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# The Cold Room

By
Lewis A. Sellers

> The Box that Krenshaw opened was surprisingly small, considering it took four of the installation's security guards to lug it there into the complex's deepest subterranean lab. Across the room Pierceson cleared off another table and set up a small electromagnetic scanning unit. Dust stirred lazily in the dim emergency lighting.

> "Lord, Krenshaw, how about turning on the damned heat?" That was the customary greeting of the Lieutenant as he stumbled into the room, puffing thick white clouds that tangled in his hair as he spoke. Brash crimson lines marked his otherwise handsome face. He was, with a considerable strain, lifting several crates out of the service elevator. Both the Lieutenant and his transport had descended to the cold silent room without drawing must interest all from the people brooding in its unnatural half darkness.

> Krenshaw was pouring her attention into the Box -- onto what lay therein, bathing her brilliant gleaming eyes with a faint ruddy glaze. She managed, however, a brief remark, mumbled, something to the effect of you're closer, which sent the walking shadow called the Lieutenant into a seething silent rage.

> After a while of fumbling around with the erratically flickering hall fluorescents, he gave up and stormed blindly down the dark maintenance tunnel. The bloody little pinpoints of light from his assault weapon's laser-sight stabbed into the smothering darkness. He tripped only a few times. And managed -- barely -- to restrain from empty an almost full clip into a pressure suit someone had left leaning precariously against a wall. Just barely. Actually, at that moment, he had a mind to turn around and blow the hell out of it just because that's the way he felt.

> Eventually, after reaching the sub-tunnel housing, he managed to convince the computer system to direct power to the lower level heat exchangers (something it was inexplicably loathe to do).

> Several kilometers above, the churning methane seas of Titan swirled in the rising warmth drifting off of the buried nuclear power plant.

> The Lieutenant meanwhile, began to slowly paw his way back towards the main lower level lab where the others would be busy yet again setting up unnamable pieces of equipment. He felt very tired, and it had been so very long since he had had half a chance, or the desire to, to eat. The way his stomach was twisting, he felt sure it much be eating its way to his brain for spites sake. He knew it. It would get worse though he murmured, and just grinned at the thought cause he knew it was true. Actually, there was even a bit of comfort in having some idea of what the future held -- for a change.

> As he made his way wearily into the room, a layer of dust slowly fell, lightly covering his armor. "Damn," he muttered while all their eyes flickered momentarily at the ceiling, The few puffs of warmth that blew from nearby vents stopped their flowing.

> Krenshaw frowned and gave a flippant gesture. "After five years I've gotten use to this frigging cold anyway." She smiled poutingly at the Lieutenant with narrow dancing eyes. "Oh well."

> "Damn heat seekers," he mumbled in his breath, and stared down at the floor, LastUpdateding it in disgust. "Damn -- anyone got a lighter?"

> Mostly ignoring him, the others' attention belonged to the monolithic nightmare orb that rolled round and round, bloody veins of fire flaring at random across it's dimly cloaked surface. In the middle of the table, above an empty box, it seemed to spin wildly. But in the middle of that table it also stayed, resolute. The dust was undisturbed by it's libations.

> The Lieutenant stared over at Krenshaw with a devilishly mocking grin. "So, miss Krenshaw, oh lord of all things -- have you figured out what the hell that thing is yet?"

> Another layer of dust settled across the room.

> "Shit." The Lieutenant spun towards the elevator leveling his weapon hard at it. Nothing moved. The doors stood silent. "Hurry up will ya? Damn." Weapon shouldered, he moved the last of the crates into the lab and processed to rip out the elevator's internal drive circuits. It settled into the concrete padding like a dying animal. The interior lights sputtered out.

> "Actually," Pierceson mumbled, "No, we haven't. Not exactly. I probed it myself with the electron microscope and got nothing. I mean that literally. The electrons just didn't bounce back. It was as if the orb was absorbing them all. Same with the electromagnetic scan, all wavelengths from the long radio to gamma are simply soaked up -- trapped I suppose."

> "So it's a black hole?" the Lieutenant puzzled.

> "No," he smiled. "Of course not -- well, I admit it's more or less black and has an adequate spheroidal shape, but it exhibits no gravimetric abnormalities. In fact, it seems to ignore any sense of gravity at all together. I suppose you could consider that abnormal in of itself however." He mussed in a tight fascinated gaze. "It hovers there without any care in the worlds."

> Whirling round and round as they did on the orb, the chaotic veins of continuously waking red light washed the three in blood. "Uh, wait…" interjected the shadowy Lieutenant with sudden realization. "Now, let me get this straight, I thought you said it absorbed all light? Then it shouldn't be glowing like that should it?"

> As if in response the pattern faded. The orb was now devoid of all distinction.

> "What the…" the Lieutenant back up a few steps and hugged his assault weapon nervously.

> "Strange," remarked Pierceson. "Personally I was theorizing it was some kind of a phenomena like Cerenkov radiation -- not emitted so much as a side product of some effect the orb was having on the environment around it. Curious event. Maybe I should get closer and try to commune with it. It seems responsive enough to suggestion." He grinned slightly.

> "Yea, right. And I bet it eats your face," the Lieutenant smirked with that faint hollow kind of laughter that masks a silent scream. Then he began pacing. "Damn it. I need answers people. Now! They'll get down here soon, whoever's left alive after fighting among themselves. And I don't think I much matter if it's our side or the Titanians who get here first."

> "Here," Krenshaw said, staring at the Lieutenant, perhaps now with a slight trace of empathy. "I'll do the scans myself. Move out of the way Pierceson. Lieutenant, think you could help me move this equipment over to the orb?" She smiled mockingly. "Hmmm?"

> Krenshaw studied the orb intensely. Dust fell about the room, falling sometimes through and sometimes quickly over the orb. This annoyed all but Pierceson to no end. He was pouring over exhaustive records, condensed into the computer system's vast holographic memory. References to some of the most obscure physical phenomena scrolled before his eyes, both theoretical and observed. [insert.] Still, there was nothing resembling what stirred ominously before him. He was reaching an uncharacteristic point of near hysterical frustration as hour after hour died uneventfully.

> "Jesus Christ! I don't understand. I just don't understand." He broke, both the equipment around him and somewhere deep in his mind. The pieces littered the dust strewn floor.

> "You shouldn't exist!"

> In response, the hovering nightmare ceased to be.

> The Lieutenant fell hard against a table, crashing it against the wall. He muttered almost inaudible even to himself. "Oh lord, oh dear sweet lord--"

> Blindly, Krenshaw fell back, grabbed at his firm, reassuring body.

> All Pierceson could do was drop to the cold hard ground, white confusion streaming from his open mouth. He cried out. "Impossible! I will not believe in you. I will not! -- I'm …" His wide eyes dropped their gaze to the floor. "I'm hallucinating. That's it," he breathed with mad comfort, all the tension in his body flowing out to fill the room. "Yes, that's it. All a dream, a horrible -- impossible dream." He however, knew this was not so. Or, if it was, it would make no difference. There were many questions in his mind, long, complex, exhaustively detailing, but all he could crackle in the depths of his cold drying throat was the most simple, and consequentially, the hardest to answer.

> "Why? Answered the darkness that grew suddenly, slowly into a shadowy orb. They stared with hollow mesmerized eyes. It continued, now full formed.

> "You seek to understand, but once understanding you grow stagnant, sedentary and dream no more. My children, you exist not to die in the dull darkness of your mind, alone. I hold you far to high among things to ever allow such to happen… most precious ones.

> Go beyond yourself, in blind terror and profound agony, leave your little valleys, into the depths of this universal darkness fly! -- for no reason you understand, save it sates some part of you unsaitible. For you feel comfortable a little while, a momentary place to stand."

> It paused, luminescent, bathing the room in its own blood.

> "Do you understand now?"

> None of the three gave external evidence they comprehended at all anymore. They merely were, one mind, thinking the one thought, both a question and an answer. The dust settled on the floor, covering their footsteps and instruments from view.

> And again it ceased to be, leaving the room with a warmer feeling for those dwelling there than it had sensed before.

Copyright © 1992, Lewis A. Sellers. All Rights Reserved.
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