Glitterdust:

Desperate eyes look over a suburban cement wasteland of dismal opportunities. The landscape was quenched momentarily by the rains of new employment.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 22:19

The offer seemed generous at the time, good hours, no micromanagement, peace and quiet, and nothing to spend money on. They promised travel, complete benefits, and a low stress work environment.

I accepted as soon as I could. The company manages mines in south America, and eastern Africa; Peru and Tanzania. I was going to be a Monitor Technician, the machines will do the work, and if they fail, I will trouble shoot them. 

I had 3 weeks before heading out to Paraguay. I had a going away party, said goodbye to my parents and friends. We spent the late hours dreaming of things to do when I got back. I am very excited for something, somewhere other than this place.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 08:24

I got my plane ticket in the mail yesterday, with my onboarding packet. It contained phone numbers, and device set up information for my phone. I won’t have internet access; the security is super tight, and the onboarding will all be done through video training. 

All the details spin me out, what if I missed something, what if I forget something? The contract says I will be in isolation for 2 years. It reminds me of Alaskan deep-sea fishing shows, where the crew is on the unforgiving ocean, but rather than steep waves, its the mountains of Peru, and I’m fishing for minerals. Its only 2 years, and I need to get out of this place, and a little solace might be the change I need.

#End reflection hour Reiko O’Neal

Reiko had never flown on a plane before. The takeoff was exhilarating; the horizon teetered uneasily outside his window as the plane turned its heading. Once oriented, he relaxed a little.

The flight and the landing were smooth, and Reiko was greeted by a company representative who seemed to know who he was. Reiko was relived at the Company assistance, and once the car was traveling to the remote mining facility, Reiko slept. He dreamt of zig-zag descending escalators, each crossing over a mirrored and ascending version of the machinery. The people’s feet and arms seemed like natural extensions, as if small veins or fingers, and the escalators wrapped around forming a solid knot. Reiko awoke trying to unravel the knot, interrupted by the turbulence of the gravel road.

Reiko watched the landscape change as the car traveled deeper into a dense foliage of unusual leaves and creatures. Three hours later, the small shape of the mining facility could be seen in the lower valley, and a distant circle of bald forest marked the only sign of human civilization. 

As the car crept up on the lower valley, winding the wide roads made for the construction equipment, it grew from toy to tower. The bald spot too seemed to come into clearer focus; a great field descending into the earth with trucks and cranes perched nearby. At a distance the size of the trucks and cranes made the place look quite ordinary. However, the trucks were many times larger than normal trucks, like behemoths drinking from an inverted oasis, and the car was bringing a thirsty insect to inhabit the facility’s concrete body. 

The perimeter was lined with a 3-meter cement wall, which appeared as a thin ridge when compared to the swollen perspective of large machinery. The driver scanned his badge, and the car parked at the single door leading into the facility. Reiko was shown the control room, his station, his sleeping quarters, and a brief description of what the machines each did. Only the most basic explanation was given, the rest was promised to be provided in the training videos. 

The driver left with a cold handshake, and a date to retrieve Reiko.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 10:24

The training is easy, and the monitoring only requires my eyes. The machines are all self-run or operated remotely by other company employees. I get this feeling they only needed a warm body, for some liability reasons, or safety. It doesn’t bother me; I’ll take their money, and when my 2 years is over, I’ll be richer and away from here. I think I will have a lot of time to figure out what I will do when I get back. 

The facility seems alive 24 hours a day. I can tell when the operators are done with their shifts; they drive the trucks and return the cranes to default positions. The constant thunder of the equipment makes it hard to sleep, the huge trucks marching in their opposing spirals, in and out, up and down the hole in the earth. They pile it up, drive it out, drive empty trucks back, repeat. 

I don’t like the destruction to the forest around me. Sometimes I think I can hear a bird of some kind through the crash of operations, but the facility is a cocoon of sound. These things don’t really bother me that much, I think I’m already getting bored, and it’s only been a week. 

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 15:15

Yesterday I had to resolve a problem. The machine removing the earth stopped working. One of the augers was jammed and the conveyor belt melted. When I noted the block and filed the report, I saw the source of the blockage. It was a stone temple; the whole thing was directly under the mine. The machine had already chewed through most of it before friction ground the operation to a halt. The reset process seemed to repair the belt and the machine began crunching up the temple walls, filled with carvings of birds and faces. I felt terrible about it, but what could I do?

I still feel terrible this morning. I keep looking at the gigantic trucks leaving the facility, full to their edges with the boulders of some unknown culture. They are to be rolled, smashed, powdered, and sifted, at least that is what the training video told me. The training doesn’t say what minerals it will be sifted for, or what to do in this kind of discovery. I am starting to understand why monitor technicians don’t have internet access.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 14:51

It has been 3 weeks of nothing happening before the auger broke again. This time the machine was jammed with what appeared to be large bones. A ribcage belonging to a gigantic creature was wedged inside the feeder. I could only watch helplessly. I went through the process to reset the machine. I was pretty sure they were dinosaur bones; those bones should have been exhumed and put in a museum or something. 

The next morning, I watched the trucks, and found myself on the verge of crying. The size of the bones and the size of the trucks made me feel like sifted dust; powerless and unnecessary.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 07:15

It has been 6 months since my last reflection hour and luckily there hasn’t been any more resets. The machine continues down into the earth, and the trucks keep carrying the boulders away. The days are starting to look the same, the automated trucks leave at the same times, and return empty each morning. 

The auger doesn’t stop, I can hear it through the concrete, the walls don’t muffle the sound, they reverberate it. I thought the noise would go away, vanish into the background. I thought I would get used to it, but I haven’t. The crunching noise has made it difficult to sleep.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 20:21

The auger broke again. This time it didn’t seem as bad, but once the auger started breaking every hour, I started to get worried. The blockage looked like glittering sand, and upon closer visual inspection, I saw what the auger was digging into; a slab of bedrock crawling with words. The words weren’t really writing of any kind, but fossils, millions of geometric shapes; triangles, hexagons, spirals, and squiggles of some ancient life. Their mineral skeletons had choked the auger.  

The words were the written in the bodies of whatever creatures they were. I can almost understand them, as if some message from long ago was preserved with their bodies, a message for me. The training videos instructed me to wait.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 20:54

I am so bored from waiting for something to happen. I still have another year, and nothing moves. The trucks are motionless, and the auger is frozen in its unworkable state. I woke up last night to the sound of the machine, but when I went down to the pit, only the glittering fossil-words offered anything. They sparkled and teased me, as if they had something to say from millions of years ago, something written in a geometric language anyone could understand. 

After staring at the exposed pit, I returned to my bed and tried to sleep. Later that night I heard the machine start up, and again I investigated to discover nothing.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 00:03

Last night after I returned to bed, I felt like I could understand the meaning of the glittering words. The shapes imparted a meaning: they are diagram, efficient diagram of processes. In the moment of understanding I knew, I knew if the words had to be recorded, collected, something before the auger was fixed and the diagrams crushed.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 07:13

I was up all night writing the words of the Radiolaria, their ancient and powerful race once covered the world. They used their bodies to create lattices of superconductive minerals. The message was holographic, as if the words were seeds, and upon growing bigger and squirmed with understanding. I soaked it all in, their history, and the monument they left: A gigantic siliceous ooze at the bottom of the ocean, waiting to conduct, to engage, like a computer ready to turn on. 

The clarity of the message hurts. There is no update from the company, I have no access anyways. I am hoping someone notices the lack of truck shipments and sends someone, I haven’t seen any sign of the company in months.

Reiko O’Neal #reflection Hour 05:14

I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t want to be part of this mine, this creature clawing at the earth, chewing on its bones. I don’t want to be part of society, or any part of the machine, any part of its unending hunger. I want to be part of the beautiful Radiolaria, their divine symmetry, their timeless voice, broadcasting over the earth with glittering perfection. 

I’m going to throw my body at the pit. I can climb up the crane and toss my corpse over. My blood will seep into the dust and join the fossil-words. I can be part of them, part of something timeless. I want to add myself to them, these angels of dodecahedrons, these hexagonal chimeras of transcendent minerals; the brittle soul of the earth. 

Maybe my death will stop the mining, maybe they will look at the glittering words and pause to see their wisdom and history.

#End reflection hour Reiko O’Neal

The company did arrive at the end of 2 years. The facility was considered abandoned, and the body of the monitor technician was never found. The auger was turned back on and mining continued. The new monitor technician thought they saw a vague human outline in the bedrock, but there was no way to tell anyone.

Ocean Eyes:

Stheno, called herself Seth in the new world, the ancient tongue of her birth was buried beneath the waters. The oceans had different names, and the mountains were dwarfed by the rising behemoths of nations and corporations. Things which were big, were now small, and human beings squirmed with strange eyes and new hungers.

Seth was the oldest of the 3 gorgon sisters, she was born in the cold dark of a sunless ocean. Her sister Medusa was killed by a man named Perseus, and vengeance was denied because Perseus wore a helmet which rendered the wearer invisible to all senses. Seth outlived Perseus, and the stories of Greek gods, and their worshipers. She walked the ruins for many years in search of the helmet of Perseus, determined to erase the power which killed her sister.

The Gorgon sisters are snakes, or rather are relatives of an ancient serpent. An old serpent had died and left its blood to sink into the ground, it was the 3 sisters who collected it. Seth was given long life, perhaps long enough to see the end of all things, she didn’t know. Medusa was given the eyes of the serpent, and her gaze turned men to stone. Euryale also inherited the gaze of stone, but her eyes turned towards the stars and she left the world of men long ago.

Seth remained, but her gaze was different, her revealed the face of death. The inability to avenge Medusa compelled her through the centuries to seek mask to walk amongst mankind. In Seth’s natural form, her hands were bronze, her eyes were metallic black, and her teeth jutted from her jaw like a boar. Red snakes coiled on her head rather than hair, and her skin shined with teal scales. Her voice was the sound of an ocean storm, and her feet were bent and taloned like a chicken. To human beings she appeared as a beautiful woman, who’s visage was painful to endure, inspiring lovestruck fools to murder and kill.

Seth’s beauty was refined from years of hunting men. Her hair was black silk and her eyes held an ancient mystery kept at a distance. When it was revealed, the monstrous vision of the black horizon, it would kill with an unbearable weight. The only recourse was to fight or flee, and most men fought her, only to die transfixed by her eyes while her talons and teeth consumed them.

Her manipulation strove towards a single end, she wanted to control the thing which denied her vengeance. Perseus was dead for nearly 25 centuries, and Seth had grown with the wheel of change. She learned the ways of the new world, and about the forces of technology and growth. She maneuvered her way into the vaults of empires, forgotten tombs, places forgotten by the tides of men, and still the helmet of invisibility eluded her.

It was the year 2091 when Seth found the trail of the magical helmet. A class A corporation was under investigation for using security forces which seemed to vanish when questioned. The VIX corporation was on site during a terrorist attack, someone had dumped titanium oxide into 3 water reserves, and they were the security corp responsible in guarding the reserves. When cornered, the security personal vanished. Since they couldn’t be arrested or detained on site, and their office was across the globe, their connection remained a mystery.

A report of vanishing forces sounded a lot like the helm of invisibility, and Seth was determined to find the truth of the VIX company. Did they have multiple helmets? Had the technology been reversed engineered? Seth devised a plan to go to the top of the company and find out. She wore the mask of a beautiful woman and posed as a project manager. She sat on endless meetings, but while the meeting discussed metrics and timelines, she played the employees against each other. They tried to resist; some hung themselves, some quit, and those in her way, or those not helping her ascension, were quickly disposed of.

By the end of 3 years she was 2 fangs into the heart of the board of directors through obedient worship. The president was elusive, and near retirement, and rumored to be almost 100 years old. Only the vice president had access.

Unfortunately, the vice president was one of the early suicides. He realized what Seth was doing, and knew he would be the last stop, the anticipation and stress of the oncoming predator was too much. He could handle risky mergers, court hearings, and police investigation, but Seth’s eyes made him feel like a child, as if the corporate world was only a playground for simple forces.

Seth was patient, and after the death of the vice president she lived in his house, went to the same places her went; stalking the shadow of his grave, looking for any clues to the president of VIX. There was a bureaucratic process for replacing the vice president. It took years, and Seth circled the throne, waiting for her prey to appear. Then the announcement came.

The president was retiring, and any secrets would be passed to the new authority.

Seth was ready, she had maneuvered those durable enough to not kill themselves or each other. The remaining servants were completely obedient. None of them had ever seen the helmet or learned anything about the VIX security disappearing, but the video footage clearly showed the dramatic vanish. Someone suggested it could have been a deepfake, video can be contrived or invented from very little information. Seth ignored them, fired them, this was her only lead on the object of invisibility in 2200 years.

The meeting was planned 3 months in advance and included a ceremony to pass of the authority to the new president. It was hosted in a beautiful company building called the Palace of VIX. Generous amounts of money were injected into the palace, details were given every consideration, and strangled into a sleek event. There wasn’t a single piece of silverware out of place or a piece of trash without attention. Voices were solemn and eyes calm. The throng of Seth’s supporters were confident the old president would hand the keys to the palace over to the only leader seemingly competent enough at the high-magnitude order required for a class A corporation.

After a series of exhausting introductions and glamourous fluff-talk, the president walked unto the stage. They wore a simple and well fitted suit. Their legs were mechanical; a clear metallic shine could be seen, even from the back tables of the auditorium. Their arms also stretched longer than a typical human, ending in 6 fingers. The face however looked predictable withered. The ashen gray skin held an unholy vitality to it, and their eyes a serene sense of purpose. The president took the podium and began to address the congregation.

“Greetings employees of the VIX company, I come before you as the president, your president. I have worked tirelessly to ensure the quality of service we provide be held to the strictest standards and the utmost quality….”

The president trailed off into a speech about the VIX company vision. Seth watched with half-closed eyes, waiting for the reveal, confident in the exchange of power about to happen. However, the speech took a turn she did not expect.

“….. it has been shown to me, or rather I have seen with my own eyes, firsthand what has been transpiring after the death of the vice president. I have watched you all closely, more than any of you know or could know. I know Seth has tricked you, forced, you, convinced you through her charisma to be you next leader. I do not bow to usurpers, nor will Seth ever touch the presidency of the VIX company. “

At once the crowd began murmuring and the room of darkened eyes looked to Seth. She shifted nervously and waited for the president to finish.

“….I will spare you all the punishment of your betrayal, your spinelessness, you are creatures of greed an power and I will treat you like the pets you are. Seth will die on this floor for her ambition, her body will be a reminder, next time hang yourselves like the noble vice president. “

Seth remained frozen; her world was turning upside down. The president then put on a bronze helmet and vanished from the podium, leaving a collective gasp like a smoke screen. Seth remained still, seeing the helmet meant vengeance was within her grasp, she needed to only wait for the president to show himself again.

Then it hit her from behind, a sharp distraction. A blade had been plunged into her back, and the tip was poking out her chest. She looked down and saw her black blood flow over the blade. She slumped to the ground, holding the wound with her hands. She closed her eyes and listened to the rising tide of voices. Within a few heartbeats she heard the president again, this time standing over her body.

“… you see, this is the reward for ambition. Let this be a lesson for those thinking of claiming the presidency of VIX. “

There was clapping and hollers; loyalties had flipped against Seth.

She lay on the floor, hoping those nearby would not notice her blood. Up until this moment the president had thought her a typical human being, bound by the ladder of power, and the compulsion to ascend. Seth however, was not interested in wielding power, only destroying it.

Her eyes flashed open, seeing the helmet within reach. She met her gaze to the president and revealed herself to him. Her eyes flowed out, without glamour or gloss. She shed her mortal skin and stood before the crowd in her nakedness. Seth stood 3 feet above the president, her chicken legs bent and ready to pounce, her mouth went slack, and the boar teeth dripped with iridescent salvia. Her hair of red snakes hissed and coiled, in preparation to strike. On each of her arms, she wore bronze gauntlets, and with a whisper of quickness grabbed the helmet of invisibility. 

The president stood transfixed before a greater horror. Seth spoke in a thunder of speech; it echoed through the brains of everyone and reverberated down to the bones.

“I have waited two ages of civilization to find this helmet and finally avenge the authority of man kind against my sister Medusa. All of you here will bear witness to this moment, so drink deep with your eyes, it will be the last thing you see. “

Seth held the helmet in one hand and looked down at the cyborg president. She let out a crow, a caw, like a rooster, echoed by the screech of hissing snakes. She stared into the president and showed him the ocean of death, and the greater darkness. The tide swallowed him up. Tendrils of shadow crept from the corners of the Palace, and darkness ripped his flesh from his body, then shattered his metallic bones in a thunderclap; nothing remained.

The crowd screamed like a choir and ended in a hymn of terror. Seth was pleased, she put the helmet of invisibility on and vanished from the eyes of men forever. Those who witnessed the event could only see the greater darkness, they were blind to everything else. Their tongues likewise were bound to the event and could only speak of the great tide of which awaited them.

The Palace of VIX was abandoned, and the corporation died without its president.  Seth called herself Stheno once again and slithered back into the waves of a sunless ocean.

The Black Knife:

The black knife of the Pharaoh Sneferu was buried in the Bent pyramid until raiders exhumed it in a fever of greed. Marauding and looting carried the knife through private collections and museums. After a series of mismanagement, the knife was separated from its detailed description. Shortly afterwards, the knife was mistaken for a plain tool and donated to the thrift store during a renovation. 

From year to year it drifted, until it found itself in the bottom of a junk drawer owned by a couple in their 5^th year of marriage.

The couple lived in a small 2-bedroom apartment, made in the median decay of poorly built construction. The place wouldn’t last 10 years, but prices were low enough to attract Mr. and Mrs. Benedict. He took her last name, and she didn’t want kids. They had a wonderful honeymoon, enjoyed the same beer, and loved criticizing the same movies.

Their peace was built as quickly as their apartment, and the cracks started to form in the relationship. She was unrelenting about where to eat and he hated doing housework. The compromise was to eat at her preferred restaurants as often as possible. When they were hungry, the resentment built up, each blaming each other until the cold silence froze their tongues. After dinner, they resumed their pleasant attitudes and returned home to their unused dishes.

The knife found its way into their home from a yard sale. They ended in an argument about a vinyl record player which only needed a few fixes. They settled on the knife and a box of pressed flowers. Both items were ignored after the day; their consumer behavior was habitual. The junk drawer also included a well-loved bottle opener, and a small bag of unused metal twist ties.

Mr. Benedict worked as a paralegal, and his job included more numbers and reports than he liked. He wanted to go rock climbing and was quite proficient in his early 20s. Now his legs and arms were used for carrying coffee cups and flipping through meeting minutes to transcribe. He still dreamed of the hot sun and warm rocks under his hands as he hoisted himself over the boulders in his own way. Whenever the sun shined on his face, he had a flash of old memories, glowing brightly in retrospect.

Mrs. Benedict work at the last hospital in the area not owned by a Church, or a corporate monstrance. The hospital included Friday night walk ins, for those without insurance and sliding scale payment options. Over the years her idealism faded, and she considered working for those giant creatures. They offered wider benefits, narrow hours, and expansive career growth options, her appetite for practical things increased each year. 

The knife sat in the junk drawer for 10 years, ignored by the Benedicts and their mundane lives. Each year the knife hummed a little louder, like a tiny creature shuffling the contents with nervous anticipation.

Mr. Benedict reduced his hours to part time and developed an interest in peaceful gardening. He loved getting his hands in the wet earth, watering his plants, and watching new life bloom. His garden was modest but lush, and it soon became what he worked for. While shuffling papers and typing reports, he daydreamed of royal lilies, and aphid covered roses. Perhaps he could order some lady bugs online and have them by the weekend? He took the path of the dreamer squeezing through the cracks.

Mrs. Benedict found a new job at a larger corporation and became the primary source of their freedom and luxury. She was promoted each year and excelled at management. She loved the numbers and tables and did not avoid work. To her, the control meant everything, and the higher up the ladder she went, the more control she became accustomed to. She took the path of authority and wielded it like a veteran centurion.

The cracks in their relationship widened as their interests diverged, and it would seem they might drift apart. Yet they stayed together. Bound by habit, and by love. They swallowed their differences, and their fights, their small silences, and continuing through the years.

However, after the latest promotion, Mrs. Benedict was growing more agitated with the chaos of her work. She could not control the top executives, yet was consistently randomized by them, sending her into a directionless urgency. She wanted order and the only thing she could control was Mr. Benedict.

She began needling him on which plants to plant, which fertilizer to buy, what kind of gloves to wear when gardening. She started to treat their relationship like a management meeting. Each day she came home and inquired the details of Mr. Benedict’s activities. 

Mr. Benedict did not like conflict and tried to appease his wife. He thought she might be feeling unloved and picked her the most beautiful and fragrant of garden roses. They were pink and white, pale red with crimson lines, deep oranges, and blended yellows. He took the knife of Sneferu from his junk drawer and lovingly cut each one. The blade was warm and hummed a little. Mr. Benedict marveled at the beauty of the blade and wondered where it came from, and how long it been in his junk drawer?

The bouquet was put in a vase and set out as a surprise for her when she came home. She noticed it, and was instantly suspicious, she needled him with questions. This behavior was out of character, what was he hiding? She did not care for roses, and it showed on her face.

That night Mr. Benedict slept in restless turns, and strange dreams crept into his morning mind. He dreamed of using the knife in his junk drawer, but rather than the stems of flowers, he cut his fingers. They fell from his hand with the smallest effort and splashed in the vase water. They didn’t bleed, they fell into pieces as if a seam was pulled from his hand. The dream followed him to work and he looked down at his fingers, ready for them to fall off.

He did not share the dream with his wife. The second night they fought about his mood. He kept the dream from her and exaggerated the truth, saying his day was difficult. She didn’t believe him, and habitually needled him until they went to sleep; Mr. Benedict slept on ice, and the dream returned.

This time the knife cut away his leg, and in the same fashion; his leg fell to pieces with the slightest touch of the warm knife. He woke later than he wished, Mrs. Benedict had already left for work, and without waking up to say their familiar farewell. Rather than feel worried about his wife, he felt free, he felt like the knife cut some part of him away, and with it took the anxiety of their tense silence.  The apathy was a relief. His day was clear and light, and his works duties were effortless, Mr. Benedict could not remember feeling such weightlessness.

The 3^rd evening was tense for Mrs. Benedict, and her needling ended in futility.

The dream was different on the 3^rd night, this time a great ocean was seen, and Mr. Benedict saw himself drowning under the waves, and disappearing. The knife was in his hand when he woke up. Without telling his wife, he decided to call in to work and take a road trip to the ocean. The knife compelled him and drew him to the shore.

He drove in silence, and the dream followed. The knife was with him too, resting on the passenger seat, humming louder than before. He drove 3 hours before reaching the beach, and the sun was near its zenith. He took the knife and walked out to the beach and sat quietly on some driftwood. He sat there for the entire afternoon, saying nothing.

For the afternoon, the ocean was his church and the shoreline his pew. He sat in holy silence, holding the black knife until everything within was cut. He thought of the knife touching his body, and it fell apart, he thought of his place of work and the building crumbled. He thought of Mrs. Benedict, and she fell into the waves, he thought of his garden, and the flowers rotted into dust. Each thought unraveled until only the wind blew; Mr. Benedict made his offering of tears and nothing remained.

Before the sunset, he gathered himself in a clump of bones and skin. He walked from the silence of the ocean and returned to the sin of existence. The black knife had cut his heart out and swallowed it, and whatever awaited him at home, couldn’t touch the abyss he had fallen into.