Wait, what?

[Narrator]

It's just another morning in the dorms. Students are shuffling into the showers, getting ready for class. But something is off.

It's subtle until it isn't. Who really pays close attention to the plain, functional carpet in the hallway after all. But over night it seems somebody has taken it upon themselves to add some highlights. Craggly lines run across the carpet, forming erratic patterns of intersecting lines that look like the scrawling of a bored three-year old. Except they extend down the entire length of the hallway, forming a weird kind of pattern that's almost designed to not actually repeat itself.

[Null]

"...That's peculiar. That's damn peculiar," The Boy said, noticing the new craggly lines.

"That's not normal at all," he said, unnecessarily, as he began following the lines, looking to find where they started and/or ended.

[Narrator]

It's a pattern in the carpet, the lines don't really lead anywhere except for criss-crossing all over the place. But in paying close attention to them Will might notice that here and there the lines seem to not quite end where the carpet does, instead extending ever so slightly into the baseboard as discolorations in the wood.

[Null]

Will might notice that. The Boy definitely noticed that.

He shifted one of his arms into a blade, and made a cut in the carpet near where the lines extended into the wood, to see, if they went underneath the carpet as well.

ASHLIE could bill Tereza, if she was so damned determined to own a Will.

[Narrator]

Peeling the carpet back some, which involved some effort to pry it free of the glue keeping it on the floor, shows that here and there the discoloration extents all the way to the concrete. Like a printing that bled through somehow except it's not really paint. Just concrete that happens to be discolored in the exact same spot.

[Null]

The boy frowned. This required closer investigation.

He shrank down to get a...what's the opposite of a bird's eye view? An ants' eye view? ... at where the floor met the baseboard. This was darn peculiar.

[Narrator]

Yep, even at a couple inches height that sure is some discolored concrete. He has a good look of the underside of the carpet too, showing the same kind of lines. In the dried glue however are a couple specks of what looks like glitter amidst the streak of different color.

[Null]

The boy walked over to one of the specks, trying to see what the heck was up with these things.

[Narrator]

They look like they're embedded in the glue although after a bit of poking and prodding to try and get a better look at them it seems like they're shook free of the dried glue and suddenly scurry away like miniscule silverfish, zipping up across the underside of the carpet and towards the edge of the cut.

[Null]

The boy blinked...and then chased after them.

"Wait up, you fuckers," he cursed, in the tiny high-pitched voice you'd get from being that small.

[Narrator]

Whatever the things are, they're fast! After sprinting across the carpet for a bit the Boy manages to lunge for one of the little bits of glitter and grab a hold of it by essentially wringing it out of the short carpet fibers sticking up. It sits in his hand, almost a two-dimensional flake it's so flat, then breaks apart into hair-thin streams that shoot away across his palm in a dozen different directions with only a vague tingling sensation.

[Null]

"What in tarnation," the boy fumed. "It thinks it can get away with THAT, does it?" he said, growing to full size.

This smart move here might have been to call some of the tech boys in to build a contraption. Will likely would have shifted into a roomba, and tried to suck some of the little buggers up for analysis.


The Boy was more into 'property damage', and went to cut free a huge section of rug. With that many little golden whatzits running around, he was guaranteed to catch one, right?

[Narrator]

The silvery droplet that escape from his hand by reforming on the back and dropping down disappears into the carpet, but the Boy is quick to tear up a long stretch of carpet. For the most part he mostly just makes a lot of racket in order to reveal more concrete, but for a brief moment he can spot the silver drop zipping across the ground like a very motivated bit of mercury. Then it suddenly stops and soak into the concrete itself, leaving behind nothing but the strange patterns in the carpet as well as a kind of radiating star of almost white skin on his palm where the thing touched him.

[Null]

A radiating star? The boy studied his hand closely, to see if it was spreading.

[Narrator]

It doesn't seem to, just five lines coming together in the middle from where the drop sat on his hand and then spread apart.

[Null]

The boy frowned.

"You and you," he said, pointing to two random passersby. "Keep anyone else from coming down this corridor. Punch 'em in the face if they won't listen to you. I'm going to take this to the lab and see if the eggheads can figure out what the hell."

Before waiting for an answer, the boy turned and headed for the science labs, to get his hand all scienced up.