by Prometheus and T5
"...fish sticks," Sam Dawson half-yelled, staring at a frozen package.
Danny Hearn quickly popped his head around the corner of the door. "That's all?!" he said frowning, his eyes still dark-rimmed from the fading hangover.
Sam rummaged through the freezer a bit more, his hands leaving damp imprints along the surface of the sleek, silver metal fridge door.
"Uhhhhh..." his voice came muffled from inside the freezer, "...and refried beans."
Danny stepped fully into the spacious kitchen area, leaning heavily on a marble island-unit counter. He sighed, ruffling his thick auburn hair.
"Jaysis... okay... have you checked the walk-in?"
Sam shut the fridge door, holding two icy packages. "What? You're too good for fish sticks?"
"I don't even know what the hell they are," he sneered with a mild headache. "Have you checked the walk-in?"
"Fish sticks are frozen pieces of--"
Shut up! Danny yelled at Hal.
"Dude! You call up any animal gene you need, and you don't know what fish are?" he asked incredulously.
"Of COURSE I know what fish are!" he yelled in irritation. "It's the fucking sticks part I'm having a problem with! What are you 21st century people? Cro-Magnons?!"
Sam gained a mock-serious expression on his face. "Ohhhhh! NOW I get it... the future-boy has champagne tastes..."
Danny grabbed the sides of his throbbing head, the hangover beginning to reintensify. "What the FUCK is CHAMPAGNE?! WHAT THE HELL ARE FISH STICKS?! SPEAK GODDAMN ENGLISH!" he yelled in sheer annoyance, his face reddening to a glow.
Sam stared at him a moment, still mock-serious. "Dude... you don't know what champagne is?"
"Champagne is an alcoholi--"
"FUCK YOU!" Danny finally yelled, realizing that he hadn't got around to all of the 21st century's culinary delights, including champagne... whatever it was.
He immediately bolted for the walk-in freezer around the corner, cursing and grumbling the entire way. "Fucking primitive, cave-dwelling... ignorant... never should have come out of the FUCKING trees... scared of fire and shit..."
Flinging the walk-in freezer open, a waft of cool air briefly fogged his eyes. Stepping in, he found over a hundred different food items securely stored in the nice, state-of-the-art freezer.
"DUDE!" he yelled over his shoulder to Sam, who was walking up, trying to bite down a snicker. "There's LOTS of food in here!"
"I know," Sam said, shrugging.
Danny slowly turned toward him. "You... know..."
"Yeah..." he said, shrugging again.
A small vein began poking along Danny's forehead. "Then, why, Samuel..." he began, very, very slowly, and very, very quietly, "...didn't you... tell me..."
Sam shrugged again. "Eh... I just thought you might want fish sticks," he replied, his mouth beginning to give way to a smile.
Danny immediately tackled him in a flurry of hungover anxiety, beating Sam's cackling form repeatedly with his fist.
Meanwhile, on the ground floor, Shirley Francis was going over a few tax forms on her desk, looking on-line for information on advertising. She sipped her coffee gently, allowing the hot liquid to drift down her throat. Tobias Christopher had gone for his daily jog of fifteen-thousand laps around the perimeter of the entire island, and she could swear that she heard scuffling and laughing from the second floor.
She smiled, playing with her hair a bit, still engrossed in her work. Kids... she thought.
The main lobby door suddenly swung open, and a slender bald man, around six feet, seven inches tall, stepped in. His robe blew a bit as the glass door slid shut.
"Hello..." she began with a smile, "...can I help y--?"
"Thank you, but you have much work to do..." he interrupted, walking toward her, his eyes never leaving hers, holding up a single finger, "...and, besides, why would you want to waste time talking when there is no one here?"
The end of his sentence drifted off as her eyes glazed over, still staring at the spot where he had entered. He never broke his stride, entering the elevator. The silver doors closed as he eyed the numerical keypad. He winced a bit, technology outfoxing him. Doors. Minds. Objects. Even laser trip-wires. These were key simplicities to him. But complex data pads were a bit out of his league.
"If Z were here, she could just 'boom' me straight in," he began with a smile. And, suddenly, his face grew very calm and serious. "'Z'... what... who is that?"
He was confused. A letter? A name? Why had it suddenly popped into his head? Who was Z?
He quickly dismissed this. It was neither the time nor the place for such a thing. The young woman that he had met sunbathing had spoken of this place. She had advised him that this new consulting agency specialized in strange things. And, since he was a stranger in a strange land, what better place to start looking for questions than here?
Going up through the elevator shaft, sprinting nine levels had been easy, his toes gripping the edges of the thick, steel cabling. Stopping on the tenth floor, he felt something... odd. Something quite undefinable.
He asked the doors to open, and they did. Strangely enough, he was expected.
"Greetings, stranger," Naecken began, standing directly in front of the elevator shaft. "May I offer you a drink?"
Turkish Stringfellow looked at the strange creature that spoke to him, if creature indeed it was. He couldn't feel it.
The only senses that acknowledged this being were his regular, three-dimensional senses: sight, hearing, and possibly kinetic touch. He reached out to the black, devil-like being, and Naecken returned the gesture by grabbing his hand and starting to shake it up and down.
The atmosphere was clean and colorless. Someone had painted the walls, ceiling, and floor green. There was no furniture except for a mattress on the floor. Most of the walls had been removed, and pillars held the base weight of the next floor.
"Carrot juice?" offered Naecken.
"Eh? Thank you..." the thin, bald man replied, uncertain as to what he had actually just said thanks for.
The dark being gave him a glass of orange liquid. Very carefully he tasted it and, to his surprise, liked it.
"We are opposites," the devil told him with a firm tone of voice.
"Yes, I presume so."
"Yet parts of me are becoming clearer now... and they are part of you."
"Part of me?"
"At least of what you represent. I have meditated during the times of pain and realized I am not who I am yet. I feel another change in representation is coming. You will be needed to keep us in balance."
Stringfellow looked at the enigmatic being's feet and the slippers he wore. The pair of strange footwear designed to look like a fluffy animal didn't really look appropriate for this being, and neither did the carrot juice, for that matter.
"I hope I can call you friend," said the ebony giant.
"It would be a shame for us to be enemies." He gave him his hand again, and Stringfellow found it to be a fantastic experience to touch a being that wasn't really there.
Then the dark man sat down and hummed, apparently forgetting the world around him.
Stringfellow left him there and left his apartment. Now that he was here, he could sense weird things in the beings inhabiting this place. They seemed to have an abundance of energy for beings on this plane. He decided to investigate.