The Impossible Work

Four tentative raps against a chrome door.

“Who is it?”

“I-It’s Tyler Ramsey, sir. It’s my first day here? I was told to – “

The shimmering metal slid downward into the floor.

“Yeah, yeah, I know who you are. Come on in, Tyler.”

The voice was gruff, and his words were clipped. Tyler didn’t think it was an inviting voice at all, but he followed his command regardless.

“Alright then, Tyler. Let’s see… your first day at the institute, huh? How’re you feeling?”

Tyler could feel the cold sweat running down the back of his neck. He replied, “I-I’m doing good, sir.”

Tyler looked around the room whilst the gruff-voiced man clacked away at a keyboard, eyes locked to a holoscreen. The office was like the rest of the facility that Tyler had seen, an array of cutting-edge electronics dressed in a strange mix of polished metal and a tacky plastic-rubber combination, like an old, cheap diner. There was a state-of-the-art computer built into the steel desk, reliable luminescent bulbs protruding from the ceiling, and the door itself was of a modern, maximum-security design. But the floor was a charcoal grey, firm rubber blotched with stains, and the walls were made of a sickly, mustard yellow plastic that hurt the eyes when staring at it for too long. As Tyler shifted nervously from one foot to the other, he could hear the sticky film of the rubber floor ripping from the soles of his mag-boots.

The man behind the desk hit a final key with extra gusto, he then deftly found a lighter and pack of cigarettes from the clutter of his desk. Once a drooping cigarette hung from between his lips, he leant back into his comfortable, ergonomic chair. He wore the same uniform as Tyler, a pressurized, full-body suit made of rubber and metal, with yellow cables that curled from the back to the chest. Tyler felt very cumbersome in his armoured uniform, but the man sitting at the desk seemed to wear it like a second skin. He scratched at a poorly kept salt-and-pepper beard as he gave Tyler a scrutinizing glare. A few agonizing seconds passed, the man then took a drag and breathed a long plume of ash grey smoke.

“There’s two things you need to know, straight off the bat,” he declared.

Tyler straightened his back and nodded, eagerly awaiting instruction.

“First things first, the name’s Jeremiah. I’m the Head of Care here at this institute, but you probably knew that already.”

Tyler nodded.

“Second thing, you’ve put your suit on incorrectly. The joint seals aren’t fixed properly. If you’d gone out into the pens like that, you’d be dead by the end of your first shift.”

Tyler flushed red with embarrassment. “Oh, they are? I-I’m so sorry sir, I’ll fix this right away…”

Tyler fumbled clumsily with the soft rubber joints of his suit. He could see the error; the fastening clips had not been pulled tight enough. As he struggled with the clips, Jeremiah pushed out of his chair and strode over to Tyler. His footfalls sounded heavy against the sticky floor.

“Here, let me help you out,” Jeremiah said.

“Oh, t-thank you, sir.”

“Please, none of this ‘sir’ crap. Just call me Jeremiah, or Jay, either’s good.”

“Okay…”

The two of them proceeded to reaffix Tyler’s suit. Jeremiah worked swiftly against the rubber seals.

“How old are you, Tyler?”

“Seventeen, si- Jeremiah,” he replied.

“Jesus… there wasn’t any other industry you wanted to go into? Freighting? Asteroid extraction?

To say Tyler was troubled by Jeremiah’s response would be putting it softly. Tyler swallowed hard, but decided honesty would be the best way to start with his new boss.

“Xenodimensional biology has always been a fascination to me. So, as soon as I finished school, there was no other choice for me really.”

“That so…”

The last joint seal was fastened correctly, and Jeremiah stepped back to admire their work.

“There, much better,” he said. Jeremiah then rounded his desk but remained standing. He inhaled another gout of smoke before extinguishing his cigarette in a black-stained, plastic ash tray. He leant over his deck and clacked at a few keys, he then held one down and leant a little closer to the holoscreen. There was a brief electric tone, then a sharp beep.

“Hey, Casey. How’re you doing?”

A voice responded from the computer, a thin electric distortion over her words. She replied, “Hey, Jay! Yeah, everything’s good. What do you need?”

“I’ve got the new kid here, Tyler. Just thinking of who we could partner him with today. Is Owen free?”

A small pause from the computer, then, “No, that’s no good. Owen started his holiday today.”

Jeremiah clicked his tongue, “Of all the days! Alright, Priya then?”

“No good either. She’s still stuck in that quantum refraction. The earliest we can maybe get her out is early next week.”  

“What about that new girl? You know, the one who started a month ago. Abbey? Or Abigale, was it?”

“Ashley, you mean.”

“Yes, Ashley! Is she free?”      

“She died last week Jay, remember? Spent too long in the Cube’s pen, ended up like a big bolognese spread all over the walls.”

Jeremiah pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed with frustration, “Yeah, yeah, I remember now. Goddammit… alright, thanks anyway, Casey.”

“Yeah, stay safe.”

A second bleep, then Jeremiah released his finger from the key. He straightened his back and sighed again. Tyler has been standing perfectly still, letting the little horrors of that conversation wash over him entirely. He was suddenly beginning to question his childhood enthusiasm for the work. Jeremiah put his hands on his hips and looked over at Tyler.

“Well, looks like you’re with me today, kid. There’re plenty of new hires, but we never seem to have the staff!”

Tyler remained silent.

“…Owen would have laughed at that, it’s fine, you’ll adjust to our humour eventually. Come on we’d better get a shift on; it’s about feeding time. Helmets up.”

Jeremiah pressed a button on his suit’s wide collar. A shimmering cylinder of orange-red glass formed itself around his head. Tyler repeated the process, then followed at his boss’s heels.  

***

Down halls of polished silver and drab plastic they marched, Jeremiah in the lead, Tyler following just behind him. The young lad felt as if his nerves would consume him entirely, but once they entered the holding pens proper, his anxieties melted away and transformed into an electric curiosity. A wide, brightly lit hallway lead into numerous pens made of glass and steel. Behind those energy-laced windows were entities beyond Tyler’s wildest imaginings, things he had only read about in scant news reports and scientific journals. Nevertheless, he had been fascinated with such creatures for as long as he could remember. For the pens that could be entered, there was an airlock system to prevent escape or contamination. Despite the threat of such careful security, nothing could dampen Tyler’s excitement as he entered his first pen.

The room was like a walk-in freezer. Frost clung to every surface, and a low mist hung around their feet. Hovering in the air were three hyperbolic dodecahedrons, each was the size of a human head, and their bodies were inky black and reflective. There were no features, no obvious limbs or methods of locomotion, but they bobbed through the air like bubbles caught in a gentle breeze. They all seemed passive in demeanour.

“Thought I’d start you off easy. These little guys are harmless really.”

Tyler’s eyes and smile were wide under his helmet.

“They’re wonderful… and we feed them with these?”

Tyler gestured with the long nozzle and canister he had picked up before entering the pen. They were attached to each other via a snaking pipe, and within the canister there was a sound like the shifting of sand.

“Yeah, that’s it. Just aim the nozzle away and squeeze the trigger.”

Tyler did so, and a metallic grey mist shot from the nozzle. The barbed creatures pivoted quickly into the mist, absorbing the substance through unseen means.

“They eat minerals you see, but only when it’s ground into a dust like this. They love iron, can’t get enough of the stuff, greedy little fellas.”

Tyler painted the air with metallic plumes, and the creatures danced and feasted in their own esoteric way. Tyler’s smile grew wider still.

***

Hours of hard work passed Tyler bye. Whilst sometimes slow and a little clumsy, his enthusiasm carried him through the tenser encounters with the xenodimensional beings. The ‘Conkers’ as Jeremiah called them were at the bottom of the institutes pecking order of lethal guests. As the day rolled on under the artificial lights, the entities grew stranger, more anathematic to what Tyler considered to be the natural way of life. In a pen filled with simple plastic blocks, a swarm of two-dimensional creatures, each the shape of a spider’s web, skittered across every surface. They were beautiful to look at, each the blue green of a tropical sea. But as Tyler passed by the pen they would swarm towards him, blotting the window entirely in a squirming turquoise shade.

“Highly toxic, those things,” Jeremiah had said, “If just one touches you, you’ve got a few hours before your blood crystalizes, and your insides turn hard as stone. So, like most things here, we’ve got to do things remotely.”

He had then pushed a blue button on the adjoining wall. Through an electrified chute in the ceiling, the corpse of a pig fell with a heavy slap. Tyler wished to forget what he saw after that.

They passed through a multitude of oddities that filled Tyler with equal parts delight and terror. All the while, Jeremiah gave his own simplified understanding of the creatures under their care.

“See this big worm here? Sometimes we have to get into the pen to clean, but never let it touch you. You’ll start remembering it across your whole life, a big fat maggot squatting in your memories. A lifetime parasite, they call it, catalyses your aging process drastically. Nasty things.”

“Now, I know this just looks like a patch of mist and a bunch of neon lights. No, listen, I know it’s speaking English, but it isn’t really. Think of it like a big parrot… yes, I know it says things it shouldn’t know about you, but it’s all a big trick really. Come on, let’s move on…”

“There it is, the famous Cube. We don’t even feed this one. No one’s seen it eat anything in five decades. But still, be careful if you’re ever doing maintenance in there. Don’t want to end up like poor Abbey.”      

By the end of his first shift, the inside of Tyler’s helmet stunk with sweat. He was exhausted, hungry, and felt something like pins and needles pressing into his brain; he assumed the latter was some harmless quirk of working with such alien creatures. He hoped as much, anyway. But they had come to the final pen at last. Tyler peered through the window to get a good look at the hungry resident within.

The creature was large, roughly five feet in length and quadrupedal. It reminded Tyler of a reptile, but one that had crawled out from a semi-lucid nightmare. The moss green of its body was covered in scales the shape of penrose triangles, making it difficult to behold for more than a few seconds. It possessed a head, but a clear face could not be seen as it was in the shape of an impossible trident; a blivet-shaped snout that snuffled at the steel flooring of its pen. But as the two reached the window, it stopped and slowly turned its head upwards at them. It was stranger still as the longer Tyler tried to observe it, its body behaved unusually. As light refracts and flares when observed in certain ways, so did the body of the blivet beast. It made Tyler queasy to see the ersatz flesh of the creature shift like a lens flare before his eyes.

“And what do you call this one?” Tyler inquired.

Jeremiah leant against the window with one arm. He turned to Tyler, yawning as he said, “Don’t know yet. Big fella is new, a fresh catch from the fissure by Proxima-Six. Only arrived a day ago, we don’t really – “

Tyler’s eyes grew wider still as the blivet beast lunged towards to glass. But rather than impacting against the wall of its cage, its snout passed harmlessly though the glass and was dyed electric purple in colour. In that brief moment, Jeremiah was unaware that impossible jaws were thrusting towards his hand against the glass. Adrenaline pumped through young Tyler. He unclipped a portable, standard-issue electro-prod on his suit’s belt, whilst in the same motion lunging for Jermiah’s arm and ripping him away from the window. The violet maw burst from the glass, humming a discordant tone as its body defied their three-dimensional reality. Tyler plunged the electro-prod into the beast’s snout, releasing a burst of yellow electricity. The creature recoiled back into its pen, reluctantly padding away from the window. 

“Jesus christ!” Jeremiah cried. He quickly moved to a control panel beside the pen window. He opened a semi-opaque casing and flicked a switch. A hum could be heard behind the walls of the pen as security systems came to life. The blivet beast lunged at the glass again but was rebuffed by an electric charge now coursing through the inner window. Tyler and Jeremiah stood there, panting in their suits, and staring at the sulking caged creature.

“A-a-are you alright, sir?” Tyler stammered.

Jeremiah turned, staring at the young apprentice with wide eyes. He replied, “Yeah, I’m good… I’m good…”

They both took a few steps back and caught their breathes. Slowly but surely the adrenaline drained from their bodies.

“Sorry about that,” Jeremiah said, “Some idiot flipped the security switch the wrong way. Good thing we found out, that thing could have been prowling about anywhere…”

“Yeah,” Tyler responded. There were few words that came to his mind. It was his first day on the job, and already he felt his own end was close at hand, as if life and death was separated only by a fragile pane of glass. As his anxieties churned inside of him, Jeremiah clasped a hand onto his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile.

“You know what, kid? I think you’ll do just fine here.”

Tyler did not feel reassured.