Alan liked collecting stuff. Not just any stuff, but it was still safe to lump his collection together into one nondescript category. He always viewed the 'stuff' he bought as potential decoration, and it appealed to his fascination with patterns and puzzles. He owned three modern art themed rugs, yet only had one room to put one in; No two of his picture frames could be said to match each other, but each had a unique and enticing design to it; And the number of things he would like to hang up on his walls wouldn't fit even in an ordinary-sized house, let alone his two bedroom apartment. All the same, every purchase was well worth it to him.
This was how he came across a strange totem pole on his way around town one weekend. Truth be told, he wasn't actually out to browse for any new items on this particular weekend, but he just happened to be passing by a little antique pawn shop when something in the window display caught his eye and drew him inside. The totem pole was covered with what looked like foreign writing on the sides as well as very elaborate pictures. Before he realized he was holding it, running his fingers over the gilded surfaces, he had already approached the owner of the store.
"How long have you had this piece in the store?" Alan tried to ask offhandedly. A question to which the sharp-eyed gentleman answered, "Inside of a week," before engaging in a story about how the item that Alan was holding was actually imported from another country, and that he couldn't possibly let such a rare piece go for any less than two hundred. Alan briefly attempted to argue that he wasn't interested -- he knew how these swindlers worked -- but of course the owner had seen him drawn to it from the moment he entered the shop, and in less than a minute had him convinced that he couldn't live without it.
"Two hundred it is then," Alan sighed as he pulled out his wallet and paid the man.
Rather than taking his latest piece of art back to his car first, he instead brought it along with him to lunch so he could have a chance to look it over more closely. After the hostess had seated him and he was waiting patiently for her to return for his order, he pulled out the little totem pole and set it upon the table.
The totem pole stood about ten inches in height and was tapered so that it easily sat on one end without tipping over. From top to bottom it had shimmering gold that flowed like cursive writing, but looked like gibberish that didn't seem to match together at all. In spite of this, it still accomplished a beautiful spiral of gold from top to bottom. The whole thing was smooth like polished wood, yet oddly heavy as though it had a core made of stone. The thing that most interested Alan were the pictures on the top. There were three murals, tiny, yet extremely detailed. One showed a picture of a female dancer clothed in exquisite silks. The second, an almost exact depiction of the moon. The third was a constellation of stars that he had never seen before.
"Sir?"
Alan jumped. He had been so absorbed by the art that he had forgotten that he was waiting for his waitress to return.
"Y-yes. Sorry about that," he muttered, picking up the totem pole and placing it in his lap. "I'm ready to order. I'll have the smoked salmon and prawns. Just ice water to drink please."
"That won't be a problem," she scribbled on a pad of paper ask she spoke. "Soup or salad?"
"Salad with Thousand Island dressing, please."
She scooped up his menu and went back to the kitchen with his order, leaving Alan alone once more. Rather than setting the totem pole back upon the table, he kept it out of sight in his lap and continued to study the pictures. Checking for tool markings or paint, he ran his finger across the picture of the woman dancing. The totem moved.
Alan set it down next to him on the seat as though it were a snake trying to bite him. He continued to stare at it until the waitress brought him his salad and almost scared him to death. She asked if he was alright with an eyebrow raised skeptically, and he assured her that he was fine. He thanked her for the salad and tried his best to smile so she would leave.
Once she was gone he experimentally touched the totem again and quickly withdrew his finger. Nothing. He pressed the picture of the dancer. Nothing again. Confused and wary, he realized it would be best to place it back into his coat pocket and eat his lunch before he became any more suspicious than he already was. He finished his salmon, decided he didn't have as big of an appetite as when he'd come in, got a to-go box, over-tipped his waitress hoping she would kindly forget to tell anyone else about her jumpy customer, and drove home.
-------------------
Finally arriving home, Alan had convinced himself that his mind had been playing tricks on him earlier. He closed and locked the front door and sat down on his couch, taking off his coat and pulling out the totem pole.
Again he touched his finger to the picture of the dancer, sure that nothing would happen this time. When a piece of the totem on the bottom shifted, he almost threw the whole thing across the room. What was he holding? Was it a bomb? Some kind of trap? A long lost artifact from some other country? Questions flowed into his mind like a million little voices who all wanted an answer at once.
He touched it again. This time it shifted again, a little lower. He set it down on his floor and touched it. Nothing happened. Apparently he needed to have one hand wrapped about the base for this to work. Technology that he didn't, couldn't possibly, understand. Yet his unending curiosity wouldn't let him stop. He picked the totem back up and touched the mural of the moon. More of the gilding shifted, this time in the opposite direction. He liked art that made him think about patterns, but this was outrageous.
Over the course of the next hour, Alan made several observations: Nothing he touched would cause a change to the totem except for the three pictures. The moving parts were only on the bottom, where the fancy gilding was at, and they seemed to move one at a time from top to bottom. The dancer moved one piece to the right, the moon moved one piece to the left, and the stars moved two adjacent pieces in the opposite direction from each other.
He had started to slowly try and line up pieces of the gilding all along one side of the totem when he had to use the bathroom. When he came back everything he had done was undone. His confusion returned, this time with anger. After more experimentation he found that if he was not in close proximity to the totem for about forty five seconds after he had made a change, it would shift on its own, effectively randomizing everything once more.
Alan spent the rest of the night rotating back and forth, lining up every line that seemed to fit with another along one side of the totem. It was very hard working with characters that he didn't recognize, and realized partway through that he was doing some parts wrong and kept shifting pieces until at one point he touched a picture and nothing happened. He tried the other two and they wouldn't work either. The gilding on the side shimmered. He must have done something. He turned the totem to the side and looked at the words he had made.
ΩΩΩ ΩΩΩ ΩΩΨͺ ΨͺΨΉΩΨ΄ ΩΩ Ψ§ΩΨΉΨ¨ΩΨ―ΩΨ©
An unexplainable feeling grew slowly in his gut as he sat there holding his totem. It wasn't fatigue, he wasn't tired yet. It wasn't quite lethargy either. Then he knew: acceptance. The aura about his totem was almost recognizing him as much as he was it. Without even consciously realizing it he glanced at the writing again and spoke aloud in a language that he did not know.
The writing shimmered again and a small puff of smoke shot out of the top of the totem pole. Alan watched as it rose towards the ceiling, unsure of what to do. It began to change colors from a dusky gray to a vivid green. When it turned red and began to expand, he got worried and stood up from his couch fully intending to run, but only to find that there was no where to go except through it. Instead he stood there dumbstruck, watching his apartment slowly fill up with the colored gas.
