The Scanning Read online

The Scanning

  A short story by N. Z. Kraime

  ©2013

  Copyright © 2013 by N. Z. Kraime

  ISBN

  978-960-93-5005-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE SCANNING. Copyright © 2013 by N. Z. Kraime. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  The following fonts were used on the book's cover, taken from the Open Font Library:

  Pfennig by Daniel Johnson

  Crimson by Sebastian Kosch

  Cover design by Tatiana Angelidou

  Translation from the original Greek text was done by Eirini Haritou

  For more, please visit the author’s Official Story Hub: Kosmosyria.gr

  For Tatiana, whose dream inspired this story.

  The Scanning

  “The Scanning. Samna’s never-ending nightmare for the last thirty thousand years. It was one of the first things to be depicted on primitive stone carvings. Which means that this phenomenon is even older than the first kinds of writing.

  Something that has to do with our cells and gamma radiation. This is the best scientific and official explanation that scientists came up with, after extensive research and studies over thousands of years. When the Scanning is approaching, you have to stop whatever you're doing. You have to close your eyes, cover your body with whatever you can find and lower the metabolism of your body as much as possible. Sometimes you feel the Scanning hitting you in the stomach. Sometimes in the legs. When you start to feel it in your entire body, it is a bad sign. You must never let it find you.

  There is always death after the Scanning's end. When you hear the Scanning approaching, you know that someone is about to die and you can only pray that it won't be you. Considering that the Scanning comes about every day at noon, when our star, Emias, is at its highest point in the sky and more intense than the rest of the day, one could understand how self-deprecating the feeling of wishing for someone else to die in your place is.

  I have located the source of the signal that the Scanning emits. It is strange, but it is coming from an ordinary hotel, which has been open for the past forty four years. I am standing right outside the door of the hotel's room, where the signal's source is located. I will leave my sonographer here, outside the door of the room. If you find it, then I've never returned. In that case, do not enter the room. Find the encrypted coordinates inside the sonographer's memory to locate my laboratory. Try finding a scientist who is not scared of investigating the Scanning. You might be able to find a way to stop it. I do not know what awaits for me behind this door. Goodbye.”

  Teftkra pressed the record button again to stop the recording. She bent down wearily to put her sonographer on the floor, next to the door of room 404. She reached forward with a tired hand and pushed the door which, to her surprise, opened up quite easily.

  “What the blazes is going on and how is it possible that no one else has ever paid any heed up till now?” she wondered, taking a look around her.

  The hotel staff, the guests, everyone were going normally about their business as if nothing was amiss. Then Teftkra suddenly realized that, while she was recording her message, everyone in those crowded corridors seemed to be ignoring her. She noticed, however, that no one was passing down the aisle where she was, nor did any of the rooms on her corridor seemed to be occupied.

  “I'll go crazy! I have to find out!” she said to herself and pushed the door wide open.

  Although she was expecting to see a frightful sight that would make her freeze in fear, what she saw in front of her, as she took the first step into the room, was just a normal hotel room. With the exception of the beds being bare, without even any mattresses, there was nothing unusual about the place. Teftkra, though, was not reassured in the least. She walked on tiptoe, to the center of the room. She strained her ears, ready for action at the slightest noise, wishing she had brought along something to defend herself, even a regular pistol.

  She felt her hands too tired to defend herself in a hand-to-hand fight, should the need arise. At the age of forty-seven, she had spent thirty two years of her life studying and researching the Scanning. It was the greatest obsession of her life, her ultimate pet conspiracy theory. And when, one day, she discovered the source of the signal, she got up from her desk and suddenly realized that she was too old.

  She found it hard to decide whether it was worth it, having spent her entire youth on a crazy research. Had she never discovered the source of the Scanning, she might have been bitterly disappointed about the way she had lived her life. As it was, she had done the unthinkable. Here she was standing, in an forgotten hotel room, with all evidence leading to the center of that room and with her anticipation growing stronger by the minute and making her shudder a bit.

  “It can't be a miscalculation of my locator, it's too precise for such kind of mistakes. The signal is coming from the center of this room!” she whispered to herself.

  As is always the case in such circumstances, her intuition was correct. She had not realized this but, while she was walking towards the center of the room, she had passed through the opening of a wide, invisible capsule. And one could never possibly fathom what was inside that capsule.

  She remained still for a few seconds. For a moment she thought she sensed a muscular movement that was not her own. In absolute stillness, a movement was heard again. It was then that Teftkra absolutely regretted not having a gun with her. Her muscles began to twitch, her eyes rapidly examining every corner of the room.

  “Do not be upset, my child”, a heavy, calm and sonorous voice, like an old man's voice, startled her, coming from right next to her.

  Out of sheer fright, Teftkra hit her head on the invisible wall of the capsule and fell on the floor, unconscious. A few moments later, when she had sufficiently recovered, battling with some back pain, she hurriedly stood up. She tried to make up her mind. Was the voice she heard a figment of her imagination, born out of nervous apprehension or was someone actually there with her?

  “Do not believe what you see and do not fear what you cannot see” said the voice, carrying the impression of wisdom in it. The creature speaking was not your usual bloodthirsty monster, mined from some random horror story. For all Teftkra knew, it could be a wise old man, a monk from the Sacred Valley outside the city. And, although the whole thing had scared her out of her wits, Teftkra felt something warm growing inside her heart upon hearing the voice.

  “I'm not scared” she immediately replied in a calm voice. “Who are you?”

  Right before her eyes appeared the capsule that covered most of the room. It appeared so quickly, as if it fell off the sky, without making the slightest noise.

  “How come I cannot see you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Are you really prepared to gaze upon my image?” asked the voice.

  “No” the woman answered sincerely. “But you yourself told me not to believe what I see and not to be afraid of what I cannot see. What I saw didn’t scare me. I understand that you're a very intelligent being, probably a lot more than me or anyone else who lives on Samna.”

  “Our civilizations differ as much as the white holes of the green galaxy differ from the conflicting higher quantum sets in a deductible lesser barytonium” said the being and continued with his train of thought; “And yet, your perception of existence and creation is extremely well-formulated.”

  Teftkra strained her dark green eye
s and raised her eyebrows, confused and impressed at the same time.

  “Look, I have no idea what the blazes you just said, but show yourself, please. I am the one that detected your source signal. I found you. I have won. So, appear now.”

  To Teftkra’s satisfaction, the being allowed her to see it. The woman had actually succeeded, in comparison to many others who had tried in the past to identify the source of the Scanning, all of whom had failed. Right before her eager eyes, the creature's body slowly began to appear. Four red little atrophied legs appeared onto the thick carpet of the room. She could tell that they were unused for a long time. There was something strange about those legs. One seemed a little too long, one was short and fat, the other two looked more like ruined and mutated generic limbs. She could not figure out what was going on.

  Those legs were tied to a flabby, fat, round body that slowly appeared from the bottom up. Shortly before the neck appeared,