A City in Grooves

“Careful, now!” Howard instructed. He framed the slide with each of his pointer fingers.

“None of these tables are level, I swear,” Tom replied. He took a deep breath to steady his hands.

He lowered the tweezers until they were just above the glass plate, then dropped the material. Howard nodded and placed a layer of film over the sample.

They hovered over the reagents of their task; the latest batch of dirt from the geology department. Professor Howard handled the glass slides, and Tom handled the soil specimens. A phonograph dribbled out a static tune from the desk behind them – Miss Elliot’s Ragtime Listening.

Howard scribbled on the label and placed the slide within a hard case – only the professor’s official signature would be accepted.

Tom checked his watch behind a stifling yawn.

“Oh, come on!” Howard prodded. “You’re young, with all the energy!”

Tom rolled his eyes and reached for another sample baggy.

One of the specimens shimmied out from the bottom of the pile, and Tom recoiled as if it had bit him. He jumped to his feet and sent his lab stool clanging to the ground.

Professor Howard eyeballed the sample from his seat at the table.

“Curious,” Howard began.

The bag ruffled back and forth.

He pursed his lips while he observed; the plastic almost looked like it was breathing. It had the vascular movements of a living creature.

Tom stepped to the table again with renewed confidence. He plucked the stool from the floor as he approached.

“Must be a bug inside?” he reasoned.

Howard nodded, “I was thinking a mouse.”

They closed in around the sample and squinted through the plastic – nothing looked out of the ordinary. Tom reached to the table behind him for a pair of forceps.

“Don’t be silly. I thought you wanted to be a scientist?” Howard asked with a grin. He reached out and plucked the sample up with his bare hands.

The professor dangled it between them so they could both inspect it; the contents were the same clumps of dirt, albeit a little lighter. Howard shook the bag and held it up under the light.

Tom squinted and said, “Nothing, huh? Must have been a draft.”

He plopped back down on his stool and returned to his work.

“No…” Howard muttered. “There is something here.”

He shook the bag with unwavering focus.

“Hey.”

Tom slowly looked up from the other samples.

“What is it?”

“Tell me what you see.” Howard instructed. He tossed the baggy on the desk before his assistant.

Instead of picking it up, Tom pinned the corners of the plastic to the table with his fingers and stretched it tight. The specimen was chalky, but consisted mostly of just one solid piece of dirt. It gave no obvious indications of strangeness other than the brightness of the soil. It could have passed for gold.

There was some kind of motion, though. Tom furrowed his brow and squinted harder at the bag.

“It’s moving,” he concluded.

The professor nodded.

Tom slid the bag across the table, then pulled open a desk drawer. He produced a slender magnifying glass to get a better look.

Professor Howard leaned back and watched his student conduct the research.

The material was stacking, like a self-erecting sandcastle. Particles of dirt scattered around the floor of the bag rolled up the edges of the clump and positioned themselves like brick and mortar. The construction knocked other particles loose that tumbled down to the bottom, only to stir again and roll back to the top.

Tom shook his head and set the magnifier down.

“It’s not just moving,” he concluded. “It’s organizing.”

Howard arched an eyebrow.

“Organizing itself,” Tom clarified.

“Perhaps there is an overabundance of a rough material in the soil – iron, led, or some kind of deposit?” the professor offered.

“But why is it doing that?”

“Usually some kind of magnetization,” Howard looped a finger through the air like a symphony conductor. “There could be static in the bag, or in the table.”

Tom brought a fist up and smashed the dirt sample flat. He twisted his hand back and forth to make sure it was totally crushed.

Howard clapped his hands and howled, “I knew you were a man of science!”

They leaned over the bag – only a fine dust remained within the plastic.

“Mystery solved,” Tom concluded.

“Of course,” Howard said as he checked his watch. “Bah, the whole day’s gone by. Let’s pick this up tomorrow after class.”

They cleaned up Howard’s private lab, which was attached to his campus office. He served as the head of the physics department, but was established in every scientific program offered at college. Tom was a second year biology student and Howard’s favorite assistant.

Tom stacked the cases of labeled samples and hoisted them into the air. He took careful steps toward the storage room as he navigated the lab. It was bad protocol to carry so much delicate material, but Tom didn’t have the patience for return trips.

“Whoa!” Howard cried out.

Tom stumbled and started to lose the stack of samples. He wobbled at the knees to correct himself, but instead banged into the phonograph table. The record came loose from the tray and fragmented across the floor.

“Shit!” Tom hollered.

“Forget it,” Howard insisted, frantically waving one hand. “Just – come look at this.”

Tom set the samples down and tiptoed through the shards of broken vinyl. The professor pointed to the table.

The sample bag bloated and compressed like a working lung, and inside, the particles of dirt swirled in a mini cyclone of creation. Individual specks conglomerated into clumps before finally stabilizing into the same single piece of dirt. The duo watched in silent wonder.

“Any theories?” Tom asked. He was bent over with his hands on his knees, just a nose away from the plastic.

“No.” Howard admitted.

They sat down while the soil repaired itself. Neither dare disturb the delicate masonry at hand.

The professor produced a second, stronger magnifying glass from his own toolkit. He lowered it at a sloping angle so as not to heat the contents by mistake.

“My lord,” he whispered.

Howard offered the eyeglass to Tom, who took it with hesitation.

He peered down at the eversifting dirt and found a kaleidoscope of vortexes. It reformed itself into the same crude shape as before, but the details were revealed by the deeper magnification. The rigid dirt gave way to something prismatic, like the body of a snowflake. The grains became blocks and the blocks became structures – indeed, the soil sample resembled the construction of a city, albeit the size of a coin.

Tom set the magnifying glass down and leaned back from the table.

“What should we label this one?” he asked.

Howard laughed nervously, “We won’t. I want to run an experiment on this.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“The private kind,” the professor explained with an unblinking stare.

Tom nodded along.

“We need to find something to apply the soil too,” Howard explained. “Something it can manipulate.”

“What about that?” Tom nodded to the shattered ragtime record on the floor.

The professor dropped to his knees in a frantic scramble to collect the slivers.

“Yes, yes, yes! This is perfect, Tom.” he mumbled.

They scrounged up the fragments and set them in the top tray of a rolling cart. They did their best to fit the pieces together in something true to the original shape.

Howard collected the dirt sample from the table, and Tom gathered a cloth from the linen cabinet.

“New thinking, new answers,” the professor said as he tore the plastic open. He upended the bag and scattered the dirt amongst the ruins of the record. Tom tossed the cloth over the cart to hide their experiment from any wandering assistants or adjunct faculty.

They rolled it into Howard’s private office and locked the door behind them.

“Make no mention of this, son,” the professor warned. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“I have a statistics test,” Tom explained.

Howard pursed his lips and shrugged.

“It’s no matter, I’ll write you a truancy pass from the board. Just be here so we can check the results together.”

They hesitantly parted ways, and returned early the next day – earlier than they would have for any other obligation. The veneer of normalcy echoed down the hall in the way of pleasant smalltalk; the crisp autumn dawn, the hustle of the late semester, and the rumors of war in Europe. There was no mention of the experiment within the forlorn laboratory.

Professor Howard opened the door for them and made sure to quickly lock it once they were inside.

“I think we got a little excited yesterday,” he admitted as he took off his coat. “I can’t imagine this will be what we hoped.”

“I wanna see it anyway,” Tom shrugged as he opened the office.

They wheeled the cart under the beaming lab bulbs and exchanged a look.

“Any wagers?”

Howard pinched the cloth cover with a finger and thumb.

“Can of worms!” Tom offered.

The professor tugged on the fabric and let it slip to the floor – beneath it lay Miss Elliot’s Ragtime Listening, completely intact from end to end.

Tom ran both hands through his hair and said, “Unbelievable!”

“Believe it,” Howard assured him.

“It looks brand new! It’s not even faded in the middle!” Tom shouted.

Professor Howard thumped him in the temple with two stiff fingers.

“You’re going to rouse the entire campus – shhh!” he implored the young man. Tom frowned and left a lingering eye on the professor.

They bent over and examined the impeccable vinyl grooves. There was no evidence of cracks of any kind, not even a scratch. There wasn’t a speck of dust in the cart, either.

Howard reached down and picked it up with delicate fingers. He brought it up to eye level and surveyed it from a more even position. Tom stood on his tiptoes to get a peek.

“I don’t see any of the dirt,” he explained.

“It’s there,” Howard said with a nod. “Let’s get this under the microscope.”

Tom grabbed the best pair they had and set them across from each other – the record was wide enough that they could both look at the same time. The professor slipped it under the lenses and they leaned into their scopes.

There wasn’t any kind of discernible damage in the material, but there was a thin layer of dirt over the entire disk. It covered every black gap and channel just enough that it no longer reflected any light.

Tom scaled the magnifier down to a sharper image.

He could see the same drifting essence that was in the plastic bag, except now it had direction. There was traffic that moved this way and that amongst the grooves. As Tom watched the commotion on the surface, he thought he could hear the clamor of a city, reduced to a squeaking orchestra.

They both cycled their scopes to the highest setting and revealed the intricate details of the architecture. Mythical cityscapes framed streets that ran in geometric circles. Castles and cathedrals were interlinked by way of legendary halls, all cut from microscopic dirt particles. The faces of some of the larger buildings were etched with cryptic runes of worship.

“Can you confirm what I’m seeing?” Howard asked with a distant tone.

“Yes,” Tom concurred dreamily. “Yes.”

The professor broke away from the scope and sighed, “Let’s see if it plays.”

Howard removed it from the microscope tray and refitted it to the phonograph. He placed the needle on the outside channels once it started to spin.

The same opening track from the album electrified the room, more crisp and pleasant than ever before. Howard immediately began to bounce at the hips while snapping his fingers. Tom tapped one foot against the floor.

“I’ve never heard it sound so… clear.” the professor said. Miss Elliot’s soaring voice lifted them into a sporadic fit of dance.

“It’s like she's here in the room!” Tom agreed.

This was the only album Howard owned, and so became very familiar to the likes of him and Tom. The music coming out of it now had sounds and instruments the duo had never heard before – melodic flutes and sandy percussion beats, even rhythmic backup singers crept out of the folds. Everything about it was amplified to the fullest extent.

Howard stopped dancing and scratched his beard. He gave the spinning record a curious gaze.

“What is it?” Tom asked.

“I have one more experiment,” the professor explained. He removed the needle from the vinyl and plucked it from the phonograph.

Howard lifted it above his head and let it drop to the floor.

The record clattered around his feet but remained intact.

Tom bent over and scooped it off the ground, then did his best to fold the disk in half with his bare hands. The material didn’t even bend.

“It feels indestructible,” Tom exclaimed.

“The dirt sample changed the entire molecular structure! It’s a completely different object!”

They reduced the light to a minimum and pulled the curtains over the windows. Howard was content to conspire alone about the perplexity of the specimen – they would make their research public once they had a better understanding of the material.

Tom checked his pocket watch.

“I can still make it in time for the test,” he explained.

Howard waved a hand in the air, “Then go! But come back when you’re done, and see what I’ve discovered.”

Tom gathered his things and let himself out of the lab. He glanced over his shoulder and gave the professor a lingering look – Howard danced to the unheard rhythm of the music.

__________**__________

The laboratory was the same when he returned; the windows shrouded, and the low hum of the spinning record. A shadow passed back and forth behind the curtain.

Tom casually knocked on the door – the shade went still at the sound.

Is he trying to hide?

Tom shook his head and brought his knuckles up to the door again. He rapped twice, waited, and then twice again. He finished the code with three slow, deliberate thumps with his foot.

The professor scurried over and unlocked the door like a wraith.

“About time,” he complained, and secured the door behind them. Tom unloaded his coat and bookbag on the nearest table.

The record sat under a huge microscope, one that Tom had never seen before. It was dialed in to mere centimeters from the surface of the disk.

He could hear the wobbling melodies spurting from the speaker, though. Tom turned and found there was a second copy of Miss Elliot’s Ragtime spinning on the phonograph.

“Where did you get that?” he asked the professor.

“It replicated itself,” Howard rubbed his hands together while he spoke. “The results of another experiment.”

Tom went still as he listened.

“I managed to snap the original record in two – it took a table vice and a tremendous blow with a hammer.”

“Why?”

“The more I examined it, the more flawless it became. Don’t you see, Tom? Whatever this is, it rearranges matter until it is perfect.”

The conclusion reminded Tom of the music from earlier, and how each song had been fine tuned to perfection. It had been so perfect that they’d danced together without ever having done so before.

Tom nodded along.

“All matter, DNA, it all adheres to a structure. This alien specimen has the ability to reset the password of that structure,” Howard said.

The professor led him around the lab and showed him the other breakthroughs: once the dirt sample was applied to a vessel, it couldn’t be removed. The soil’s effort to improve the existing system made them one and the same.

Next, he had Tom look down the hulking microscope lens. It was a special piece of equipment he borrowed from a neighboring department.

Tom held his breath as he surveyed the kingdom. The castle canals transitioned into temples and finally into pyramids. There was a noticeable shift in age and architecture as the civilization drifted out from the center. The original runes on the shrines and citadels transformed into hieroglyphic scriptures along the Egyptian avenues.

He looked up from the city in grooves and found Howard staring holes through him. A feverish sweat broke along his brow.

“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” the professor explained.

“You should show it to the science department!” Tom encouraged. He slapped Howard on the shoulder.

“No,” the professor recoiled. “Not yet. I need better data before I hand it over.”

Tom sighed and gave up the chase – he almost seems sick.

They settled in for the afternoon’s work. Tom made an effort to relocate the larger microscope, but the professor stopped him and insisted they work elsewhere.

“I don’t want to unnecessarily disturb the community,” he explained.

Tom sighed and moved their equipment to an adjacent table. He organized everything for streamlined action, as to finish and leave the laboratory behind.

Perhaps I’ll assist a different department next semester.

They worked under the quaking rhythm of the record, which Tom couldn’t even recognize anymore. The upbeat harmony was replaced with a quavering voice that didn’t sing in English – the words were sharp and enunciated with an old world tongue.

Howard broke out in a wild dance at random intervals. He’d waltz from one side of the lab to the other, and come to a stop at the other microscope. Tom had to wrangle him from his distractions just to finish the task at hand.

“I don’t know what’s come over me!” Howard giggled. The structure of his skull cut through the veiny surface of his skin.

“You’ve been strange today,” Tom agreed while he packed up their equipment.

“I’m on the edge of a breakthrough, son,” Howard said. “Energies start to change when that happens.”

The professor’s grin melted into paranoia. His eyes skirted toward the lab door, and the bolted lock above the handle.

“Did you hear that?” his teeth clattered together as he spoke

“Hear what?” Tom asked. There hadn’t been a sound.

“Someone lurking in the hall – we can’t let any of this be discovered. This is clandestine research, understand?

In fact, we should reset your password – the classified nature of this demands it. Anyone could have heard your secret knocking earlier.”

Tom shook his head and collected his bookbag.

Howard danced his way to the door and pressed himself against it. He reached out with both arms and slithered against the wood like a drunk trying to keep his balance. It reminded Tom of seizures he’d witnessed in the medical bay.

The professor let a rhythm come through his limbs in a tapping melody. His hands and feet synchronized and produced a beat similar to what was on the record now – Howard even sang some of the exotic notes.

“What are you doing?”

“I reset your password,” Howard explained as he scurried back to the record player.

“Why don’t I just say ‘Open Sesame’?” Tom laughed.

The professor gave his student the same dead eyed stare.

What the hell is wrong with him?

Tom navigated his way to the door without ever getting too close to Howard. He feigned to check on their work for the day while he collected his coat.

“I think we’re done with the geology samples. Tomorrow we can move on to the AG project.” he ventured.

The professor didn’t respond.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Tom bid.

Howard only jittered to the music.

__________**___________

Tom made his morning march across campus. His eyes throbbed from a sleepless night, but the exhaustion strengthened his resolve: they were handing over the geology samples today. He would make sure of it. Only then would the weirdness of the lab return to normal.

That’s the theory.

This was a program to help him get ahead, not stifle his research with distractions. The little city was exciting, but it was meaningless if Howard didn’t make a presentation.

He came upon the laboratory and remembered the new password – Tom was certain he couldn’t replicate it.

He shrugged and tried the old one. It was really just a formality anyway; a fun way for the professor to sift through his visitors as useful or annoying. Anyone without the special knock code fell under the latter.

Nothing stirred beyond the lab window. A single bulb fizzed to illuminate the room, which was shrouded by the curtain.

Tom tried to get an angle to see into the lab but had no luck. There wasn’t a sign or shadow of anyone within.

He reached out and jiggled the knob, which rolled loose in his palm. It was the first time he’d found it unlocked throughout his time on campus.

A nervous sweat came to life along Tom’s neck as he pushed the door open.

The laboratory looked like a vandalized flophouse; trash and discarded paper lay scattered, and lines of ink traced up and down every wall. It resembled a sloppy geometric pattern.

Tom checked the back windows and private office but found everything intact. There was simultaneously no one around, and no sign of break-in. He shook his head when he remembered the unlocked door.

He leaves it open one time, and a parade of drunk freshmen come crashing-

There was a clatter behind him. Tom went cold and tucked himself away behind the storage shelves in the back. He thought he must’ve stirred the criminals awake and now they’d find him.

“-in dim Carcosa…” a voice sang.

It was Howard. Tom peaked between the boxes and stacks of paper to be sure.

“Who are you talking to?” he asked as he stepped out from the shadows.

The professor jumped at the sound.

“I can’t pronounce his name,” Howard confessed. His eyeballs were a cloudy yellow, and bulged out from his skull.

“Who?” Tom pressed. He gestured to the painted walls. “What is all this?”

“The city streets.”

Tom squinted up at the markings and recognized them as a map. There were intersections and thruways, entire blocks of buildings and commerce. Even the ceiling was encompassed with unfinished neighborhoods.

“You did all this with the microscope?” Tom asked.

Howard convulsed with laughter. His breath reeked of alcohol.

“I walked the corridors and learned the symphonies of the Ancients,” he babbled. “Through golden arches I wandered until I found eternal sands.”

“Are you drunk?” Tom demanded.

“Of course I’m drunk!” he threw his arms over a table and sent the equipment clattering to the floor. “You think you’d dance in the Court of the Yellow King without a drink?”

Howard trembled through a fit of convulsions. He kicked pieces of loose equipment around that sent an echo down the hallway.

“Relax, Howard! What the hell is wrong with you?” Tom tried to subdue the professor to no avail. Howard was so strong that he parried his student’s attempt with a single hand.

“Come with me,” Howard jittered. “I want you to see how the shadows fall in the twilight of Carcosa.”

He gripped Tom’s fingers and bent them backwards with no effort.

Tom screamed and retreated deeper into the laboratory. He looked down at the rapidly bruising flesh around his knuckles. Howard didn’t break them, but he came damn close.

“I quit. I’m done.”

The professor ignored him. He stumbled back and forth around the lab, mindlessly searching for something that wasn’t there. Tom started to examine the contents of the room: the alien soil lay on one table, another covered in used syringes. Festering pocks rested in the cradle of Howard’s arm.

“Jesus, what have you done?”

Howard bumped into everything as he waded to the phonograph – he dropped the needle on the record and let the scratching music come to life.

“Taeal ‘iilaa almadina,” it sang.

He reached down and sank his fingernail into the surface of the vinyl. It skipped and wobbled in protest.

A clod of dirt built up around the tip of his finger – Howard took the soil and smashed it into his eyeball.

“I’m still learning how it works,” he explained. He waved a hand in the air as he spoke, and Tom noticed the features – Howard’s arm was elongated at the elbow. The veins ruptured under the skin from an internal stretching, and his lab coat was torn to ribbons.

Tom took slow steps toward the back of the lab.

“We need to get you to a doctor,” he said. “If you put that debris in your bloodstream, it’ll kill you.”

“You’ve seen what it does,” the professor countered. “You’ve seen the city in grooves.”

“You’re crazy. Let me outta here!” Tom demanded.

Howard hoisted his arms and dipped into a spinning dance routine. He took up fists full of dirt and rubbed them into his face and mouth while he moved. A black web of veins ebbed along his chest and throat.

“The King calls for us,” was all he managed to say.

His forehead ruptured and a slimy appendage slithered out from the skinfold – something like an antenna. The early morning darkness of the lab shadowed Howard’s transition, but Tom could hear every inch of skin tearing up his back and ribcage. The professor brought his hands into the light and found one them half mutated into spiny pincers.

He tried to speak again, but only a deep green foam spilled from his mouth. He looked euphoric in his madness; the inhuman transformation seemed to deliver more pleasure than pain to its vessel.

Tom blinked away his tears and saw Howard’s hulking silhouette approach. His shredded lips pulled back into a half smile around a pair of mandibles. One claw came to rest on Tom’s shoulder while the other smothered his airways with the infectious dirt sample.

“Please,” Tom muttered through a mouthful of earth.

Howard’s alien maw clacked a response.

The burning sensation against his cheeks was suffocating – Tom could feel the gritty particles tearing through his face. Warm blood poured out of the fissures and filled his mouth and nose, and his screams were stifled with the rancid taste of iron.

He opened his eyes just in time to see the laboratory dissolving into the ether; one wall tipped and fell away into nothing, and then all of them in tandem. Beyond, instead of roaming campus hallways, Tom found a glistening sidewalk. It sprawled out for miles in every direction.

The roads were framed with golden spires and bejeweled temples, all of which imbued a static sound that was both deafening and silent at the same time. It was so loud that Tom felt he was only processing the vibrations of the frequency, not even the sounds itself. His skin quaked at the disruption.

My screams are just a scratch in the music.

Tom wandered through ancient avenues of unknown origin. The city grew darker as he explored deeper, but his vision improved as the light receded. Alas, Tom’s shadow stretched into an unfathomable size. It carried a blackness so deep that he periodically mistook it for a hole.

He navigated empty roads until a different sound could be heard; caustic Egyptian symphonies. Tom danced his way toward the trembling Court orchestra.

The streets became populated as he approached the royal affair. Men and women dressed in a variety of clothing strode this way and that, joyous in their musical parade. There were Puritans and old French legionnaires, even Eastern tribes of conquerors roamed the grounds. All of them cast eager glances at the pyramid looming above them.

“Where are we?” Tom pleaded, but no one spoke in return. He was answered with the knowing nods and passive gestures of those without time for tourists.

The procession of citizens swelled until Tom was locked between strangers. They pressed back and forth in an effort to reach the inner chambers, unbothered by the claustrophobic nature of their method. Onlookers shook their heads at his frantic struggle to get free. Even the walls excreted disdain for his panic.

Everything here resents me, it wants to be my tomb.

A column funneled the crowd into the Court’s golden dead end. It was framed around the foot of the pyramid, which hosted a grand theater and pews for the audience. Strange markings tattooed the faces of the structures – Tom had seen them all from the microscope.

The pilgrims lined up before a colossal throne, and in it, a worm of apocalyptic magnitude writhed to the music. Great spines arched out from its segmented body, sticky with goo and gore of eons gone by. It tapered down to a small, moist nozzle no larger than a handball.

Tom watched the citizens collect their quarry – they approached the worm’s canal to accept wretched infants with open arms. The fleshy nozzle coated them all with ooze as it delivered over and over again.

It was his turn in line. He stepped forward and felt the hot exhale from the birthing hole – warm mucus plastered his face.

His larvae slithered out from the canal; Tom danced with it into the inner folds of the city.