Tuesday's Ten Minute Tale - the result!

[martinlivings]

Okay, here we go. Thanks to battersblog for "dust", chrisbarnes for "Trans-Siberian Railway", and rabbit1080 for "submarine". I'd have loved to go with benpeek's suggestion of an autobiography, but considering I've never been on the Trans-Siberian OR in a submarine, that makes it difficult. It IS first person, though, so that's kind of autobiographical, right? Right?

BTW, it's really lame today, I'm sorry. I wasn't inspired. I'm tired. Poop. :(


"Done and Dusted"
(c) Martin Livings 22-7-2008

I made it as far as Irkutsk, the Trans-Siberian carrying me there from Moscow over the course of three days, before the people on the train forcibly ejected me. Now I sit on the shores of the Angara, the snow slowly burying me. This frozen place will be my grave. And hopefully my work will die with me.

The experiment was with sub-atomic bonds. More accurately, how to break them. Russia was desperate to reclaim some semblance of its pre-Cold-War military status, and hired my team to develop a disintegrator ray. It sounds like something out of science fiction, aim it at an enemy tank or submarine and watch it disappear, but actually it's quite simple. The bonds between sub-atomic particles are very strong, but only over a short distance. My device used magnetic resonance to increase the vibration of the particles, which in turn encouraged them to move further apart. At a certain point, the bonds started to break, but without the explosive detonation of fission. Instead, they simply gave up the ghost, and the object would crumble into dust.

We tried it on inanimate objects, and it worked perfectly. Then we moved up to organic material. And from there, of course, we disintegrated monkeys.

That was a mistake.

The resonances were the problem, you see. It seemed that, with living tissue, the resonances were too similar to one another. They formed harmonics, ones that could easily spread. When we disintegrated our first monkey, it set off a chain reaction. Within a week, all of our test animals were gone, turned to powder.

Then a lab assistant started to crumble.

We put the whole compound into quarantine, but it was too late. It had jumped the fence, and people were dying, disintegrating. Turning to dust. It didn't seem to be affecting me, so I ran, like so many others, fled the city on the train, tried to get as far away as I could.

On the third day, I awoke to find my bed covered in a fine powder. My right hand was missing. And my nose.

When the other passengers saw me, they threw me from the train to save themselves. I can't blame them, but I suspect it's too late. They'll probably never make it to Vladivostok. It would be best if they don't. It's being spread by the panic.

Mother Russia, turned to dust. And then, perhaps, the world.

Comments

[chrisbarnes.livejournal.com]

Not lame at all - it's a version of the apocalypse I've never seen before. (OK, so I guess the science might not bear up under scrutiny, but hey, it's a ten minute tale).

[hkneale.livejournal.com]

As usual, excellent.
And impressive; it only took you two minutes.