"Can I see your ID, sir?" the military guard asked.
David removed it from his pocket and handed it over.
"Doctor, huh? Seems like we get a lot of those lately."
"Yeah. But considering what it is."
"Actually, sir. I don't have high enough clearance to know."
"Oh."
"Here you go," the guard said, returning the ID badge. "Have a nice day."
David moved past the guard and walked down a narrow hallway, at the end of which was a metal door. He opened it and walked into a hallway with white walls. As he walked through the hall, red lights flashed around his body. And when he made it to the end of the hall, a sound was heard over the speakers right before a voice. "You're clear."
The door opened and David walked into the next room, which was empty, except for a guard standing next to an elevator.
He approached him.
"ID please."
"I just did this with the last ..."
"ID."
Apparently, this one wasn't much for talk. David handed his ID over and the guard used a scanner to verify it. Once that was done, the guard asked him to use the eye scanner.
"Didn't you just verify my ID?"
"Sir, please. These are the rules."
David did as he asked, and placed his eye in front of the scanner, which sat in the wall just next to the elevator. A red light flashed over his eye and a computer readout displayed that he was clear.
The guard handed back his ID and allowed him into the elevator.
The trip down seemed like forever. But it was only about half a minute. When the elevator stopped, David walked out the door and into a lab, filled with at least a dozen lab coat scientists.
"David," a man said, walking towards him. He smiled as he shook David's hand. "I'm Dr. Richard Burton. Welcome to the most fascinating work any scientist could hope for."
"I can't believe the security you've got here."
"Well, with what we've got down here, we have to."
"Have you opened it yet?" David asked.
"No. But we're hoping that since you're here, we might be able to."
"Why me? I'm probably the least qualified person down here," David said, looking around at all the scientists busy doing seemingly important things.
"Well, first of all, you're the one that found it."
"That doesn't mean I know more about it than you do."
"Listen. Don't sell yourself short. I've read your history. You're brilliant."
"If you say so."
"I do. Now come on. I'm sure you'll want to see it."
They walked through the lab and down a stainless steel hallway, then into another lab. Only this one was behind a vault-like door, which Richard had to punch in a code just to open.
They walked inside and saw a pane of glass separating the lab from the room containing the object. Machines constantly scanned the object, from every angle, gathering as much information on it as possible.
"What have we got?" Richard asked.
A man spun around in his chair and sighed. "Not much more than before."
"What have you got so far?" David asked.
"Who's this?" the man in the chair asked.
"Tim, this is David Carmichael."
"Ah, the one that found it. You know, you're pretty famous, as far as top secret scientists go."
"Glad to hear it. Now, about the object?"
"We like to call it The Box."
"Is it a box?"
"We know it's hollow."
David moved closer to the glass. He was only one of a few people who had actually touched it. Through the glass it looked exactly the same as it did when he found it. Minus, of course, all of the dirt that covered it.
"Tell me everything," David said.
Tim sighed, then punched up something on the computer. "Dimensions: 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet. A perfect cube. Material: Metal. But no metal that can be identified. And it's still emitting radiation. Also which we can't identify."
"That's it?" David asked.
"The scanners show that the interior is empty. But other than that, we don't know much."
"This is supposed to be the most sophisticated lab in the country, right?" David asked.
"It is. But this thing is completely beyond us."
"It may even be alien," Richard said.
Tim looked up at him. "That's just a theory. And a remote one at that. This could just be someone's science experiment."
David peered closer at the object, touching the glass as he did. "What kind of experiment?"
"Whoa, stay away from the glass," Tim burst out, pulling David back.
"What is it?" David asked, alarmed.
"Some people have gotten sick from getting to close to it," Richard said.
"Even through the glass?"
"Yeah."
David looked at his hand that touched the glass. It seemed normal, unaffected. But then the palm of his hand began to get redder and redder. "What the hell?"
"David!" Richard yelled.
David collapsed on the floor, shaking with convulsions.
"My god!" Tim said, rising out of his chair. But his eyes weren't on David, they were on the object behind the glass. It was glowing. And everything around it, all of the scanning equipment, began to melt.
"David, can you hear me?" But he didn't respond. He just kept on shaking.
Richard looked up at Tim and told him to go get help, but Tim wouldn't move. He stood up and was about to turn Tim around towards him, but he saw what Tim was looking at. The object was now so bright that nearly the entire room it was in was filled with white light. Oddly, though, none of the light came through the glass and into the lab. It just stopped at the pane of glass.
David's shaking began to subdue, but he was still sweating and his breath was shallow.
But Richard's focus was no longer on David, but on the object behind he window. The thing they called The Box.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the light was gone. But just before it was gone, Tim could have sworn that he saw something inside the object, as if he were seeing an x-ray of it. And it was moving.
David tried to get up, stumbling once. "What ... what happened?" he asked, looking around the room and seeing Tim and Richard staring at the object. David looked at the room behind the glass and saw that everything was dark. The scanning equipment was gone and so were the lights. What David didn't know, though, was that the equipment and lights were still technically in the room, it's just that they were melted by the object and were now puddles of hardened metal on the floor. With the lights from the lab they were in, they were able to see the object. A perfect metal cube, just as it always looked.
"I think we just made some progress," Richard said, looking at Tim and then David, then back at the object.
What was this thing?
