The Glass Man Comes
The midday sun was abruptly eclipsed, leaving Vincent’s face with an odd coolness as he worked his glass. A low, guttural rumble, like the groan of a titan, vibrated through the cobblestones of Pompeii. He looked out the window up at the peak of Vesuvius. A plume of dark, roiling smoke, thick with ash and fire, billowed into the sky, quickly darkening the blue.
Panic seized the marketplace. Vendors let out cries, donkeys brayed, and children screeched in fear. Chaos broke out, as people pushed and shoved in a desperate attempt to flee the impending doom.
Vincent felt his heart pound against his ribs. A child, no older than his own son, stumbled and fell. His cries were swallowed by the roar of the volcano. A woman, her face streaked with tears and ash, clutched a small, cloth-wrapped bundle to her chest.
He could taste a thick stench of sulfur on his tongue as a rain of pumice stones began to fall. They pelted his skin and coated everything in a layer of gray dust. The sky was now a swirling vortex of black and red, illuminated by the fiery glow of the eruption.
Vincent knew that this was no ordinary tremor. The wrath of the mountain was being unleashed. He had to act quickly. Glancing at the secret hiding spot underneath his furnace, he knew that time was running out and there was only one thing he could try.
The world began dissolving into a blinding inferno. A wave of liquid heat, as intense a heat as the furnace itself, engulfed Vincent, stealing the air out of his lungs. The ground trembled violently, causing bricks to fall out of the ceiling. The roar of the volcano was deafening, a monstrous symphony of destruction.
He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the inevitable. He expected the crushing weight of ash and rock, for a final, suffocating darkness. But it never came.
Instead, an unfamiliar stillness settled over him. The searing heat receded, replaced by a strange, cool sensation. The deafening roar of the volcano faded into a distant hum. He tried to move, but his limbs felt stiff.
He opened his eyes, or at least he thought he did. The world appeared distorted, refracted through a strange, crystalline lens. He looked down at his hands and his breath caught in his throat. They were no longer flesh and blood, but translucent, shimmering glass.
Panic surged through him but his emotions were muted, like a ripple on a frozen pond. He tried to scream, but no sound escaped his lips. He was trapped in a living prison, encased as a living statue of glass.
He stepped outside, gingerly stepping over bricks and broken tables. His workshop was utterly destroyed. The entire town had been devastated by the volcano. Buildings had been reduced to rubble. Streets were buried under a thick layer of ash. The air was thick with smoke. The world he knew had been replaced in an instant by a desolate wasteland.
Everyone he knew — family and friends — had gone. Yet he had survived, in some manner. He was a relic, a silent witness to the destruction. He had changed with the world.
Time was no longer a progression from day to night. It turned into an amorphous fluid for Vincent. Encased in a crystalline form, he was a silent witness to the ebb and flow of centuries. The destruction of Pompeii was the opening act of his prolonged existence.
He wandered across the ravaged landscape beyond the ruins of his former home. The world was a tapestry of change, woven with the threads of empires rising and falling, of wars and plagues, of triumphs and tragedies.
He saw the rise of Rome and the legions marching across Europe, the aqueducts and colosseums standing as testaments to its power. Then he saw its fall, how their infrastructure turned into ruins that was disappointingly familiar. He witnessed the darkness of the Middle Ages, the flickering candlelight of monasteries, the sound of steel clashing on the battlefields of the Crusades. He observed the blossoming of art and science during the Renaissance, as the ancient knowledge he knew was now being rediscovered.
He was a silent observer during the French revolution, watching the guillotine fall and Napoleon rising above the years of senseless death. Then came the industrial revolution as machines rose and cities grew to new heights.
Each era left its mark on him through his memories. The layers of history etched into his consciousness. He became a living repository of the past. He saw the world changing from swords and sandals to steel and steam. He had seen humanity at its best and its worst.
Yet he remained a man out of time, a mere ghost in a glass shell. He felt a prolonged loneliness. The endless parade of human history lost its allure. The grand narratives of empires and revolutions, and the petty squabbles of politics, felt increasingly repetitive. It was a drama that played itself on a constant cycle on the stage of time. Vincent found himself growing weary of the constant noise and commotion of human existence.
As he walked along the coastlines of eastern Asia, he looked out at the vast, unexplored depths of the ocean. That was a realm that nobody knew of, one with a mysterious silence that resonated a lot with him. The sea offered promises of something new, with its hidden currents and unexplored depths. It was a departure from the well-trodden paths of history.
He turned towards the salt water lapping against his vitrified feet and simply walked into the sea. It was cold and briny and quickly enveloped him, the opposite of what he experienced from Vesuvius. He sank, slowly and steadily, his glass form impervious to the crushing pressure of the depths.
The world above faded into a distant haze. The sunlight cast an ethereal glow around him. He saw strange and wondrous creatures he never knew existed. These bioluminescent beings pulsed with an otherworldly light. He spotted colossal, silent beings that looked like monsters from his fairy tales.
He descended deeper into the abyssal zone, towards the darkest points. The water grew colder and the darkness more profound. The pressure from the water only grew.
He felt the forces threatening to shatter his glass form. He tried to turn back, but his body was too heavy. He wasn't able to swim, he was sinking. His consciousness began to fade. He felt a strange sense of peace, a quiet acceptance of his own isolation. All sense of time and place was lost as the darkness consumed him.
The submersible's robotic arm carefully cradled the translucent sphere.
It was brought into the onboard laboratory for further investigation. It was a bizarre artifact: a perfectly preserved human brain encased in a vitrified material, pulled from the crushing depths of the abyss.
"Remarkable," Dr. Rafael Santos murmured, examining it closely with a microscopic lens. "A complete, vitrified human brain at these depths? That defies all known geological timelines."
"And the composition of the vitrification is unlike anything I've ever seen," Dr. Zahra Tazi, the teams's geologist chimed in. "It's not volcanic glass, or any synthetic material. It seems almost organic. But that's impossible."
Councilor Aliye Borhan leaned forward, raising her eyebrows. "What are the implications Doctor? Is there a way to learn more?"
"Potentially, Councilor," Rafael mused, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "Look at these neural pathways. They appear perfectly intact. If so, our optical computing system might be able to reconstruct the brain's activity, essentially reading the memories that have been stored."
"Memories? From how long ago?" Zahra asked skeptically. "This object could be millions of years old."
"Carbon dating places it closer to two thousand," Rafael tapped on a datapad. "But the vitrification process seems to have halted all organic decay. Think of it like discovering a time capsule, a window into the past."
"And what if these memories are dangerous?" Aliye wondered. "What if they reveal something we're not prepared to see?"
"The potential for knowledge outweighs the unknown," Rafael said firmly. "We're talking about finding a direct link to the past. That's a risk we'll have to take."
"Let's take it back to shore," Zahra decided, her scientific curiosity overriding her caution. "I want to run a full analysis of the vitrification process first. There's something very unusual about this."
Back at the high-tech laboratory, situated on the coast, the vitrified brain had been carefully encased in a containment field. Every so often, pulses of light went through as the optical computer tested the etched neural pathways. A computer-controlled laser, precisely calibrated to interact with this crystalline structure, began stimulating the dormant neural pathways.
"Neural activity is being detected," Rafael announced with growing excitement. "We're seeing patterns. We're detecting coherent thought processes."
In front of them, a holographic display flickered. Then, full images began to appear. They were fragmented, like shards of a mirror. They could see Pompeii, its streets bustling with life, and the ominous plume of Vesuvius erupting.
"It's working," Zahra said breathlessly. "We're seeing memories."
The images began to grow more coherent as the lab computers improved their synchronization. They were mesmerized of this glass man witnessing the story of human history unfolding in front of them. It was a silent film originated from his mind.
"He saw so much," Rafael murmured with reverence. "Centuries of human history, all etched into his brain."
The memories shifted again, showing a plunge into the depths of the darkness of the ocean and all the strange sea creatures he encountered.
"He went deep into the sea, without any equipment, deeper than any human has ever gone by themselves," Zahra watched with wonder.
Rafael, Zahra, and Aliye exchanged a look, a silent acknowledgment of the profound strangeness of the moment.
"He found his peace," Zahra whispered.
The images faded, showing an end to his story. The scientists stood in quiet contemplation, having encountered a silent traveler through time who experienced the world. And now they were tasked with understanding and carrying on all the history he saw.