Touched - Order of Odium: Book One

Daniel - 5

The door opened revealing much the same as every other room Daniel had seen; a square room with a guard post situated on a metal platform on the end of the room closest to the door. Two armed guards stood without expression staring at the artifact that was in the middle of the room as usual.

Daniel and Aleksander walked into the room and the door shut automatically behind them. Daniel could hear the door locks move into place with a loud click.

Aleksander turned to the two guards "Hello gentlemen! This is our newest subject, Daniel. Here's here to run a test with me. You two 'know the drill' so to speak."

The two guards nodded and said "Yes sir" while continuing to stare at the object in the center of the room.

Although Daniel had done this with other artifacts many times before, he still felt awkward each time. It reminded him of when he was still in school and had to go to the front of the class. He knew the guards probably couldn't care less about him, especially when the artifact seemed to demand all of their attention, but his innate self-consciousness still arose occasionally.

"Well then, let's get started, Daniel." Aleksander took a small notebook-sized device from his lab coat pocket and pulled a stylus out of it. The device was only a little thicker than a couple of pieces of paper put together, but the stylus was the size of a pencil. Daniel had no idea how the device held the stylus inside of it, but he had seen stranger things here, so he wasn't too surprised by it.

"First tell me what you see when you look at the artifact please," Aleksander said, his stylus hovering above the device, ready to take down notes.

"Umm, I can only see the stand or whatever in the center of the room, and something small and silver in the middle of it."

Aleksander seemed a little surprised but failed to hide his expression before Daniel could notice.

"In that case Daniel, please walk slowly towards the artifact, but do not touch it, okay?"

"Sure thing boss." Daniel started walking towards the middle of the room where the artifact was supposed to be, all too aware that the guards both raised their weapons as he walked.

As he reached the stand he noticed that the silver object on it was a quarter, something he had only seen in history books.

"Are you able to tell what you are seeing now?" Aleksander asked from his position by the door.

"It looks like a quarter, I guess. I've only seen one in a history book from school and that was a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is."

"Great. Can you describe what it looks like?"

"It's silver-colored, has a man's face on the front of it, but I can't remember the name of who it is. There's some words around the face and one word at the top, and some numbers at the bottom."

"Okay, what are the numbers?"

"1, 9, 9, and 2."

"What does the top word say?"

"Liberty"

"What does the man's face look like?"

"It's a side view of a man, one of the old presidents I think they were called. He looks bald up-front and has hair in the back that goes down to the man's shoulders."

Aleksander seemed to be becoming excited now. "Great! And are there any other words you can see?"

"The words next to the man's face say 'In God We Trust" in all caps"

"Amazing! That's a quarter from 1992! That was decades and decades ago! Do you remember what the quarters you seen in class looked like? Is there anything different from what you remember?"

Daniel thought for a moment before replying, "They only had a few pictures of quarters in the books we looked at, but this one seems just like one of the quarters from the pictures. I don't notice anything different."

"Okay! Great job Daniel. I wish we could take a picture of it, but there is no point."

Daniel turned towards Aleksander, "why not?"

"As I've mentioned, this artifact changes depending on who is looking at it, and unfortunately the same goes for photographs of it. I can take a picture of what I see, but when you or anyone else looks at it, they'll see what they would see if they looked directly at the artifact. It's something we are trying to understand ourselves. Anyway, let's go ahead and start the actual experiment. Since the artifact is so small to you, just place one finger directly on top of the artifact."

Daniel hesitated. "Is this thing going to bite my finger off again or something?"

"No Daniel, you should be perfectly fine. If not, remember we have a great medical team on hand!" Aleksander chortled loudly at his joke.

"Yeah, don't remind me," Daniel said under his breath. "Is it okay if I touch it now?"

"Yes, please go ahead," Aleksander said as he ensured his device was ready to take notes.

Daniel took breathed deeply in an attempt to calm himself and readied the new index finger that had been attached the day before.

"At least if this gets bitten off or whatever it'll be that new finger they gave me yesterday instead of one of my original ones," Daniel thought.

He touched the quarter and immediately disappeared from the room.

~ ~ ~

If you've enjoyed this, please consider following, commenting, and voting! Thanks for reading!