Draftbox - TBL (Taco)

The air felt cold, frigid, perhaps it was below freezing, there was no real way to tell. Yet here he stood, with his boots in the sand, an infinitely eternal stretch of dunes that seemed to go on forever in all directions. A place that is known for it’s hellish, scorching climate and it’s abundance of peculiar fauna. Yet come nightfall there was not a creature in sight, everything hiding from the moonlight. It felt like a different world.

With every step he took more and more sand poured into his boots, no matter what he did, there was no preventing it. "It has a mind of its own" he would joke with his colleagues at the nearest outpost, "and when the wind picks up" he would say, "you’re in for one heck of a time!". At this stage he had learned to accept it, he had long since stopped trying to brush it off his clothes.

The GOC had no clothing specifically made for a desert like this one in it’s inventory, at least not for him. He was under-equipped, under-paid, and underwhelmed, he did not mind however. A job was a job, and this one was his. Then again, with a name like Desert Anomaly 16-d/d, it was no wonder he was sent to seek it out alone. He had heard of some of the other anomalies his fellow agents were assigned to track down and he couldn’t blame the GOC for using manpower elsewhere.

It amazed him to think that at one point every single one of the trillions of grains of sand made up part of a solid rock like the one beside him, a solitary boulder in the depths of the desert. In the bowels of what remains of the colossal mountains he was told used to dominate the horizon. Mountains ground down into fine grains over the ages.

This place gave him too much time alone with his thoughts, and he had a feeling it wasn’t good for him. He checked his compass to ensure the path he was traveling was the right one, then he went back to trudging along.

He was not from this place, he was an alien, an outsider, a tourist. He could tell, even in the absence of any other humans, he was not welcome here, yet he came anyways.

The steady tick of his Geiger Counter was constantly picking up the unusually high background radiation, singing a perfect cadence for his footsteps. He liked the tick of the Geiger Counter, it was… comforting, it kept him in good spirits. He had heard stories of people before him sent to search for 16-d/d who went insane looking for a spot where the Geiger Counter would begin to speedily tick off, people who would become ecstatic at even the slightest tick, people who would curl up into a ball and cry like a spastic upon even the slightest mention of this damned place. They left the desert, but the desert never left them. He made sure that he would not succumb to the same fate, he would not waste his life on a single object. However, just like them, he was looking for the Geiger Counter to tick off. He was looking for a sound.

“Looking for a sound”, he thought.
“That’s an oxymoron, no, wait, that’s not the term, it’s a - what do you call it? A - uhm, forget it.”
“Keep thinking like that and you’ll go crazy…” a little voice in his head told him.
He stopped to think about it, but agreed with the voice.
He kept on walking.

Suddenly BRRRRDDTT
His Geiger Counter sounded off like the cracks of a firework on the Fourth of July.

He couldn’t see anything, he could hear it however, that’s for sure, a crackle of static with several beeps alongside it. As he began to brush away the sand a dull metallic shine bounced off where his flashlight was facing. Digging it up he was a bit surprised. It was most definitely what he was looking for, but it looked like a, well, it didn’t really look like anything at all, far from what he expected it to look like. He decided that it looked like a rock, not the most professional description, but then who said he was a professional?

After years of exhaustedly looking through virtually every GOC filing cabinet in the world and connecting the dots he had at last isolated the location of it in an area small enough for him to begin his search on the ground. He was not the first to do so, his superiors knew that, he knew that, but his superiors told him they were hopeful he could keep his sanity on such a lengthy search.

Ten years, ten whole years in this coalition, oh where was it that the time went? Where was it that held all the days gone by?

Each day was moving sluggishly by, but at the same time he felt as though it had happened so recently. Could he even remember the last time a day stood out to him since he had begun working on 16-d/d?

Perhaps when I'm laid to rest I will finally realize how much time has truly elapsed, perhaps then I will look back and see how much I will have done.

In an instant, as if by command, he woke from the daydreams consuming his mind. Where was he going? Ah, that’s right, he was to return on the route he took.

He quietly asked himself why he heard a sort of sound, a familiar one, yet not one he could wrap his head around. Often he would hear things, sounds, screams that others would not hear. As a child he had always wondered why it was. Perhaps it was exceptionally good hearing abilities, perhaps he made the sounds himself to keep his comfort, he had always been unfond of silence, the lack of noise put him on edge.

Or perhaps it was all in his head… Still, he never could tell.

Why was it that he spoke so quietly to himself out here. There was no one to hear him out here, no one to judge him other than himself.

Taking a glance at his Geiger Counter, the little meter on it was pushing earnestly up towards the higher numbers.

He suddenly realized he was still holding the damnable rock, throwing down his pack he rifled through it hastily searching for the lead-lined container given to him for 16-d/d

As he did he wondered why lead was so heavy, he wondered why it was called lead, he wondered why his superiors had said not to lick it, his mind jumping back and forth, all the while he wondered why he wondered about these things…

The rapid clicking of the Geiger Counter began to increase in volume, ticking violently loud in his ears, it began to scream out in pain. Screaming in agony at him to close the container. He felt as though his ears would bleed.

There was no time for wondering in these types of situations, no, no time to wonder right now

He slammed the top half of the container down and latched it to a close. A perfect fit.

The wail of the Geiger Counter ceased, it returned to the clicks following the typical amount of background radiation detected, the clicks he was so accustomed with, the clicks that were comforting- well, the clicks that used to be. He did not like the Geiger Counter when it screamed, he is less fond of it now, knowing how it shrieks in pain. However he was comforted to know that it was probably his Geiger Counter that made the noise, that screamed, probably.

On his lengthy return to the outpost he thought about how similar the scream was to the wail of his colleague as he was being beaten on the ground, as his ribs shattered into millions of tiny fragments, as his throat was stomped on, viscera flying out his mouth, as he began to bleed to death from the inside, slowly… painfully…. He shuddered at the memory and was glad he was now assigned to a less dangerous anomaly. Albeit a less interesting one.

A week to arrive, a week to return, and two weeks in between spent searching. All the while alone with only his thoughts to comfort him. He had never been fond of starting conversations, always the quieter kid. When he did converse it always led to him making a fool of himself, always ending with fingers pointed right at him. He hated it, yet right now, he wished more than anything to return to those days.

He wished he had something to distract him from himself, the sun having come up rather recently in his view were many things that he would rather think about, yet every time he tried to observe a creature or aspect of the landscape his thoughts came back to him, full circle.

It was like his brain wanted him to think about the very thing he himself wanted to steer clear from. Like they were two separate people, two separate people who could seldom come to an agreement as they thought they understood each other. Each side learning more about each other and subsequently throwing curveballs that became harder and harder to hit.

It was a war of attrition, yet they each saw it as a chore. An end was inconclusive. But neither realized this, they were both too busy chasing the light at the end of the tunnel to take a moment and look sideways.

He was used to pushing these things to the back of his mind, stalling until they returned, then rinse and repeat. Thoughts like these were not welcome here, yet they came anyways, what irony.

He had given up on trying to forget, it never worked. He would will himself to expect the worst and hope for the best. An optimistic pessimist.

Another oxymoron, no, wait, that's not the term,

It's a - what do you call it?

It's a - uhm.

It's a -

You know what. Forget it…