Aladdin's Curse

“Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate!” (“All hope abandon, ye who enter here!”)

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto Ib. III, 9

The asteroid belt of misshapen vibrating rocks, some the size of miniature planets, is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the red planet and the big one with the bloody crimson dot. Like too many balls whisking about the table, pinball-like collisions between the asteroids within the belt breed meteors or shooting stars that occasionally penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. If a meteor of some size fails to burn up due to its high velocity, it will slam into the Earth and from that point on, it is known as a meteorite. Every few years, a meteorite is discovered on Earth by someone immediately after its fall. It is primarily by chance or luck of the draw when someone is able to see where it lands. Since humans have colonized the planet nearly as successfully as ants, an exceedingly rare meteorite has punched through the roof of a human dwelling. The probability is quite small but not fully within the realms of the impossible. It is what happened to Dr. Billings on a cool October morning in the year 2015, the 7th, a lucky day if there ever was one.

Dr. John Billings was 44 years of age, slightly built with dark hair that was graying out more prominently day by day. He had a dark moustache with a little gray but a goatee that was nearly completely silvered as a pre-1965 U.S. coin. He worked as an associate professor at the University of Sacramento and thus, had obtained a PhD rather than a medical degree. He happened to be working in his personal basement laboratory when he heard a strange noise like a crash, perhaps something falling over. He flipped off a Bunsen burner, strode upstairs, and performed a cursory search of the house. Finding nothing, he went through the exterior kitchen door that led into the attached garage. The 2-car garage with nothing more for natural light than 2 small windows was usually a bit dark and dingy, but it happened to be radiating at the moment for some unknown reason.

Meteors are usually extremely cold, colder than anything imaginable on Earth, and ordinarily remain that way despite the intense heat experienced after penetrating the Earth’s atmosphere. Aside from transmitting an eerie glow, this one was also inordinately symmetrical in shape, nearly a perfect cylinder, a couple of inches in diameter and about 6 inches long. Dr. Billings eyed it with scientific fascination and his initial thought was from whence it had come from. His immediate question was answered when he looked up and noticed the hole in the roof of the garage along the back side, a fairly small but precise one. Out of a burning curiosity, he approached the object gingerly, bent down to pick it up, but halted. He decided to touch it lightly first much like someone would do to find out whether or not they needed a potholder to take a hot pan off the stove. The garage floor was 4 inch thick poured concrete and the object had broken through to the actual ground beneath it. It felt cool to the touch after a couple of quick finger pokes. He put his hand around it, squeezed, pulled it up, and brought it back to his lab. His first puzzling question was, “How could anything lit up like it was be cool to the touch at the same time?”

It was 11:17 a.m. in the morning when he had picked up the little cylinder-like object. At 11:36 a.m., his wife Judy came through the front door during her lunch break. She worked as a librarian barely 2 miles away at a branch of the Sacramento Public Library. Judy ordinarily did not disturb her husband in his lab and John, preoccupied with his work, did not realize that she had come home which was a normal occurrence for him while working. She parked in the driveway but did not notice the hole in the garage roof since it had gone through the rear side of the roof facing the backyard. The breakthrough had been fast and clean, neither time nor enough prolonged contact to set anything on fire like asphalt shingles or wood rafters. There was no smoke or smoldering either.

Analyzing the cylinder further, it was shiny black in color with smooth lines like obsidian, a glassy-like substance formed from intense heat, as from volcanoes. Worried about the glow, he discovered that it was mildly radioactive when it registered slightly, but distinctly on his Geiger counter. The last thing he needed was to suffer the fates of the famous Curies given their extensive work with radium. There did seem to be a faint outline of a circle near one end as if it were a capsule with a lid, but it was dirty. He tore off a paper towel, ran a small amount of water on it, and rubbed off some of the grime. To his amazement, the cylinder moved outward slightly more than a centimeter, maybe half of an inch.

“John, Oh Johhhhhhn, telephone,” called out his wife. It was the land line, and he felt his pocket for the cell but realized that he must’ve left it out in the car charger. Even in 2015, cell phones could still be unreliable and the Billings were one of a growing minority who still kept a land line.

“Hold on a minute,” he shouted back. He hastily ran up the stairs to get the phone. It was the university wanting to know if he was coming in today. He looked at the digital clock on the counter, it read 12:01 p.m. “Oh my god,” he thought to himself. “I’m uh, uh, I’m not feeling good today,” he sounded a bit lame and unconvincing. “Could you get Dr, Rose to fill in for me?”

“Yes, okay,” answered the secretary who was used to absent-minded professors.

“Good Bye.”

“Bye,” and he hung up the receiver. He had been so engrossed in his work, that he had forgotten the noon lab for his introductory chemistry class.

“Who was that honey?”

“Oh just the office,” he answered while heading for the basement stairs.

“What did they want?” She asked inquisitively.

“Nothing important,” but he knew that he would not get off that easily since his wife was one of those who wanted or had to know everything. She was a librarian after all, used to grinding out details.

“They wouldn’t have called the house phone if it wasn’t important.”

“Yeah, I left my cell in the car; I missed a lab is all.”

“Well, not all of us can sit around all day and play with our little toys. I’ve got to get back to work, see you later.”

He kissed her good bye and hurried back downstairs. Much to his fascination, the end cap had moved out a good 5 centimeters or 2 full inches. He picked up where he left off only this time he used a clean rag to rub and polish it. To his growing surprise, a dense, grayish-cloud of gas slowly escaped from its home within the cylinder, rising a little over 7 feet in the air. It was rather funnel-shaped, tapering down to a point at the top of the cylinder and expanding several feet in width at its widest point above what could only be described as a large rounded torso? Then there was a bald head at top, two narrow slits for eyes, a wider one for a mouth, and it even seemed like a pencil thin moustache and thin goatee was forming into an Oriental-looking face. It folded what resembled beefy arms and then it began speaking!

Dr. John Billings was immediately alarmed and actually had a gas mask somewhere in a box, but he failed to smell anything and the color was more of steam and it ended abruptly. Still, he couldn’t locate the gas mask after some frantic searching but did grab an old antique bronze lamp sitting back in a desolate corner on an old shelf. He had paid a dollar for it at a rummage sale wondering if he might have use for the metal. It was one of those old obsolete items that looked more like a teapot with a handle and a spout from whence the flame spewed out. The inside was hollowed and he popped the top off. In the meantime, the cloud was hissing, but Dr. Billings did not recognize it as language and promptly stuffed the cylinder in the lamp. To his further astonishment, he heard what sounded like a “nay” or “no” coming from the mouth of the cloud, but as soon as the cylinder was enclosed in the old lamp, the smoke filtered in with it in a rush like a high pressure vacuum. He dismissed the voice as no more than hissing steam. There were some brief banging sounds as if the cylinder was crashing against the lamp walls, some vibration as the lamp skittered about on the stainless steel counter top, a little steam poured out of the spout of the lamp, and a faint metallic smoky-like smell as if molten metal had been burned or welded. Then there was silence.

Dr. Billings went to grasp the handle and “Ah!” He burned his hand as if he had placed it directly on the burner of a hot stove, and raced to the faucet to run some cold water on it. There was a nice stinging red welt that would probably blister on the palm of his right hand. He filled a beaker with cold water and with the rag handy, he poured some water on the lamp and it sizzled as steam poured off like an old locomotive. A second beaker full made it steam a little less. This time he gingerly grasped the handle with the rag and the warmth quickly played through the cloth. He picked it up high enough to notice a nice discolored circle that had burned into the stainless steel and sat it back down as it seemed to heat up again. He walked a few paces to a side wall where there were water lines and a sink. He filled up the sink with cold water, grabbed the lamp with the towel, rushed back to the sink, and plunged the entire object within it. A new batch of steam arose but it tapered off and seemed to do the trick. He touched it under water with his left hand, the water had warmed but the metal object had cooled enough to touch. He left it there a few more minutes, pulled the plug to drain the water, and then filled it again with cold water to be sure.

All was quiet and his hand hurt again where he had burned it. He had briefly forgotten about it but now the pain resumed. He stared briefly at the lamp, wondering if he was dreaming, but his scientific mind kicked into gear. Where did it come from? Maybe it was the neighbor kids launching payloads in their model rockets, but it had some heft and glow to it. Where would kids get something mildly radioactive? There were low grades of uranium, some once used in glassware to give it that little extra greenish or Vaseline like glow. The object had pierced through the garage roof and had broken through the cement floor; that meant that it had likely traveled at a high velocity. The most likely conclusion was that it had either been launched, more like something from the military as opposed to some kids, or it had come from space, outside the planet. “Is it a UFO?” He voiced allowed. What bothered him was the fairly uniform cylindrical shape as if it had been carefully crafted somehow. The military might play out in the desert some but he lived in a subdivision of Sacramento, a fairly good size town. Maybe it was space debris. Various countries had so much junk up there that more and more of it seemed to be falling back to Earth of late.

He drained the water again, pulled the lamp out safely as the exterior had cooled, and tugged at the lid. It would not budge. He pried and pried with his hands, found a screw driver, then chisel, and a small pry bar, but it would not give. It was as if it had been welded on. That would explain the molten metal smell and heat he thought, but how? He sat down on a stool and stared at the lamp for a moment. The lamp did completely shield the faint light or glow that the cylinder had given off. The composition of the lamp was bronze, but it had severely tarnished due to its long years of neglect. He picked up the lamp and still felt a strange warm feeling and he tried one more time in vain to remove the lid.

It was getting late in the afternoon and Judy would be arriving home soon. He wasn’t sure if he should tell her just yet until he had a chance to figure it out. In the meantime, he’d have to round up a shingle or two from the garage to patch the roof. He had kept a half a bundle from when the contractors had last replaced the roof a few years back. He had a full class schedule tomorrow and needed to do a little prep work for that too. The lamp and the cylinder inside of it could wait another day or two. It certainly wasn’t going anywhere, so he thought.

“Don’t have the spirit of contradiction. You will only burden yourself with foolishness and annoyance. Let prudence plot against it. Finding objections to everything can be ingenious, but the stubborn person is almost always a fool. Some turn a sweet conversation into a skirmish, and are more of an enemy to their friends and acquaintances than to those with whom they have no dealings. The bone of contention is the hardest when the morsel is the sweetest, and contradiction often ruins happy moments. They are pernicious fools who add nastiness to beastliness.”

Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 135