Today's comes from
Wake Up Writing!
Use all of the 10 words listed below in a piece of fiction or
non-fiction. The order doesn’t matter, all that matters is that you
use them all.
Accelerate, Copious, Fluid, Jaded, Mundane, Plastic, Rustic, Savannah, Traumatized, Windchimes
The lights were dimming again.
That was never a good sign. Usually the tests' effects were well-confined by the tons of soil surrounding the particle accelerator. That it could affect systems so far out meant that they were testing it at the higher energy levels again.
Of course the bar's rustic lighting and antique power generator were perfectly capable of having brownouts on their own, but Craig could see the filaments flickering in a regular, staccato pattern. It was them all right. They were the reason he was topside in the first place, trying to forget those damned cylinders with copious amounts of local-made vodka. It didn't look like vodka. For one thing it was far more viscous than it should be and it left a slight discoloration on the glass as the sloshed the fluid around. The first time he'd tried it he was too traumatized to look at a drink for a month. But you got used to it after a while. Anyway, it was the only thing to be had.
It was weird; everything up here seemed so mundane. He looked out from his vantage point across the wide African savannah. He'd long become jaded to the view; choosing to spend what free time he had at the nearby village rather than in the center's recreation facility. Still, he couldn't ignore the vastness of it all. Nothing but untouched wilderness as far as he could see. So much freedom... but where could he go? They controlled all transportation out, and it would be foolish to try to escape on foot. There hadn't been lions in the area for years, due to all of the hunting in the area, but there were plenty of other creatures just waiting for someone foolish and clumsy to just wander by. Being drunk didn't help much either, but that was becoming his constant state.
A sound like windchimes brought him out of his reverie. His phone was reminding him that his shift was due to start in 20 minutes.
A short walk brought him back to the complex. The only evidence of its existence was a gentle curve of earth rising to a height of just 8 feet over the ground. The ground sloped down sharply as he approached it and the earthen walls eventually gave way to steel and reinforced concrete. He detached the plastic card from his belt and touched it to a sensor inset into the wall. An LED glowed green and the hand geometry sensor lit up, indicating the next step in the authentication process. After passing that, and entering a password, the door unlocked with a loud clank.
Now that the door was open he could hear the machinery running in the distance. He didn't have to see it to imagine the particles flying around in the gigantic underground supercollider - constantly accelerating with each pass. It was only a matter of time, really. They'd succeeded in creating an infinitesimally-small singularity and were trying to get the mass up enough to see some real, measurable data.
His work, though, was on the cylinders. Always with those damned cylinders. Sometimes in his sleep he could see them: tumbling end over end, their edges blurred until he could no longer tell if they were five inches long or five million. In reality, they were much longer than that. It was a curious effect, being able to have infinitely-long cylinders constrained within a finite space. A byproduct of some of the stuff the guys in Area 17 were working on, he imagined.
Someday he'd escape, he knew. They would find him eventually. There was no doubt about that. But hopefully he'd be able to get out the word first about what was going on down there.
Wordlessly he activated his local terminal and began his work on the tumbling calibrations for the day.
Someday.