Changing the World Malleable "Webizens" at a Time!

THE ADVENTURES OF GILBERT AND DREL
by Matt Mongrain

     Gilbert paused to admire the scenery once more. He was on a boat, in the middle of the Adriatic sea , a vast expanse of blue water as far as his eyes could see; the reflection of the sun made the depth’s shimmering ripples glow with energy. Overhead, gulls chirped, circling the boat with frightening determination. It all seemed so beautiful to Gilbert; he heaved a great breath, and walked back towards the cabin of his small vessel where a large stone lay in the middle of the room.

     The stone, too, merits description; it was a very large boulder, just large enough to fit through the doors; it made one wonder what exactly it was doing on a boat, and why the boat didn’t sink under its weight. The stone radiated a cold, grey unhappiness - it permeated the boat, sinking through everything from the cushions of the captain’s chair to the rusted steel of the sides, and around it was a taut yellow rope. Gilbert eyed the rope with growing fear, but his resolve grew no less; he tied the other end of the yellow rope around his waist, picked up the enormous stone with unnatural strength, and walked outside.

     With a final, sweeping look at the entire horizon, not a single dot of land speckling its calm perfection, he threw the boulder off the ship and into the cool water under him. The yellow rope snapped with such vigor that Gilbert feared it might break him in two before the water had a chance to claim him; to his pleasure, his back seemed intact as he sunk slowly into the depths of the sea.

     The cool blue water accepted him as the world couldn’t, embracing him into its calm folds. He drifted, content, into an odd sort of sleep - one undisturbed by dreams or visions, of the sort he hadn’t had for what seemed to be ages. There was always worry on his mind, invariably; but not now. Now was different. Now he would finally be free to sleep forever.

     Today, like every day, he subconsciously felt a hand support his back as another slit the rope around his waist with cold accuracy. At that instant, the terror and nightmares returned, just like they always did, as he was pulled out of the serene water. The blue of the water turned a fiery blood red, and Gilbert thought he could make out little demonic faces biting him, clawing at his flesh. He screamed, but the sound was muffled and distant under the waves; he was unable to find even his own voice among the terror that surrounded him, and he was paralyzed by it.

     He felt the familiar hand pull him, coughing, onto the deck of the boat. Curling up like a child, Gilbert turned away from his savior and shivered.

     “Please don’t do that to me, Drel,” he said bitterly. “Please don’t keep my from my freedom.”

     Drel stood up, and stared, emotionless, at the pained man; Gilbert’s dark hair clung wetly to the boat. “You know I haven’t a choice, Gilbert. I am only fulfilling my duty.”

     “Duty?” Gilbert spat, bitter. “To whom? The humans who spawned you and I?” He began to take off his clothes, to hang them out to dry. “The humans who made the two of us into monsters?” he demanded through his wet shirt.

     “We are not monsters, Gilbert,” sighed Drel. “We are superior to the humans in eve--”

     “I don’t believe that, Drel. If we were superior, we’d replace them. You won’t even let me taste the water. It’s the only place they can’t touch us, Drel... in death, they can’t touch us.”

     “My instructions are to watch over you, Gilbert.”

     Gilbert walked naked to the cabin, where a fresh set of clothing was hung limply on a ramrod. They only had three sets of clothing, and there was always one out to dry. Drel didn’t care about being wet, and spent most of the time so - he had not once changed his clothes. “Those instructions came from the humans, Drel,” said Gilbert, calming down.

     “Yes, they did, and I must follow them,” began Drel, staring pensively at the patterns formed by the wavy water. “You know what happens to us when they find out we’ve broken the rules. We cannot break them.”

     Gilbert would be unable to win this argument, this same argument that they shared every single day. Drel was right; if they broke the rules, the nightmares would return. Though he had been given a long time to contemplate it, Gilbert had never discovered the source of the terror; he just knew it happened to Drel if he failed to save Gilbert from the water, and it would happen to Gilbert if he were to be pulled from the water by Drel. Despite the fear of the terrors, Gilbert would still try every day to end it, hoping that maybe Drel would leap in with him so that they might slumber eternally together.

     They had little information about anything given to them. All they knew was that humans had locked them into this strange prison, that they were called Gilbert and Drel by the humans, and that they spoke the language English, a language originating from a land called England , on the planet named Earth. For three weeks they had thought and talked and considered - they had been left on this boat in the middle of a world of seclusion for seemingly no reason, left with very little food, three sets of clothing, the boulder, and a long reel of yellow rope. They finished all the food in short order, storing its nutrients for later retrieval as they had been trained to do.

     Gilbert thought. He remembered that he had been trained to store the nutrients, but he could not remember an instant of his training - or if there had, indeed, been any training at all. He slumped into his chair and allowed his head to fall into his outstretched palm.

     “Drel,” he cried out suddenly, shattering the calm of the sea. He knew Drel was on the other side of the boat, scratching equations into the white paint of the steel. “What do we know about ourselves?”

     “We know that we are not human,” said Drel, sighing. “We found basic supplies on the ship – food, water, rope, and – oddly – a boul—”

     “The boulder. Why would they give us a boulder?” asked Gilbert. “There has to be a reason; they don’t want to encourage us to kill ourselves, obviously.”

     “Perhaps it is so that we might carve ourselves a tool,” suggested Drel. “Or that we might use it as a game.”
     “I think we should break the boulder, Drel,” said Gilbert, standing up and grinning widely. “I think we should break it in two.”

     Drel was surprised. This would mean the end of Gilbert’s attempts at taking his own life, and would make Drel’s life a lot easier in consequence. But it seemed somehow wrong to break the boulder. After a lot of calculations and scribblings, Drel had concluded that the boulder was very nearly spherical; such a fantastic aberration of nature should not be tampered with. “Are you quite certain, Gilbert?” cried Drel to the tall man who was rapidly approaching the boulder, stone fists clenched to the point of pain. “It’s all we have other than our clothing and--”

     “Never mind that, Drel. We’re being hidden something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there, somewhere. Everything we’ve been given - the clothing, the rope, the food - all makes sense in context. But the boulder doesn’t fit.”

     “That’s true,” said Drel with a nonchalant shrug. “We’re running out of nutrients, too... we’ve barely got enough for another week. I suppose that the boulder would be no great loss; I fear only that should we break it, the terror will return.”

     Gilbert stopped dead in his tracks and unclenched his fists. No matter how many times he was given his hot, searing, bloody glimpse of Hell, he would never grow used to it. It was the sort of thing that burned to the very depths of his soul, the sort of thing that no man would ever be able to shake off, and he never looked forward to experiencing it. He didn’t know if he’d be able to take that chance, but he raised his fists again. “They can do what they will to me. We’ve only a week left.”

     Before Drel could move to stop him, Gilbert allowed his massive fist to come crashing down like a sledgehammer upon the boulder. With a great crack, the stone broke into two perfectly even slices, that dropped onto the floor without a sound. Gilbert had his eyes shut tight, awaiting the terror to overcome him; after a few seconds, he opened his eyes tentatively again to find that nothing had happened.

     The two huddled around the shattered bits of stone and stared at them expectantly. Inside each half was buried half of a black sphere with odd ridges on the inside; they looked like they would fit neatly together if removed.

     “Oh,” said Drel, awed. “Look at the halves. They’re so black, and perfect... if I conducted tests on them, I’m certain they would end up being halves of an absolutely perfect sphere.”

     Gilbert was speechless, taken aback by the odd, alien beauty of the sphere. They were untarnished in every way, perfectly smooth, but they still exuded the appearence of being incredibly old; it seemed less like it had been buried inside the stone, but rather that the stone had grown around the onyx halves. He reached for the stones, fingers outstretched, yearning to touch them. He found himself unable to resist their intoxicating lure... they wanted Gilbert to touch them.

     As his fingers began to near the stone, he felt a sense of mounting dread that he couldn’t explain. Still, though, he couldn’t stop the stone’s approach to his hand... the stone itself was moving towards him now, breathing, begging him.

     His fingers touched the sphere, and he shrieked as unimaginable pain coursed through every fiber of his body. It felt to him like a million-volt electric shock, coupled with flaming heat - the pain was so intense that after an incredibly brief instant, he passed limp onto the floor.

     Drel was puzzled - he had seen his friend touch the stone and then instantly pass out, without a single word of information to fuel his calculations. He opted not to touch the stone, and went back to the other side of the boat to scribble calculations regarding the sphere and await his friend’s return.

     A full day later, Gilbert awoke from nightmares and scrambled to his feet. “Did you touch the stone?” he cried to Drel, who was not surprised by Gilbert’s sudden awakening. “Tell me you didn’t touch it.”

     “Why not, Gilbert?” asked Drel, standing up. “What happened to you?”

     “Pain,” said Gilbert. “Pain is inside the stone. I don’t understand it. Incredible, surging pain...” he was out of breath, and his heart rate had shot through the roof. He panted and sat himself down on one of the chairs. “I wish we’d never broken the boulder, Drel,” he said. “I wish we’d never discovered the sphere.”

     “Was it really that terrible?”

     “More so than you can believe.”

     “Then, I shall not touch the sphere.”

     “Good. We must find a way to get the halves together without touching them. There has to be a way - otherwise the sphere wouldn’t be there.”

     “Maybe this is all a test, Gilbert,” said Drel pensively. “Maybe someone is testing us.”

     “That’s possible,” admitted Gilbert, standing up to observe the sphere once more. It pulled Gilbert’s hands towards it once more, but this time Gilbert knew to resist the impulse and held his hand back from it. He touched the boulder; it felt the same as it always did, smooth and soft. Memories of pain made him recoil, but his curiosity became strong, then overwhelming - Gilbert felt that the key to escaping the prison lay somehow inside the onyx sphere.

     He decided to ignore it for the time, and slept until morning: a well-needed sleep, undisturbed by terror. The supply of nutrients was getting low, and for a time Drel feared that they might die of starvation before they found their way out of the mess. Much to their surprise, when the two awoke they found another box of food - exactly like the last - resting comfortably upon the table in the cabin. They ate hungrily, replenishing their lost vitality, and Drel continued scribbling calculations while Gilbert simply sat and stared at the alien sphere.

     Very suddenly, he stood up, clutched one of the ramrods that were hanging on the wall, and jabbed at the sphere, frustrated. A clear, bright sound emanated from the point of impact - like a golden bell, the sound rippled through the air, and Drel twitched his head up from his work and stood.

     Drel’s “equations” now covered the better part of the ship; arcane symbols that Gilbert did not understand, and a lot of numbers. Gilbert didn’t much care for numbers; he preferred Philosophy and Music.

     “What was that sound, Gilbert?” queried Drel, now in the cabin and standing across from Gilbert.

     “I struck the sphere-half with this rod,” answered Gilbert, “and it answered with song.”

     “Strike it again,” commanded Drel with authority. Gilbert did as told, and the clear bright melodic ringing swam once more through the boat. Drel, usually shy to music, hummed the note in a rumbling basso tone.

     The sphere glowed warmly at the sound, and its colour changed from black to a creamy white. The white swam oddly within the sphere, and it appeared to radiate its own light. Drel reached out a long, bony finger, and Gilbert stayed his hand.

     “Don’t touch it, Drel,” he urged. “I don’t want you to feel what I had to feel the first time.”

     Despite the warning, Drel used all his strength to push towards the sphere, and he ran his fingers gently over its survace. “It’s smooth,” he said, staring blankly out of the window, not looking at the sphere at all. “It’s warm, too.” He pulled away his hand, and looked at Gilbert. “It’s safe.”

     Gilbert outstretched a tentative hand, and allowed his palm to touch the sphere. Drel had not been lying; the spere was perfectly smooth and round, and exuded a perfect, comfortable warmth. Gilbert smiled widely, and tugged on the sphere half embedded in the stone. With a small pop, it was pulled out, and Gilbert held it.

     It was light; much lighter than it had initially appeared. Gilbert tossed it from hand to hand, much to Drel’s derision, and then threw it at his companion. Drel, startled, caught it in both arms.

     “I should advise you not to harm the sphere,” said Drel protectively, cradling it in his arms. “It may be our way out of here.”

     “Drop it,” said Gilbert with a grin. He stared at Drel, who made no indication that he was going to drop it, and his face sombered. “Trust me, Drel.”

     “I won’t, Gilbert. Not this time.”

     “It won’t break. It can’t. Feel it.”

     Drel prodded the sphere. It was made of some strange material; it resisted denting and scratching. Gilbert had a point; it seemed unlikely that it would break readily if dropped. With a sigh, Drel outstretched his arm and allowed the sphere to fall to the ground. It fell straight down, and landed on its rounded side without bouncing or shaking, as if it were very heavy - it made no ring, or indeed any sound at all.

     As soon as this happened, Gilbert took up the ramrod again, and thrust it violently at the second half, but nothing happened; there was no sound or movement, just a hollow tap as metal struck onyx. His excitement faded; their escape from this prison would not be as easy as he hoped.

     “I thought as much,” said Drel with a sigh, and returned to his Mathematics. Gilbert was puzzled; he had truly expected the other half to ring when struck.

     “What do you mean?” he demanded of his companion. “What did you think?”

     “I didn’t think both would respond to the same thing. We’ll have to find out what the second one responds to.”

     Gilbert sighed, and gave up. For many days he tried everything he could think of on the rock; kicking it, spinning it, tossing it, but never touching the sphere; he knew that if he did, the pain would return. Eventually, though, the temptation to touch it became too strong to resist, and his fingers sunk into the sphere painlessly. This one was very unlike the other one. It was made of a thick liquid: things would sink into it, but it never changed shape. After pulling the half out of the stone, Gilbert found that he could push his finger through it without changing it at all, almost as if it were just an illusion. But that revelation didn’t help him; after passing many different things through it, his quest ended.

     Drel was, as usual, occupied in his calculations, and Gilbert had worked out a plan to once and for all end his imprisonment. He would strike Drel with a ramrod; not hard enough to injure him, but enough to knock him out. He would then make his leap with the boulder as he always did, leaving the sphere behind so that Drel might escape someday; Gilbert simply did not have that kind of patience.

     He approached his companion from behind, and Drel hardly had a moment to react before he fell limp to the deck. The blow had been hard and surgical; right on the top of his head, as Gilbert had been trained to do.

     He tied the yellow rope tightly round his waist, and attached the other end to the stone; he walked slowly to the other end of the boat, and threw the stone into the water.

     Softly and calmly he sank into the depths of the sea; it was night, and the dark water clutched at him like a mother does a child. He sank ever deeper, ever deeper, until he felt his back strike the sandy bottom of the sea. It cushioned him, and Gilbert waited; but he did not drown. After an hour, he was still alive and well, and had not drowned; and then, the dawn rose like a golden beacon, and the truth fell upon him.

     One of the ways he and Drel were superior to humans was that they could breathe underwater. With that realization, he closed his eyes and sobbed quietly, his tears mixing with the salty sea. Drel picked him up, and heaved him to the surface; the terrors enveloped the two of them, hot, burning pain and fear rendering them almost immobile. Only the desire to end the paralysis kept Drel swimming towards the surface, and he threw Gilbert upon the deck with great force. The terror dissipated like smoke, leaving in its wake two panting and frustrated creatures, curled and wet on the deck of a boat.

     Drel stood, and walked into the cabin to rest; water dripped from him, and one of the drops struck the second half of the sphere that had been dropped nonchalantly by Gilbert hours earlier.

     A warm tone could be heard; the sphere turned a milky white and began to glow with warmth.

     “Gilbert!” summoned Drel, confused. “Gilbert, the second sphere-half is white!”

     Like a cannon Gilbert flew into the cabin, excited and happy. “How? What did you do to it?”
     “I did nothing consciously,” said Drel. “But perhaps the water dripping from my body struck it, and it changed with the mixture. Simple Alchemy.”

     Gilbert picked up the now-white half and held it in his hand, weighing it; it felt the same as the first one, now. It had once been a heavy black rock, of liquid consistency, but now it was solid, light, and white. He puzzled over this, and went to retrieve the other half that the pair had stored in a box under one of the cabinets to keep it safe and dry.

     With one half in each hand, Gilbert raised a single eyebrow. “Drel,” he began, eyes full of wonderment, “how is it possible for two black stones with entirely different properties to turn into two very similar white stones?”

     “I don’t know,” said Drel. “Put them together.”

     Gilbert aligned the grooves on the flat sides of the two stones, and locked them together slowly. When rubbed together, they hummed graciously, and the two watched intently as the two sphere-halves were locked together perfectly. Much more to their surprise, the thin line that separated the halves seemed to have dissapeared; try as he might, Gilbert was unable to separate the two halves, or indeed break it in any way. The sphere was the size of a large orange, just shy of a basket-ball, and as soon as the halves were interlocked it became the most perfect shade of blue, resplendent and calming. It exuded a perfect, calm, orgasmic happiness; Gilbert felt the love pour from the stone through his hands and into his soul, and felt then that - with the Stone in hand - he would be content to spend eternity simply holding it, staring at it. Upon further examination, the sphere was not blue, but rather a completely new colour unknown to Gilbert and Drel - it seemed, almost, to be all the colours of the rainbow at once.

     Drel gawked at the sphere, at the sheer Mathematics required to build such a thing, and reached out to touch it, feeling that he could be happy forever if he could but hold it. Gilbert clutched it closer to himself; he didn’t want to lose it to someone with a passion of Numbers and not Thoughts. It was him, after all, who discovered and assembled it.

     Drel, though, felt that he was entitled to the sphere - he had, after all, discovered how to turn the deadly black spheres into the serene white ones, something Gilbert and his Philosophy never would have deduced. He looked at Gilbert angrily.

     “Please give me the Stone, Gilbert,” he said bitterly. “I desire to hold it.”

     “It is mine, Drel,” said Gilbert, spitting his friend’s name with venom. “I have worked for it, and I will enjoy it forever.”

     “You will not,” said Drel. “It is as much mine as it is yours, if not moreso. Now hand it over!”

     “Never!” snarled Gilbert, baring his teeth and holding the Stone closer to his body. Drel leapt at Gilbert’s throat, clawing at his chest and attempting to free the Stone from his companion’s death-grip. Gilbert answered in kind, kicking Drel in the legs and running outside where he would be safer.

     It didn’t take long for Drel to stand up again, and he went outside and jumped once more on Gilbert. He delivered a number of severe blows to the creature’s head, striking with his fists and claws left and right, and kicking his side violently; but Gilbert remained persistent, as the Stone had given him superior strength and vigor. He pushed Drel away, who then went flying through the air and into the side of the cabin. Clutching the Stone tightly, Gilbert stood up and faced the ocean, stroking his possession affectionately.

     Drel stood, and wiped the blood from his chin; with monstrous force he ran and tackled Gilbert, who was not expecting such a blow. His grip on the sphere slackened, and it flew from his grasping fingers and off the side of the boat.

     The two stood up and watched in horror as the round stone flew from their vessel and dropped with a sickening splash into the sea, a sea that had turned green and murky as soon as the stone touched it. It sank deeper, deeper, until it reached the bottom of the sea; it rested there comfortably, exuding a warmth that was all but imperceptible by Gilbert and Drel.

     They said nothing to each other, only wiped and cleaned their wounds, and retired to their opposite ends of the ship to ponder. The next morning, Gilbert found another boulder in the cabin, unbroken and smooth, and the previous one had dissapeared; upon breaking it in two, he found two black sphere halves within.

     It is said that if one would sail to the very middle of the Adriatic sea , one would find an enormous pile of rainbow-coloured perfect spheres buried in the ocean floor, and a boat with two human-looking skeletons sunk very near it.

[ this page and all media therein is copyright © 2002 by matt mongrain. all rights reserved. reproduction prohibited without express, written permission of the author. ]