Midnight Sphere [18+] [mxm]

Mark logged out of the virtual office and wrote code into his laptop. Code is to a computer what explaining how to drive from point A to point B is to someone who could not fathom an automobile.

The computer knew numbers, how human beings know what words and letters are formed from to create masterpieces and horrors.

This was his explanation to Guy, who knew about as much about the topic as one who had never seen a car knows how to drive. Whether Guy would admit it or not, they were a team, and this skill was invaluable.

It was a job he could mostly do in his underwear, too, which was what got him ultimately into this pursuit, and he decided to go to college.

It ripped his heart out when he let him go. Guy had become a black hole over the years, more and more reclusive and obsessive. The relationship ended when he absolutely refused any form of help.

Mark frowned. The pain was like a sore spot now that only hurt when he touched it. He was with Ashley now, had been for a year. It was better this way.

Ashley was not the brightest crayon in the box, and he couldn't relate much to him in conversation. But he was a ray of sunshine that cut through the dark clouds.

The sex was better than he'd ever had. Ashley made Mark see the gates of heaven with his body because he was loving and caring.

Guy was, ironically, given Mark's own profession: robotic, cold, mechanical. Pound it out hard and fast until one of them came, and the other jerked himself off to finish.

Mark sighed.

He would always love Guy, whether or not he got to a good spot, made millions with this new toy, whatever.

Thinking in ones and zeros cleared his head, wiped his mind of all these human complexities, until Mark didn't realize the time had gone by and it was already after twelve in the morning.

"Oh shit," he said.

His time blindness got the better of him once again.

Mark stood quickly. He fumbled for his phone among the barely visible silhouettes cast from the blue light of his laptop, connecting with the cool rectangle on his desk and immediately calling Ashley; he had everyone's contacts arranged by alphabetical order in his phone.

Ashley didn't pick up.

Mark called Guy.

After several long rings, he swiped away and sent a text to both, in case they'd gotten out. Then he fished his keys out of the bowl by the door and headed for the parking garage.

He clicked the key fob and slid into his red Toyota Camry, checking his phone once again to make sure he hadn't missed a response.

A pit of dread yawned open in his chest, an off feeling about their project.

He initially thought something was wrong when a few hours had passed and three hundred people who had used the toy had not reported their satisfaction, as they were instructed to do.

Of course, he could have chalked it up to those people falling asleep inside their chambers. However, after a full day had passed and more people simply had not contacted HQ, alarm bells were going off in his head.

As of now that he'd counted there were seven hundred people who were nowhere to be seen or heard from. Even Clara, whom he knew as an acquaintance, promised to call them, detailing her experience inside her orb, but that was yesterday.

Mark suffered through a diatribe of random roadkill and exotic animals some guy liked to eat while the radio host let him speak, citing pigeons as being, like a fortune cookie with a note attached.

He decided after a minute to listen to his old playlist on his phone for the twenty-mile drive to Clara's one-bedroom apartment. Mark used to game at her house when Ashley invited him.

He found a place to park and crossed the lot, rang her bell. Mark didn't have her number, relying on email for the trial members, around three hundred of whom contacted him with mostly acclaim for the toy.

Mark sent a mass email to all one thousand trial members to not use the toy again after they got out of it. He flew into a full-blown panic; they could always go back to the drawing board, or throw the whole project in the garbage, but if someone died...

Mark shuddered.

What would Guy do? Would he try to cover it up? Mark would not allow that, no matter how innovative this technology was.

After a minute of his heart racing, Mark opened the door. Clara never locked her door, said she had nothing of value to steal, once.

He frowned.

The living room was empty. Mark treaded lightly across the beige carpet, like he was scandalously here.

He looked in the kitchen. Who wanted to get off in the kitchen? Chamber separating one from reality or not, that's a bit weird.

Down the hall, he peeked into the bathroom. That leaves her bedroom. Mark felt so strange opening her door, a place he'd never once been.

He felt like a skeevy college student sneaking around with a girl at her parents' house, an utterly ridiculous feeling, but it took him back to when he feared being accused of something similar.

Well, with Guy, not a girl but anyway, they'd met when Guy was just a freshman in college at eighteen, while Mark was a twenty-three-year-old graduate looking for work with his computer science degree.

Guy told Mark of his plans, though he sounded insane, with sharp detail. Their relationship started as a sort of business partnership. He almost turned down Guy's offer for work on his project, but the younger man was filled with more fire and ambition than anyone he'd ever met.

Mark was captivated.

Their partnership quickly grew into something more, as it was one candle lighting another, that passion turned into love.

Also, he paid him quite a bit up front. It didn't hold a candle to how much Ashley had by being born, but it was nothing to turn his nose up at.

It made Guy's offer better, in retrospect, if it wasn't nostalgia.

He banished that thought immediately, especially as his eyes fell on the eight ball in the corner of the room, atop the nightstand, cramped between the wall and Clara's bed.

There was a pale glimmer cast from the orb. They named this eight-ball mermaid blue for its shimmering aqua color. There was a small mermaid engraved in the front, tail fin flipped up playfully.

Mark crossed the room slowly, hand hovering over the toy like he was afraid to touch it. One, that skeevy feeling that he wasn't supposed to be here returned, and two, what the hell?

What was going on?

They didn't program the toy to emit light.

Where was Clara?

Mark withdrew his hand. By creating this toy, they'd stepped upon something beyond their understanding, and it terrified him that it was more than the sum of its parts.

He knew deep down that she and the others were in there, that their organic bodies had, somehow, vanished, become synthetic material inside the machine.

And he didn't know how to extract them.

"No, no, this is crazy. This can't possibly be true," he assuaged himself.

Mark turned slowly toward the eight ball again, as though even looking at it would turn him into a pillar. He withdrew his phone from his pocket, hands shaking as he called Guy.

He sent him in there.

He sent both of them in there.

The phone rang several times, then went dead.

He screamed.

He screamed in uncontrollable terror.

Mark flew out the door.