Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2026
“Mr Pool, were you engaged in violence? I strongly discourage you from drawing attention to yourself here. The organized violence upon this society from the ruling class is hidden but all too present.” Philoctetes admonished with a flat, but friendly tone, wholely inconsistent with the circumsstances.
“Thank you for your concern, my friend, but it was the iron fist of the state that perpetrated the violence I was just now confronted with. I in no way sought it out.”
“Are you injured? The spray of blood on your face appears to conceal many tiny punctures.”
Pool looked down at the surface of the mask in his hands. It was, in fact, pocked with tiny holes and indentations, as were his goggles. The array of marks was covered in a spray of a tacky, but drying liquid, but only obvious blood around the edges.
“This isn’t all blood…what is this substance?” Pool tested it between his fingers. It was sticky and nearly oderless.
“It is phosphorescent dye. That is unfortunate. Your eyes will not readily see it, but I am able too, and undoubtably they are also.”
Pool flinched and drew back as Philoctetes came over to him and reached for his face.
“What are you doing?” Pool held his hands up, still holding the mask and goggles and stepped back.
“It appears to be shrapnel, Mr Pool. We must get you cleaned up, and remove what we can.
“Pool submitted to Philoctetes’ doctoring, remembering an incident when he fell into a bed of spiny brambles when he was a child and subsequently thrashing about as his mother attemped to pull the thorns out of his hands and face. He steeled himself and let the doctor work.
The lavatory sink cabinet soon held a dozen or so tiny grains and pellets of concrete and several metal shards, all swimming in a smear of his own blood. He looked himself over in the mirror and its determined insect population. His mouth, nose and eyes had been saved, but his cheeks and forehead were speckled with red dots of various sizes.
“I see no dye,” he said.
“It is invisible, or at least transparent to the human visual range.”
Pool had noticed that Philoctetes’ method of pondering was abrupt and did not look like any sort of human thought process. The anthromorph turned quickly and left the lavatory without a word, only to return a moment later, after some rustling in the adjoining room, bearing one of the room’s lamps, which he had paid little attention to. The pair tall cylinders had occupied the corners of that room, brightening when tapped to varying degrees.
“As I suspected,” said Philoctetes returning with an entire meter long glowing rod. The spectrum of these is adjustable just as the luminence.” Pool watched as his guide fiddled with circuitry beneath a panel at the top that he hadn’t even noticed.
The light changed first from white, to red to orange, across the rainbow hues to blues and violet and beyond.
“Mr Pool, would you be so kind as to shut off the lavatory’s light nodes,” he asked.
Pool was suspicious but did so anyway.
With the lights out and the standing lamp held aloft and near to Pool’s face, he could see himself in the mirror cast in an unwholesome light. It reminded him of Mr Maron’s obscene club in Tesifon with the revelers and terrifying music.
Pool looked at his face. The red pocks were now black, his own hair had a greenish-yellow glow to it that he did not expect. His overall pallor was stained with an uneven blotch of bright white, spread over the left side of his face except where the mask and goggles had covered, and down his neck to some extent. His fingers (as well as some splotches on the backs of his hands also glowed. It did not come off when he rubbed, not even when washed with water from the sink.
“This is approximately what I see with my eyes. It is fluoresces in the ultraviolet band of the spectrum.”
“How long will it remain,” asked Pool gravely.
“I cannot say for sure. Days perhaps weeks.”
Pool sighed. At least it wasn’t forever. If he should ever return to that horrid club in Tesifon, he would cower in shame.
“What about the raincoat belonging to my friend? Is that marked too.?
Philoctetes, lamp in hands turned and left the lavatory and he followed, turning the light back on as he passed.
The coat lay on the floor where he had dropped it upon his return. Philoctetes picked it up and held the lamp close to it.
“There is some residue on the coat, around the hood, which is also abraded and marked by the shrapnel as your face was, however, The residue does not cling to the surface.”
Further tests revealed that the dye residue on the raincoat washed off easily.
“It seems a design feature,” Philoctetes added without comment.
It seems like something Nila would arrange for.
Ion Fyr 