... too much... I mean, if he does, it's on your head, but just tell him you're here to help find the Rayon chip."
"Alright." Jack exhaled as the elevator arrived with an upbeat ding.
"Just make sure you say it quickly." Umber pressed the "SL" button on the elevator, and the doors closed shut.
Jack nodded slowly as the elevator began to descend.
"So how do you fit into this picture then?"
"Huh? Me?" Umber was caught off-guard by the question. Jack nodded and encouraged her to continue.
"W-Well... I'm an assistant to Doctor Valter. You know, he put out an ad looking for a new underling, and I'd just graduated from university, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to get myself out there as a scientist."
"Hmm." Jack nodded. "Sounds fun. You look rather young though. What'd you attend university for?"
"I, uh... I went for a double-major in Biology and Technical Engineering. That was uh... Four years for my bachelor's degree and another two years for my master's."
"Ambitious..." Jack mumbled with an almost envious whisper. He hadn't done anything in the six years following high school but work as a freelance agent, finding things people had misplaced. It didn't pay very well, but it wasn't something many other people could do, so he always had a steady flow of clients to work for.
Jack only just noticed that Umber was missing a tooth. Her lower left central incisor.
"How'd you lose the tooth?" he asked. Umber immediately bristled and closed her mouth. She looked over her shoulder at Jack and covered her mouth to speak. "Oh, you know... It just happened." she tittered with a nervous rattle in her voice. She sounded deeply uncomfortable and unhinged, so Jack didn't press the subject.
The elevator doors dinged and Umber let out a quiet, but not quiet enough, "Oh thank God" and quickly left the elevator without a word to Jack. He followed behind her and the two of them sauntered into what was unmistakably the actual laboratory.
It was a large black room. Massive, even. At least forty feet to the ceiling and fifty feet from wall to wall. A massive twenty-foot wide monitor was hung from the wall, with what looked like hundreds of wires and cables connected to the left, right and bottom of it. There were at least five different computer desks positioned randomly throughout the room. Each computer desk had wheels supporting the legs and a computer monitor and tower upon the table itself. Various assorted trinkets adorned each desk, and a wide powerbar served as the source of power for each individual station. In the center of the room, there was a netted cage with what looked like an oversized glowstick inside. It was held in place with several brass affixations which all had wires pouring out of them, and in front of the cage was a control panel with a downright unnecessary amount of knobs, buttons, dials and graphs.
Adorning the walls of the room were tables laid end-to-end, each containing countless trays and petri dishes or pieces of hardware and technological abominations. There also appeared to be a room off to the left, from which only a pure white light permeated, as if it were the doorway the protagonist walked through dramatically in the series finale of a TV show.
"What the heck is this place?" Jack was too awestruck to resist asking the obvious question.
"This is Doctor Valter's personal lab. He does most of his work here, and then whatever's necessary for work he just carries over to the professional laboratory. But he's uh... He doesn't seem to be here right now."
Jack put his jazz hands up. "Did something suspenseful happen to him? Are we about to embark on an adventure to find the whereabouts of our missing Doctor?"
"No, he's probably just in the side room." Umber pointed to the door of white light. "Just wait here for a second... AND DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!"
Umber quickly scurried out of the main room. Yes, leave the visitor unsupervised in the room he's not supposed to be in, Jack thought. He walked over to one of the computers and checked out the trinkets on the desk. This one had tiny plastic dinosaurs all along the desk and three on top of the computer tower. They felt rigid and weren't glued down.
Jack looked up, and realized he'd missed an important part of the lab. It couldn't be seen from the entrance because the caged glowstick was obscuring it, but between the huge TV and the glowstick was a pedestal with a shiny snowball on it. Or it might have just been a crystal soccer ball. Or something equally preposterous.
He walked towards it and made sure he had a good look at it. There was a four foot bronze pedestal coming from the ground that tapered in the middle. Four protrusions from the pedestal held the sparkling white sphere like it was a diviner. Jack was entranced. It didn't seem to be moving, but it still had a wavy feeling to it. Perhaps it was the way light reflected or refracted through it; Jack couldn't remember which one was the correct word.
The more he stared at it, the more Jack realized that the light actually was moving within it. Very subtly, but it was definitely doing that on its own. And soon, he was able to see visions inside of it. They looked like they could've been someone's memories. Or a movie. Perhaps even what someone was seeing right now. He didn't know, but the story he was watching captivated him. His desire to know more grew, and he couldn't resist the allure of a mystery without explanation.
Someone loudly cleared their throat. Jack quickly turned around, and saw Umber standing in the doorway with a tall man. Probably taller than himself; Umber only came up to his chin, but on this man, Umber only came up to his shoulder. He had jet black hair, and looked like he'd been recently struck by a bolt of lightning, sans soot or char. The front frock of his hair stood all upright, and he had a cutting graveness to his eyes. His skin was pale, his face was clean shaven, and his lab coat was immaculate. He didn't have an unpleasant or perturbed expression, his face showed no ill emotion at all, but his dark blue eyes still sent a chill up Jack's spine. They had an exuberant audacity about them, and effortlessly projected authority, intimidation and power.
"Doctor Valter, th-this is Jack. He's the agent y-you wanted to see earlier today. About the chip."
"Ah yes." the man's voice sounded like winter air. "Jack the Finder. My assistant here says you wanted to speak with me."
"I just wanted to meet the man in person, really." Jack shrugged, touring his eyes around the lab. "Nice set-up you have here. Must be a real lap of luxury for whatever you spend your time doing down here."
"Mm." Valter grinned politely. "So what can I do for you then, Jack the Finder?"
Jack clicked his tongue. "I assume Umber has told you about our revised arrangements?"
Valter's eyebrows raised, and his eyes glazed over into an unimpressed sheen. He slowly stared down at Umber, who rubbed her hands nervously.
"Aheheh... He uh... Jack is a little, um, upset that, you know, you didn't meet him in person... and y'know, being an hour late and all, so uh... He... He wants double pay."
Valter's lips curled disapprovingly. "Well, that all depends on whether or not our Jack the Finder is any good at his profession."
"Hm? Would you care to repeat that?" Jack teased.
"You'll have your double pay, but the Rayon chip must be found today. I suggest you depart immediately; you're burning daylight."
Jack chuckled, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the Rayon chip. "There you go again, underestimating me."
Valter was initially insulted that Jack had the chip the entire time, and was just playing up the dramatics leading up to this moment, until he remembered he'd only sent Umber to meet with him about a half hour ago.
"Well well, Jack the Finder. It seems you really are worth your paycheck."
Jack leaned his other hand on the closest nearby object and chuckled immodestly. "Well, when you've been doing it for as... long as I... have..."
He frowned, wondering why Valter and Umber had such agape and mortified expressions. He looked around the room, confused at the sudden cause for alarm, until he noticed his hand was resting upon the crystal ball thing he'd been admiring. He remembered that Valter didn't want him touching anything. Well, it wasn't that big of a deal. He'd just apologize and say he'd forgotten the no touching rule.
The weight of his leaning force shattered the crystal ball.
Oh no.
Valter had enough time to scream "You idiot!" before the room was violated by a sudden, all-encompassing white light.
Jack regained consciousness an unknown amount of time later. He had been flung against the far wall of the room, and his left forearm was clearly broken, midway between his wrist and elbow. The computer desks had been thrown away from the center of the room as well, scattering all the tiny plastic dinosaurs and any other knick knacks perched upon the desks. The petri dishes were clumped a messy pile, and most tables had been upended.
There were also a lot more people in the laboratory now than there used to be.
A strange pair of hands gripped Jack's shirt by the lapels and slammed him against the wall. Valter was staring into his eyes with a seething rage.
"Hey, hey, take it easy... My arm is broken." was all Jack could get out in his still-groggy state.
"I am about to break your EVERYTHING." Valter hissed. "Do you realize what you've done?"
Jack blinked. "Is it the apocalypse? Did I accidentally the entire planet?"
"...No." The word gnashed at Jack's ears like it had claws.
"Oh, good. Only downhill from there."
"That rhombitruncated icosidodecahedron you were leaning against was my latest project! You complete imbecile! You've shattered the IdeaSpace!"
"What's a... Rombulacoid Insidious-hedron? Wait, what's an IdeaSpace?"
"Now is not the time to expand upon either of those concepts. This is the part where I murder you with my bare hands. The police will find your remains inside wild dogs from Parnham to Aberdovy."
"D-Doctor!" Umber stammered, jogging towards the two of them. "Let's uh... Let's not resort to murder... just yet."
Oh sweet, Umber has my back, Jack thought with a smile. She sent a cold stare into his soul that quickly vanquished his optimism.
"Umber! You understand what he's done right?! You understand what he's done to my project!" Valter shouted, bashing Jack against the wall with each emphatic syllable. "This is why I don't like strangers coming into my personal lab! This was your idea, Umber! You-"
He let out a loud, audible gasp. "Oh my god. The ideas!"
Valter let go of Jack and turned around, clutching his head in dismay. Jack's senses slowly returned to him, and laying eyes upon the extra people now within the room, he realized what Valter was really talking about: The people were dressed in very disguishable attire.
The mask of Boba Fett. The suit and tie of the Tenth Doctor. The pipe and trenchcoat of Sherlock Holmes. The cassette player of Starlord. And it wasn't just accessories of icons from the golden age or the silver screen, others yet adorned themselves with semblances of historical figures: The signature cravat of Edgar Allan Poe. The bushy moustache of Nietzsche. The white wig of George Washington.
A deep, worrisome gut feeling gripped Jack. He realized these people were not in costume.