Chapter 7i^3
401 Words
Chapter 7i^3
Yanni was staring at the whiteboard.
He had piled all of the furniture in the next room. His office/lab was empty, except the whiteboard, his notes and the laser. He was wrapped in the blanket, the same one he had before all this madness. He was wearing the glasses on his head.
He was holding the globe in his hand. His blood had left a stain on it.
Two days.
That’s all he had, two days, and then his birthday. Thirty f*****g years old. End of the line. Go back to teaching.
People had died for this. Mr. Andreas, and the old woman, M-something she was called. Could be more. Had he any reason to doubt a straight confession from an android?
He could go to the police, tell them anything. He would go straight away.
As soon as he figured out that damn apodeixis.
Didn’t matter if they locked him up, as long as he could make his contribution to science before that.
He held the globe in his hands, leaned his head down and wept.
“Please, come back. Please-please-please. You are my muse and I let you go. I’m such a vlakas. Please come back. Please.”
Two days.
He turned the laser on. Took the glasses off.
Increased the intensity.
Maybe he could see something in the light just before it burned his retinas. He stood up and looked at the ceiling, where the laser beam ended. He stretched his neck and tried to see the blinding blue dot better. He swirled around the room looking up, losing his step and regaining balance, like a weird version of Zorbas dancing.
The light was too much. He covered his eyes and weeped on the floor.
A soft female hand caressed his filthy hair.
He looked up but saw only blue. His eyes focused on a figure above him but could only see the intense afterimages.
“Is it you?”
“Shh. Close your eyes. You will recover in time,” Ourania said.
“You heard me! I prayed to the globe and you heard me!”
Ourania took a weirded-out expression on her face. “I have no direct link to the globe. I just came back to check on you.”
Yanni blindly reached around the floor with his hands and found the globe. He squeezed it in his hand as if it were an instrument of power and said firmly, “Stay here and help me find the apodeixis.”
His eyes strained to focus on the silhouette in front of him.
Ourania smiled. “As you wish.”
- Writer
