Inventory 847

“It still smells weird in here, Jamie.”

Marty lazed in one of the break room chairs, leaning precariously on two legs with his back against the wall. In the sink, the black matte orb they only knew as “#847” steadily exuded an ooze of brownish-gray watery liquid, festering in the pool of its own waste building up around it. Jamie had just taken her gloves off and thrown them away, along with all the paper towels and bleach she used to wipe down the floor and table. The object had made a huge mess, and their best idea to contain its mess had been to leave it in the basin until further notice.

“If you’re not happy, then call a cleaning service.”

“Mmm, nope.” He wiped his laptop absentmindedly with his shirt. Jamie sighed, slumping into one of the two other chairs. In the third, Nora was clickety-clacking on her keyboard, repairing the database they had lost earlier that day.

“Come on, Marty, it’s 4:50. Can’t I go home?”

“Not yet, kiddo,” he said. “You’re still on shift. Besides, we’re all staying until we figure out what to do with this goddamn slime ball.” He looked at his secretary in the other chair. “You have Nora to thank for that, by the way.”

“Kessler,” she said, her eyes locked onto her laptop screen, “As much as I normally condone your carelessness, we can’t just throw it away — no matter how much you want to. At some point that nasty fluid will fill the trash can, and then it’ll fill the dumpster. And given that the sink is half-full by now, I don’t think that attitude is gonna stand until the garbage truck comes next Wednesday.” She continued to type with speed and focus, working hard on repairing their database.

“By the way, Kessler,” she gestured to her laptop screen, “I hope you know that we wouldn’t have this issue if you ordered those new SSDs I asked for. We should’ve made physical backups months ago—”

“Whatever,” Marty said, “Backups are your problem to deal with, Nora.”

The door swung open abruptly, and Darrell — the foreman hard in both hat and head — strode into the room with his pager and clipboard in hand.

“I believe what Nora is trying to say, Marty, is that she placed that order seven weeks ago. If I recall, that order never made it past your office desk.” With no seats left, he stood in the corner by the microwave, crossing his arms.

“Oh, well, I— uh. Well, that’s not the issue right now. I paged you because, as the foreman, this fiasco is just in equal parts your mess to deal with.” Marty pointed to the orb in the sink, bobbing in its own waste. Darrell peered into the basin, a sickened expression coming over him.

“That,” he grumbled, “is disgusting. And unsanitary. Where on earth did you find this?”

“Jamie found it in a really old box. It was labelled ‘number eight-forty-seven.’ None of us know what it is — I was hoping you would.”

Darrell set his hat down on the table, staring blankly in the opposite direction of the sink. “No, I don’t recall off the dome. I’d normally advise you check the database, but…” He exchanged pitiful glances with Nora. “Well, Jamie, at least I know you were actually doing something useful today.”

“Har, har,” she said. “But yeah. We’ve been in business for, what, five years? This box was at least ten old, and it must’ve been sealed with magic, cuz’ I didn’t see any tape or staples holding it shut.” She then explained how the liquid had clearly been oozing out for some time — when she had opened the box to see what was inside, the sticky slime erupted everywhere. The otherwise featureless box had had only one thing visible on it — “#847,” scrawled in Sharpie.

“But I still don’t know what it is,” she finally said, “or what ‘#847’ means. Maybe some kind of old code? We could use it to identify—”

“This isn’t an investigation, Jamie,” said Darrell. “If it’s not labelled, and not being paid for, we get rid of it. And if it’s causing a mess, we definitely get rid of it. For all we know, this could be the remains of some product now leaching out toxic waste.”

“Finally, someone has some sense!” Marty butted in. “I mean, I can’t have this… thing, in my warehouse.”

“Yeah, right, Marty.” Jamie said. “The only reason you wanna toss it is because you wouldn’t make any money putting it on Craiglist.”

“Listen, you may think it’s funny, but half our income comes from Craigslist. Just ask Nora.”

Nora looked up suddenly from her screen. “Huh, uh, what? Are you guys still talking about this?”

“You’re the one who told me we needed to figure out what to do with the slime orb instead of throwing it away.”

“I was hoping you guys would—”

“We’re not throwing it away,” Darrell said over the others. “We’re going to dispose of it by handing it in to the proper authorities.” He eyed the sink for a moment. “I don’t want to hold onto this thing longer than we have to.”

“Oh, sure.” Jamie tapped her index finger on the table impatiently. “Let’s call the freakin’ cops, they’ll surely know what to do.”

Darrell sighed. “No, Jamie, we’re not calling the cops. I’m filing a report with the Hazardous Waste Control Agency. And before you ask, yes, this is one hundred percent in their job description.” He pulled out his phone, an old brick of a device, to look up the agency’s phone number.

“Darrel, what— really? The HWCA?” Marty sat up straight, setting his laptop down. “You’re going to get a state agency involved in this? I mean, that’s— they can’t know about this.”

Darrell glared right back at him. “Well, I don’t see why not. This is the most responsible course of action.”

“It’s overkill is what it is. Our business is doing perfectly fine without henchmen in hazmat suits barging in, turning everything in my building up and down to secure and disinfect. I don’t need to fill out paperwork with the state government about potentially hazardous chemicals in our warehouse. If the only other option is escalating the problem this much, then we can gladly handle it ourselves.”

“Marty, really. Don’t be paranoid, it’s not—”

Marty stood up. “Do not call the HWCA, Darrell. I’m serious.”

Darrell set his phone down, re-crossing his arms. “Fine, you’re the boss. But you’re still overreacting.”

“Whatever.” Marty sat back down, turning to Jamie. “Come on, kiddo, you’re the one who found it. Help me out here.”

Jamie’s eyes lit up. Someone actually cared about figuring out what number 847 was, not just how to get rid of it as fast as possible. “Okay, let’s see.” She got out of her chair, straightening her hoodie. “We don’t know what number 847 is, but we do know three things about it — its physical appearance, its continuous ooze, and the box it was in. Based on the fact that the sink is two-thirds full now, we can safely say that it produces a lot of liquid, and isn’t gonna slow down anytime soon. The box was full to bursting with that ooze by the time we opened it, but still managed to contain all of it until I cut it open. This might have something to do with the fact that it was sealed without tape or anything — the people who first got it in the box must’ve known something we didn’t, and we just destroyed their containment unit.”

“Clarification,” Marty interrupted, “you destroyed it. Now cut to the chase, what’s your solution?”

“Hmm,” Jamie said. “Nora, I’m guessing we can’t just install a new drain, in like, a side room?”

Nora tapped on her laptop for a moment. “Given our current budget, it’d be about… eight months before we can pay for that.”

Marty sighed. “I honestly thought we made more than that.”

“I could always take it out of your paycheck. You make twice as much as—”

“Bup-bup-bup, that’s enough,” he shushed her. “Jamie, continue.”

“Our main problem is the ooze — we need a way to prevent it from building up uncontrollably.”

“If I may butt in,” Darrell said, “I imagine the reason it’s pooling up is that the ‘ooze,’ as we’re calling it, is too viscous to drain down the sink at a rate that would balance out its discharge from the sphere. A drain may not work anyway, as the thickness may cause the ooze to clog the plumbing.”

“Right,” Marty added, “and we need a way to get rid of that shit in a way that can’t be traced back to us.”

“I, uh, wouldn’t say it like that, but yeah.” Jamie thought for a moment. Without thinking, she got up and wandered to the sink. She gazed into the square basin, nearly three-quarters full with the slimy, griegey liquid, the orb floating at the top of the pool.

“I guess we could— hmm, no.” Number 847. Of what? How many of these were there — and were they all gooey orbs, or what? It began to sink in: this really wasn’t something normal. It produced matter out of nothing, looked nothing like anything she’d seen before. This was paranormal, in the truest sense — not like ghosts or cryptids, but some bizarre abberation of the universe that defied its own conventions.

An anomaly that had fallen into the custody of possibly the least qualified people on Earth to understand it.

“We, uh, I—” she stammered. “I don’t know.”

Nora finally hit Ctrl+S, and closed her laptop. “I guess if none of you can figure something out,” she mumbled, “I do have one idea.”