[Original Novel] The Eternal Mysteries of Vril, Part 2
About a million things my sociology professor would want to say to that ran through my head, but I’d already stepped on his toes twice, so I just nodded and waited for more. It was at least a fascinating story, and depending on whether Neil regarded it as fiction, I may also have baited him into letting some of his crazy out.
“They needed Vril to power everything from lights, heaters, dehumidifiers, to water pumps and other necessities just to make those caverns into a comfortable environment in which to live. But with such incredible energy density, it also could be used for excavating new tunnels and chambers, converting the obstructing rock immediately into vapor before safely redirecting it into volcanic emissions.”
I briefly pictured Neil as a frantic, sign-wearing hobo ranting about all of this on a street corner. Yet because he seemed so put together, I still reserved judgement. He was plainly connected enough with reality to succeed academically, and to hold down his job as tour guide. I expected at the end he’d reveal that he was pulling my leg, but wanted to draw me in until then.
Instead, he just continued to play it totally straight. “So far as humanity’s best and brightest can tell, Vril consists of antimatter contained not within a huge bulky electromagnetic confinement device as physicists use today, but instead individual molecular cages arranged in geodesic spheres you may know as buckyballs.”
I nodded and rubbed my chin to appear as if I was giving all of this serious consideration, while waiting for a punchline that never came. “This contains antimatter safely, since loss of confinement results in a much less energetic reaction than it would if a large volume of antimatter were to escape a conventional electromagnetic confinement chamber. The amount of energy released when a single confinement molecule fails is insufficient to break the bonds of neighboring molecules, preventing a chain reaction.”
I drummed my fingers on my thigh with one hand, nursing my coffee with the other. I wouldn’t even have bought it except that they come hassle you for hanging out in their lounge if you don’t. Neil never touched his.
When it seemed there was an opening, I asked him why he spoke about all of this as if it were real. He gave me a faint, knowing smile. Many possible ways to interpret that, none of which I found agreeable.
“You must know at least one jeweler, yes?” He gestured to my admittedly ostentatious earrings. “One, yes. Friend of the family.” He removed his weird little pin and handed it to me. I tried to give it back, worried it might be an heirloom or something.
“This isn’t necessary Neil. I believe you.” He closed my hand over the pin with his own. “No you don’t. But I’d think you were gullible if you did, just like that. Why don’t you take that pin to your jeweler and ask them what it’s made out of.”
Alright. I get it now, I thought. He’s really all in. He lives and breathes this fantasy. Uses it to capture the interest of naive freshman girls. He must have some success with it too, if he went so far as to dress the part and have this custom broach made.
“...Alright Neil. I will, for sure.” I worried he’d know I was lying, but he seemed to take it at face value. For the next two hours we talked about comparatively banal stuff. Campus policing, pledge drives, new clubs and so on. It’s amazing how he became an ostensibly normal, cogent person once we started talking about that stuff. Like he can just turn the crazy on and off at will.
I didn’t see him for a few weeks after that. I kept worrying one day I’d wake up to a huge backlog of angry, hurt texts from him in my phone, but nothing. He made zero efforts whatsoever to contact me after that. No emails, no calls, not even a wave when I would spot him shepherding prospective new students around campus.
It felt a little bit insulting, even. Wasn’t he into me? It seemed that way for awhile at least. I stewed over it for day after day until I remembered I still had his pin rattling around in my desk drawer. It matched up with a runic symbol I at last was able to find on Google when I searched some terms from the story he told me in the book store.
Loads of batshit conspiracy stuff came up. Page after page of it. Nazis. UFOs. Shape shifting lizard people. The hollow Earth. The entire gamut of warning signs that someone’s off their meds. Another strange symbol appeared over and over. Something like a broken wagon wheel.
I wondered if perhaps I was too hasty. I mean, I dated a Scientologist once. This Vril stuff didn’t look any crazier than Xenu, thetans and engrams. I worried I might’ve stomped on the feelings of someone who, in the brief time I’d known him, had only ever been a soft spoken sweetheart to me.
But the next day when I waited for him at the Feuerbach monument, he was chatting up another freshman with long blonde hair like mine. Feeding her the same load of nonsense about underground cities and the great flood, by the looks of it.
My initial, cynical suspicion seemed vindicated. He noticed me and seemed as if he was going to say something, but didn’t. As I got up to leave, I noticed in passing that there was a Vril rune carved into the monument with many other similar markings.
He must’ve taken an interest in it himself. Researched it, then worked it into a routine he could use to impress girls. I shouldn’t have doubted my first instinct. When I finally took that stupid pin to my jeweler, it was to sell it. Figured I may as well, considering.
“I’d sure love to know where he got this” Mr. Kamiński mumbled as he scrutinized the pin under intense magnification. When I asked why, he said “It’s made of an alloy consisting of one part gold and three parts titanium. Very rare, known to metallurgists as beta titanium-3 gold.”
I furrowed my brow. “Wait. Rare? How rare we talking?” He switched to another lens, still studying the odd little trinket through a monocular scope. “It was only invented this year. Nobody’s making jewelry out of it yet. But that’s the other strange thing.”
He showed me some magnified photographs of what the captions identified as worthless replicas of designer earrings. “There’s no sign that it was laser cut. Or stamped. Or made from a mold. The edges are perfectly sharp, however close I look. I can’t look any closer without an electron microscope, but-”
I snatched the pin from him, paid him for his time, then rushed it back to my dorm. When Melanie returned, I foisted the pin on her and explained everything I could about its origin without coming off like an escaped mental patient.
“Yeah, I have access to an electron microscope in the materials lab. Technically it’s not for personal use, but you should see some of the dumb shit the guys in my program use the 3D printers for.” I asked if that meant she’d check it out for me. “Sure I guess. You’ll have to buy me pizza though.”
I told her more about Neil and how we met over the pizza. “Oh yeah, that guy. He told me the same goofy shit back when I did the tour, before orientation. Set off all kinds of alarms in my head. I can’t believe you went anywhere alone with him.”
I insisted we’d gone on only a few dates and all of them to public places. “You say that” she cautioned, mouth full of pepperoni and olive, “but I bet you wake up one night and he’s under your bed jerking it to the sound of your breathing.”
I laughed, equal parts amused and mortified, until some pizza came up the wrong pipe. Getting the coughing under control was made more difficult as Melanie didn’t offer any help, instead pantomiming Neil wanking under my bed.
“God damnit Melanie” I wheezed. She just kept laughing, but did eventually bring me a water bottle. That might’ve been the end of it. I was certainly ready for her to come back and tell me it was just something he’d paid to have custom machined, maybe gotten ahold of the alloy through an unscrupulous friend in the materials lab.
Instead, when Melanie returned the pin to me, she just looked troubled. “So what’d you find? A nanoscale ‘made in China’ on the back?” She didn’t smile. “Where did he say he got this thing?” I balked at her. Not Melanie too. I briefly entertained the thought that I was on some elaborate hidden camera show.
“What’s the big deal? It’s a piece of metal.” She turned it over in her hands, peering at it intently as she replied. “The alloy is brand new. It doesn’t exist outside the lab yet. It’s a perfectly cubic molecule which repeats in a three dimensional grid. Four times stronger than plain titanium.”
Stay Tuned for Part 3!
Am still more concerned about your post payout, you could be earning more than this you know.
Taking that piece of shit to a jewelry, I knew it's going to bringout some strange info.
Going to part 3.
Hun sounds interesting ... waiting for your next post