Eric was up late again, the glow of his computer screen illuminating his face and wall in a blue hue. Although he was drowsy, he knew he wasn't quite at the point of tiredness he needed to sleep. He drooped forward in his chair, his perspective completely absorbed by the monitor. In his hunched state, his only sign of movement was the constant scroll of his fingers on the mouse as he rapidly glazed through pages of random websites.
His mind was wrapped up in a form of decompression as he browsed the internet. Letting go of his difficult physics midterms, he still found himself browsing scientific articles. Trying to remove himself a bit more, he opened up several content sites to pick through and rose out of his chair. Stretching, he straightened his legs and rose on his tip-toes and leaned back, tightening all his muscles up to his arms as he reached up, as if grabbing some imaginary energy pack, and opened his eyes wider. He shuffled towards his bathroom and turned the light on.
Although the lights assaulted him and he had to immedietely close his eyes again, he adjusted quickly and gazed at his scruffy self in the mirror as his vision began to focus from its' watery-glossyness. Blinking rapidly, he quickly looked around his counter and spotted his multi-colored glass bowl laying in his isoproyl bath and washed it under his sink. Letting the hot water wash away the disintigrated tar, he blew it clean, wiped it dry and packed it with fresh pot.
"I'm not going for anything crazy", Eric mused to himself as he only put a light amount into his bowl. "Just enough to make this a bit more fun and help me pass out for the night". Gently tapping the soft material flatly into place, he lit up and finished it off in a matter of minutes with about a dozen small flicks.
"There we go.." he thought to himself as he precariously placed the bowl onto his counter top. He gazed into the mirror with slightly drooped, relaxed eyes and noticed the pinkish hue in them from the increased blood flow. He hummed to himself in a rythmic tone, "Vascular dilation..that's my elation!" satisfied with his rythme and connection to his highness, he smirked to himself in the mirror. He then turned the light off and returned to his chair, bringing his face back to his blue and white screen.
Thinking to himself, "Alright, only a few more minutes and I'll head to bed for the night", he rapidly opened anything that seemed even the slightest bit interesting to him. Feeling a bit more creative and lucid, Eric pursed through a selection of science article tabs he had gathered open out of his tab-spree. Nearing the end of his own pre-disposed time limit, he found himself deeply staring into the information of an article regarding fractilization of the universal fabric versus the planck model.
Although he knew there was a good chance he was reading the hypothesis of a much-too-optimistic physicist, Eric enjoyed playing devils' advocate, especially while in his high state. Engrossing himself in the ideas of the article, he read further as the ideas progress into electrons, taus, muons, protons, neutrons, all the way down the line of atomic and sub-atomic particles being manifested as waves in a sort of generational-quantum foam that could be fractically enhanced or reduced infinitely. The physicist skewed elsewhere, citing scripts from indian texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita as proof, and Eric quickly found himself, although highly amused at the idea, desperately falling into sleep.
Stumbling into his bed, he quickly passed out diagonally on top of his covers, contently snuggling a lump of bedding in the corner as night rapidly changed to dawn for him under the disrupted REM-effects.
Regaining consciousness out of the early morning haze, he first connected the constant beeping sound of his phone as his alarm app chiming for him to awake. Even though it was several feet away, it was still painful for him as it pierced the otherwise comfortable silence he wished to continue dozing in. Knowing he was bound to his duties and overly used to his routine, he still groggily arose from his bundled bedding and slid backwards. Ignoring the slight uncomfortableness of his sweatpants grinding into his groin and pulling his leg hairs as he slid off the bed, his eyes had not yet adjusted as well as his ears had. Knowing the layout of his room well enough, the water-stricken haze of his vision irrelevant as he grabbed his phone and shut off the alarm for his work.
"Blah blah blah", Eric's first words of the day came out in a deep and scruffy bellow as he seemingly mocked his phone and partially stuck his tongue out at it. Turning the alarm off with his crippled vision, he simply slid his feet across his carpeted floor and went to the bathroom. Turning on the bathroom again, he was felt with a familiar assault of light as he was several hours ago. Shielded with his leaky and squinty eyes, he rapidly blinked the gunk and liquid away from his eyes and gazed at the mirror again. Noticing several strands of wayward hair, he grabbed his comb and moved it across his scalp in a motion that mimicked his hair lines. "This better work...", he grumbled to himself, weighing the implications of his work day and knowing he needed to look and smell good enough to be in a professional environment. Hoping his rapid comb technique would satisfy the bad-hair-day-god, he sighed with relief as his hair all smoothed out and looked satisfying enough for the day. Smiling since he lacked both the energy and body heat to leap into his slowly-warming shower, he decided instead to derobe all of his night wear.
Taking off his sweatpants and tshirt, he used his feet to fling both garments into his closet area and looked at himself while in the bathroom. Staring at the mirror, he analyzed his own body for areas of specific focus for his regiment. Humorously going through a selection of random poses he assumed a body builder would make, he analyzed his body and made note of areas that needed improvement for the week. Slapping his own ass as a stimulant to wake up, he glared at himself widely in the mirror and soaked up the bright lights before reaching for his deodorant and applying it to each armpit. He hummed to himself and bobbed back and forth and decided to nakedly dance over to his closet. Pulling out his slacks, shirt, tie, and assorted garments for the day, he quickly prepared for work at his IT department and dressed. Without showering, he decided to spend his additional spare time browsing some of the articles he had left open last night. Turning his monitor back on with a shake, the article about fractilization re-appeared. Intrigued and still in a slightly lucid-haze from last night, he pushed deeper at the end of the article. The last section appeared to be a formulaic sheet for distilling a liquid that would supposedly cause all touched atoms to vibrate at a different wavelength, that would cause their 3-dimensional spherical shape to appear and act on a smaller, fractilized scale of itself, with all parts of itself shrinking with it.
Fascinated, Eric began looking over the formula and realized it was a moderately obtainable formula with only a couple odd ingredients. The "liquid" as it turned out, appeared to be some form of ionizing plasma that was stripping electrons away from what it touched. Further reading made him realize that this formula required an immense heating for the plasma to take shape with the ingredients, making it potentially very dangerous, and also highly destructible to most test objects. He decided to write everything down in one of his notebooks, and began letting his imagination run freely. "Hrmm... if that's the case, won't this superheated plasma basically shrink only the outer surface area of an object, barely decreasing the overall size of it due to the magnetic shielding of the atoms still preventing the transfer of further electrons and chemical reaction?", "And then.." Eric added in his own heads' voice, "isn't your choice of materials basically some superstrong or durable metal or other material that can withstand high heat? Seems like a pretty pointless connection of proof if you ask me..." Eric, in his more sober mindset, realized the more logical and skeptical side of the information before him.
Deciding he needed to head to work, he closed his notebook full of brief sketches and the formulas, grabbed a banana from his countertop fruit bowl, and grabbed his keys. Double checking for his wallet and phone, he opened his banana and exited his apartment, locking the door behind him. He quickly ate his fruit as he walked to his car, head still in somewhat of a daydream. Eric unlocked his car and placed his half of the banana on his roof as he disappointingly stared at the small space his neighbor had granted his driver side. Squeezing into his open door, he grabbed his banana and backed out for work, finishing his light breakfast and drove off towards the office. Eric remained in his daydreamed mindset as he hypothesized other uses for that plasma, and wondered if that effect could take place in the form of a gaseous or safer state of matter. He flipped open his notebook while slowly traversing the exit of his apartment complex and soaked in more of the information on the page. As he hit the main road, he had time to look over everything on the page through broken periods at red lights. Making it to work about 15 minutes before his 9:00 am salaried-shift expectation, Eric was intrigued to see that the plasma was full of highly energetic oxygen isotopes. These fed unpaired electrons into substances, and guaranteed a specific pattern of electron orbitals and energy to shrink the wavelength of the afflicted atoms. Almost like an invasive, uncontrollable thought, he furrowed his brow and thought to himself, "That's interesting.. doesn't hemoglobin readily absorb unpaired electrons?".
"Good morning, Eric!", a delicately-framed girl said to Eric as he pushed through the front door of the office. Amber was a small girl with brown hair and brown eyes with an angular jawline, but overall smooth face. It worked well for her and seemed to match her open personality. The earnestness of her smile and greeting quickly drew Eric from his thoughts as he gathered his composure and stood up slightly more erect and smiled back.
Cheerfully waving, Eric greeted back, "Good morning, Amber! How are you today?". It was a little bit of small talk, but Eric was genuinely interested, and it seemed she genuinely wanted someone to listen to her. Eric focused on her and he quickly forgot about the details around him as she recounted rather happily her experience at mini-golf. He laughed inside at his own biases over the lameness of minigolf, but felt himself changing his mind as the seemingly dorky qualities of Amber were almost automatically turned into something fascinating or attractive. Enticed as he was, his small talk was ended prematurely as his boss pulled up directly in front of the main glass doors and parked his car. Sharing a connecting gaze of acknowledgment, she ended her conversation and straightened up at her desk chair and attempted to appear as if she was still preparing for the work day. Eric too knew what the sight of that car meant, and immedietely walked off towards his office. He entered his room and set his things down on top of a cabinet in the corner. He had a list in his head of objectives he would have to finish for the day, but he honestly didn't expect to be busy long. The sub-section of the company he worked for was currently in between projects after wrapping up a previous contract, and so most days were spent waiting on troubleshooting calls with the clients and coding additional features upon their request. While the morning rapidly passed, at around 12:50 pm he decided to see if anyone wanted to go to lunch for an hour break together. Eric decided to make stops at each of his coworkers office rooms, and ended up with 4 potential candidates.
Making a group text between the 5 of them; Derrick, Andrew, Sarah, Blake, and Eric himself, he listed off the options he had pooled together.
"Hey guys, so let's do a quick vote between I-Hop, Olive Garden or Subway most popular for lunch?", Eric quickly scribbled out as text and sent to the other 4. Within a couple minutes, his expectant and hungry coworkers rapidly sent back their responses and the tally was set with Eric's own vote tiebreaking towards I-hop over Subway. "I'll break the tie and vote for I-Hop this time", he sent out to them all.
Quickly Derrick chimed in with a victorious, "Aw yiss. Who voted Olive Garden anyways, there's no way we have time".
Only to be responded with a hilariously jubilant return from Sarah, "Breadsssttticcckksss!!! :) That's why. Bruh."
Redirecting the conversation, they all decided to drive out to I-Hop when Sarah's concern for responsible gas finances caused her to ask if they were carpooling. Derrick offered up his only spot to Andrew and they decided to go together, while Eric offered up his own ride for Sarah and Blake. It seemed like a fairly sound plan to them all, so they met up in the lobby of the office and walked out into the blazing sunlight and muggy parking lot. Eric unlocked his camry and watched as Sarah playfully rushed ahead of Blake and turned around to face them both and yelled out,
"Shotgun!", as she cheerfully ran to the passengers side of the car. Eric and Blake both shook their heads and laughed.
"She's like a golden retriever puppy that got her wish to be a human", Blake said through a chuckling voice.
Eric laughed louder at the odd but true comment, "Yeah for sure, too bad she has the focus of one too", Eric added on loud enough so that she could hear them teasing her. Sticking her tongue out, she got in the car and Eric and Blake soon entered. As everyone buckled up and Eric looked around the vehicle to quickly check, he left his gaze on Sarah for a split second extra. Although the mood between the group was that of good coworker friends, Eric felt he was the most sexually experienced of the group and most willing to pursue potential outcomes. He had to admit, although he respected Sarah and her genuine capabilities to perform in the office and relatively male-oriented work environment, it was impossible to ignore that she seemed to be very similar to his type of preferred woman. Despite only being a second longer to gaze, it was all he needed to reassure his mind of his desire for her. Derrick, Andrew, and Blake didn't seem to feel the same about Sarah as Eric did about her appearance, but he was enamored with her. Her soft face and features were perfectly feminine but welcoming and gentle. Her bright hair and smile always showed her happy mood and genuine intent off in her face. He recognized her facial symmetry and overall geometry of her face and eyes as being "perfect" for him. She was short, which he preferred, and although a little on the weighty side, he definitely wouldn't say she was fat. Her form was larger than most girls, but still slim for her body type and with curves. He could tell she was athletic enough to maintain her form and keep things relatively tight, even if she did have a cushioning layer of fat all around. To him, it seemed befitting and even more humanizing and attractive to him. All the more beneficial that he saw her as very healthy and self-conscious. "Plus.." he remarked to himself, knowing full well he would never reveal the crudeness of some of his thoughts, "if she was the starve-yourself type, she would never have that chest.." as his eyes found their primary target an impossible distraction.
Meanwhile, Sarah quickly sprouted off to them both as they entered, "I am a very dedicated worker, thank you very much. I write more lines of code per hour than you certainly do, Blake". Buckling into her seat triumphantly, Sarah watched Eric quickly check around the car and stop his gaze momentarily. She didn't make direct eye contact and instead used her peripheral vision to catch Eric's eyes as they stopped on her. She felt a certain smugness at his attraction to her. Deep down, she was incredibly insecure, and felt as if her body type was in constant need of improvement compared to the societal pressures. Although it definitely motivated her towards a healthier and more athletic lifestyle, she found a hard time dropping any more mass than she currently had, and had come to accept her body style as permanetely less attractive. While she knew her breasts were well endowed and attractive, she felt cheap trying to show off cleavage or tight pants excessively, and partially blamed her reservations for her lack of flirty patrons. Eric was certainly attractive, probably more so than anyone else in the office physically, but there were a lot of good options. Mostly, she was apprehensive about his personality. "Was he genuine, was he fake?" It was hard to tell coming from her previous relationship background, and she didn't want to risk anything until she was at least more sure of the situation.
As they drove the short distance and arrived at I-Hop, the group sat together at a booth and began letting loose for their brief reprieve from work and the environment there. The waiter took their order and they all entered into a light-hearted conversation about mistakes and mess-ups from the past they found hilarious now that things had worked out, ragging on eachother whenever possible. At one point Blake made a comment about the upcoming weekend off from the office and suggested a get together at Eric's place. Feeling completely insulted that Blake would offer up another person's residence for everyone without planning or consent, Eric was about to angrily interject when his attention first drew itself to Sarah as she exclaimed happily,
"Oh, oh! We could do a movie night with popcorn and roast smores on the stove! I want to watch a horror movie but I can't watch them by myself!".
Immedietely changing his stance on the issue, Eric flipped his emotions and instead happily suggested further planning to the group about using his place. "So how does this sound, around 8pm or so show up at my place for some horror films, snacks, and texas hold 'em? Greeted with a unanimous agreement from the group, the plan was set and they finished up their lunch at I-Hop.