The Kullar glass refers to two artifacts discovered in Kullar, a village in what is modern day Southern Turkey. Or maybe it’s a region; I’m not a geographer. The important thing is: an ancient, but otherwise unremarkable, clay jar was unearthed in Kullar. It appears to have been sealed at one point, but was worn away with time, revealing two curious objects inside, wrapped in decaying animal skins. Each one was a plate of some glass-like material, about the size and thickness of a pancake, but a jagged surface not unlike hammered iron. The first had the appearance of a piece of cut jade, but almost completely transparent; retaining just a slight green-ish blue hue when one looked through it. The other was similar but with a faint orange tone.
The discovery and examination by archeologists of the Kullar glass raised a number of questions. They didn’t seem to match any kind of glass-making technology that was contemporary with the pottery in which they were held, so how were they made? Who made them? Why were they made? And what were they made of? While the more historically-minded put themselves to work with the former questions, I was tasked with answering the latter. I’m in charge of running the electron microscope at my university, and the above is the information they gave me when the Kullar glass, along with very insistent instructions that I not let any damage come to them, were delivered to me.
An electron microscope, as its name implies, fires a stream of electrons at an object and then observes how they bounce off of it. Electrons are smaller than photons (which is what composes visible light, and is used by standard microscopes) and are subsequently more able to pick up fine detail and possibly make out what individual elements compose a structure. However, when I placed the Kullar glass (specifically, the blue one) into the electron microscope, nothing but darkness appeared in the results. I was examining the machinery around where the glass had been placed, using a small flashlight, when I made an unusual discovery about the glass. Light shined into it passed through and exited the glass with a most unusual color. Rather than taking on the blueish hue of the glass itself, it came out as a dark reddish color. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. How can a light passing through an object be “dark”? Surely it would illuminate that onto which it was shined by at least some amount. But, it was. It seemed as odd to me then as it sounds to you know. I shined a light through the glass and it came out with a dark beam on the other side.
I decided to photograph this strange phenomena as part of my investigation into the glass’s composition. Perhaps the specific hue that passed through the glass would give some clues. After crafting a basic stand to hold both the glass and light and allow it to maintain its position while I took the photo, I went to grab my camera. Upon coming back, I found a fly sitting in the path of the light. I went to shoo it out of the way to take my picture, when I felt a sudden sting in my hand. It was though I had momentarily brushed it through boiling oil. I recoiled in pain. What caused this, I wondered. Had I accidentally brushed my hand against something sharp? I looked at my hand and didn’t see a cut. The skin appeared very red though. I looked down at the light again and saw that the fly was still there. With my other hand, I carefully moved the paper to find the fly still imobile. An idea struck me and I turned off the light and then attempted to shoo the fly again. No pain this time, and the fly refused to move. Biology is not my field of expertise, but after careful examination, I determined that this was definitely a dead fly.
Additionally, the part of my hand that had been hurting had begun to change as well. The skin on the back of a few of the fingers had become more discolored and taken on a papery texture. Furthermore, it was numb to the touch. I felt vindicated in the idea that had inspired me to turn off the flashlight before proceeding; the light shined through this glass was somehow harmful to living cells. At this point, alarm bells began ringing in my head about radiation. Had those archeologists failed to check these items for radioactivity before sending them to me? I ran and fetched the lab’s Geiger counter and ran it over the blue glass. Nothing. I ran it over the orange glass too for good measure, which yielded an identical result. Did this glass provide some kind of new radiation that was not yet understood by science? I applied antiseptic and bandages to the affected part of my hand. More experiments needed to be performed.
Like many labs, ours contains a few petri dishes of preserved HeLa cells; human cells grown in a culture. I found one such container and looked at it under the photon microscope. As expected, it contained a number of living human cancer cells, carrying out their lives in a nutrient solution. I removed them from the microscope in order to place them under the light of the glass for approximately one second. After returning them to the microscope, I found that all of the cells were dead.
This may sound horrible to you right now, but to the science-minded like myself, I saw great potential in this discovery. If this glass had some kind of novel anti-bio properties, it could be used for sterilization of surgical equipment, items to be launched into space, or other uses that required a highly effective disinfectant. It’s possible that it could even, with the right exposure levels, be introduced to cancer patients in such a way that it would eliminate their cancerous cells without causing major damage to the rest of their body. I was eager to find out more, and it was in that eagerness that I made a rash decision.
We have a small population of lab mice, kept on hand for biological experimentation. I decided to remove one from the larger population and place it in a smaller enclosure, where I exposed it to the light for about a second. It made an immediate reaction when the light was shone on it and began screeching and trying unsuccessfully to escape the source of the pain. After the light was off, I observed the mouse as it attempted to hide in the corner of the enclosure. Much like my hand had done, its skin took on a papery appearance. One of its ears was blackened and there seemed to be a small hole in it. Had that been there before? I should have taken better notes. I looked at my own hand where the light had hit me. The discoloration was more pronounced. Touching the skin also revealed the area to have become numb. No more live testing. At least not on vertebrates.
I decided to just do basic physics experiments with the glass. Why had no effect been produced from the ambient light on the glass? Surely, light travels through it all of the time, but it hadn’t produced any of these burns into a bright light was shone through it. It may be that the light was just brighter and that triggered the strange properties, but it wasn’t that powerful of a flashlight. Surely the Turkish sun, where these artifacts had been discovered, was brighter. I now wore gloves when handling the glass, but when I had been moving it around bare-handed before, it caused no burning sensation in my hand, despite the ambient light of the room passing through it. I tried shining a weaker light from my phone through it, which seemed to pass through as a normal blue light like one would expect from a piece of glass. However, after leaving the light from the phone on and simply turning the room lights off, it changed to the reddish, dark light that I had seen earlier. It seems that it wasn’t just the amount passing through the object that caused the light, but how much light was being sent through it in a focused manner compared to the ambient light. Fascinating! I couldn’t even fathom what kind of internal material structure could achieve such an outcome. Did the ancient residents of Kullar have access to some kind of now-lost technology that was beyond modern scientific understanding? This warranted more study.
At this point, it occured to me that I had a second artifact to work with. Was it possible that the orange glass produced a similar effect? I carefully placed the blue glass back into its holder and retrieved the orange one. I placed it in a stand and shined a flashlight through it onto a blank section of counter. Much like the blue glass, the light that shined through it produced a completely distinct color from the glass itself; this time a bright, faintly purple light. Very bright, in fact. It seemed to produce a light that was brighter than the one being shined into it.
When I turned the light off, I noticed that a dark patch had been left where it was shined. I rubbed my gloved finger over it, but it was different from the thin layer of ash you would expect from a laser burn. It had a slick feeling to it. Following my instincts, I placed an open-bottom microscope over the spot to get a closer look at the patch. It was in fact, some kind of living cells left on the counter. A fungus, I believe, but I’m no biologist. Still, I wanted to know more.
I wiped the spot with bleach and pulled out another petri dish of HeLa cells, checking them under the microscope. More cervical cancer cells mingling about in a nutrient bath, like I would expect.. I exposed them to the light from the orange glass for a split second and observed them again. The effect was immediate and drastic. Cells moved faster after exposure and were noticeably more numerous. They seemed to be reproducing at an accelerated rate.
My thought process, at this point, was that this light somehow had the potential to create, or at least increase life, possibly even having a regenerative effect. A very unscientific conjecture under normal circumstances, but it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility after what I had just seen. My mind turned to my hand, and the damaged flesh that lay beneath the bandage, and then to the poor mouse I had experimented on before. I found him in the enclosure, still alive, but hiding. The exposure area on him was looking worse; I think I could see a small amount of exposed skull. I know I had decided no more live vertebrate experimentation, but he seemed like he wasn’t long for this world anyways. Besides, this was a different light, and it did have the potential to help him.
When I shined the light through the orange glass onto the mouse, he did not squeal in pain like he had the other light. It seemed to have no sensory effect on him at all, as he just continued to lay there. After a few seconds of observing him, I did notice a kind of white film appearing on his wound. Could be skin cells beginning to regrow or perhaps pus. I don’t know; veterinary science isn’t my field of expertise.
I wanted to give it some time. Science is based on observation over time. And, much like the blue blue glass, the light from the orange glass may take some time to fully take effect.
Three minutes after exposure, there was a noticeable change in the body of the mouse; skin had begun to reform over the afflicted areas of his head, but it didn’t look exactly like skin that would form normally over a wound. Rather than having the pink, sickly appearance of freshly-grown skin like under a scraped knee, it seemed thicker and darker than the skin around it, and had a wavy or pleated quality about it, almost like the folds on a clamshell.
10 minutes after exposure, enough skin had regrown to completely cover the affected area, but rather than closing over, it grew away from his skull and still had a hole through which the initial wound could be seen given enough light.
12 minutes after exposure, I notice that the mouse’s tail is bifurcated approximately 1cm from the tip. Had I not noticed that before?
13 minutes after exposure, the fold of skin proceeding from the affected area is moving, bending at one particular spot in the middle, as though there is a joint there. The mouse is itching furiously whether the growth attaches to his head and neck, but the motion seems to be unrelated to the motion of his itching.
15 minutes after exposure, the bifurcation of the tail is now beginning at the base where it attaches to the mouse’s body. The newer tail seems to have a bluish hue compared to the existing one.
20 minutes after exposure, the protrusion has taken on the appearance of a human finger, bending in a similar double-segmented way. It appears to also have a fingerprint. Where the nail would be there is instead an open hole in the skin under which something appears to be slowly pushed forward through a barrier of gore.
22 minutes after exposure: It’s an eyeball. Appears to be cephalopod in nature based on the shape of the pupil. Its gaze follows me when I get close to the mouse. There are noticeable lumps under the mouse’s skin about his back and legs. They seem to be making it difficult for him to move.
25 minutes after exposure: The lumps seem to have calcified in such a way to contort his limbs into unnatural positions. The 2nd tail has taken on a darker and segmented appearance, much like a dragonfly. At some point, a second eyeball had appeared in his far eye socket. One of the lumps had burst and through the resulting gore, what appeared to be a small crab claw was bursting forth. He seemed to be having great difficulty breathing.
At this point, I had to stop. I was watching a biological reaction that had never in recorded history been seen before, but the suffering was just too great; the right thing was to put him out of his misery. I took a pair of forceps and a scalpel and did my best to sever his spinal column quickly and cleanly. This very quickly caused the original parts of the rat to stop squirming, but the parts that were still growing continued to twitch as though still alive long after the mouse was clearly dead. I shined the light through the blue glass onto it until it was indistinguishable from a pile of dust. Still, I scraped as much of it as I could into the biological waste container bound for the incinerator.
It was at this point that I started to think about the potential for the light from the Kullar glass being used as a weapon. Imagine if someone figured out a way to project the light from the blue glass across from a satellite across an entire city. What would happen to the people there? Or what if they managed to do the same with the orange glass. I didn’t know which one was worse. Did I even want to help the researchers better understand these artifacts? I needed time to think about this. And, after seeing what happened to the mouse, the quick first aid I had performed on my hand started feeling less and less adequate. I decided to put the glass away and make an appointment at the hospital.
As I was preparing to leave, I noticed the Kullar glass was… humming is the best way I could put it. Not in the range of a human voice, but there was a slight yet audible tone emanating from each of them, or maybe from both of them together. But at this point, I was ready to leave. Another mystery that could be further investigated another day. I grabbed both of them in order to put them in storage, and that’s when it happened.
The closest I can liken the experience to is if you were walking down the street when suddenly someone grabbed you and flipped you upside-down into a pool of water. The instant and shocking disorientation that would create is what this felt like. I was no longer in the lab. My body no longer felt like itself. The temperature was much colder. The light level was much darker. The whir of the air conditioning and the light hum of the machinery ceased and I was left in near total silence, except for a deep and raspy voice.
“You have provided me with light,” said the voice. A figure moved in front of me. Maybe it was the voice, or the shadow of the voice. It was so hard to tell what I was seeing. It was like opening your eyes underwater. I tried to yell, but only silence escaped my mouth. Or maybe I couldn’t really control my mouth at all. If I was moving my mouth, the voice seemed uninterested in what I was trying to say.
“Continue to provide it to me, and I shall keep providing you with my gift. You have seen it. I have ended the abhorrent motion. I have created stillness from the chaos.”
At this point I looked below myself and saw a planet. The shadowy figure was still unseeable, but the planet was perfectly visible as though I was standing above it in orbit. Mostly covered in ice and some swaths of glittering soil. But the patterns between them looked familiar. They were the same as the continents of Earth, but the surface was different. A pale blue and silver planet instead of the bright blue and green ball we all knew. What was on the surface?
“As long as you keep giving me light, I can keep providing you with my gift. Or, you can destroy this glass prison and free me.”
As though hearing the question in my head, I was suddenly just above the surface of the planet, where icey spires jutted out of the coast. Or what would be the coast if the water was still liquid. Instead the ocean waters were frozen in the final wave patterns they would ever make. And the land was mostly covered with what I thought was some kind of silvery sludge. But further observation revealed it was ash.
Piles and piles of it, covering as far as I could see looking inland. The only thing keeping it from blowing everywhere was the complete lack of wind. The complete stillness of this world. I looked below me. The end of a femur bone jutted out of a patch of ash. And next to it there was what looked like a small branch coming out as well?
“Set me free from this prison, and I will share my gift with your world. I can put an end to all chaos, all suffering. I can make your world at peace.”
No, not a branch. Everything organic had been turned to ash. That was a car antenna. I realized this was a city I was looking at, or what used to be a city. Those icey spires were once buildings. I looked back at the frozen waves. I wanted to hope that there were still fish below the ice, but this was not a world for hope.
“All you have to do is free me.”
I looked off into the horizon. There was something bright in the distance, something approaching me. But it was too bright to see. This land was so dark my eyes weren’t prepared to look at it. It closed the distance before I could make sense and I felt something rush over me, sweeping me away. That same flipped upside down into a pool sensation caught me again.
“Do not listen to him!” another voice said. This one sounded strange, less human. Like some other animal with rudimentary vocal chords that had taught itself to speak like a human despite the pain it caused it.
Once again, I didn’t know where I was, or if I was even right-side-up anymore, but I was now somewhere different. Somewhere brighter and hotter. The near silence I had found myself in before was replaced by a constant din. Yet somehow this second voice made itself heard over it.
“I have provided you with my gift of creation. The inextinguishable flame. And, if you continue to give me light, I shall continue to give you my gift.”
It wasn’t just the sound and the brightness and the heat. I felt something. Something against my legs. Yes, I looked down and I could see them. I was standing in some kind of turbulent liquid. But on closer look, it wasn’t liquid. It was a writhing mass of flesh and hair that obscured the ground. I thought I was on some great beast at first, but the way it moved was that of a crush of living things; birds, fish, mammals, insects of all kinds, all roiling together and pushing each other about like the motion of an ocean wave.
“Behold, the world I can create. Life ever-continuing. If you shatter this glass and free me from my prison.”
I saw a rat give birth and then be devoured by her rapidly-growing young. I saw a dog with too many legs, trying to bark but nothing came out of its mouth but cockroaches. A fish with mushrooms growing at an impossible rate from gaps between its scales. It was hard to focus on any one thing for too long, not just because of how horrifying they were, but the way everything moved; constantly pushing and being pushed in the crowd, being climbed over and subsumed only to have that creature be climbed over by something new. A hot, swelling cacophony of every kind of creature struggled and screaming as it was forced into creation and fucked and killed and was killed by another. And audible over it all, filling the cracks in the sound, was that voice.
“Life continues forever under my reign. Let me free and I shall burn Him to cinders. The fire of life shall burn forever.”
I felt the cold, blue silence of the other world rush over me, and the first voice came back again. “No! Do not listen to him. Free me and I shall extinguish him for good. He will not be able to stop me. Nothing will be able to stop me.”
I felt pulled between the two worlds. I could see both of them, like when each eye is looking at a different image. I was hot and cold. It was deafeningly loud and painfully quiet. I was being pulled apart, as the voices hissed at one another in words I could no longer understand.
And then, I was back in the lab, standing there with one glass in each hand. The terrifying loudness and silence replaced with the light whirring of the air conditioning and hum of machinery. I placed them down and used a set of tongs to carefully load them into a carrying case. Gloves were not enough.
That was a little over one year ago.
I did end up going to the hospital, but when the doctors could find no cause for the “burn” that seemed to continue growing across my flesh rather than healing, I had a small “accident” that removed about half of my hand. It was… unpleasant. But I didn’t want to see how far it would progress. I didn’t want to end up like that mouse.
When the archaeologists asked me about the Kullar glass, I told them I had accidentally broken them and thrown the shattered pieces into the trash, that they had been in a landfill for weeks by that point and were probably unfindable. It wasn’t a believable lie; even if I had been careless enough to just drop them on the floor, it went against all my training as well as my explicit instructions on this project to just throw the pieces away rather than keep them for study. But it’s a lie I kept repeating. Let them believe I’m incompetent or trying to sabautage their project. Let them fire me from this job. Those are prices I’m willing to pay to keep the Kullar glass from being studied further.
I’ve sealed them away and hidden them, along with a copy of the story I’ve relayed to you here and explicit instructions to re-hide them if they are found. I won’t tell you where. I’ve taken great care to make sure they are hidden in a place that’s very unlikely to be accidentally discovered, and I’ve spent all the money available to me to hide them in such a way that nobody could track them down intentionally.
The Kullar glass were found in an unmarked piece of pottery. Somebody had sealed and buried them, and I think I know why. I have met two Gods and seen their plans for this world, and both terrify me. Whether a cold, endless death or a permanent chaos of life, there is no place in this world for humanity. No place for life as we know it. Our world, the one where we live our lives and seek out happiness; that is merely a small eddy in the stream; a little piece of calm living we have lucked into in a vast and unopposable stream of time that takes us to one of two conclusions; the permanent death or the endless suffering of every living thing. I don’t want to make that choice. I don’t want anyone else to make that choice. It cannot be avoided forever, but I’m avoiding it for as long as possible.
I’ve buried the Kullar glass. Somewhere that will hopefully buy us thousands of years before they are discovered again. And I leave this text as a message to the future. If you find them again, do not study them. Just bury them again, somewhere even less discoverable. I do not want myself or anyone else to have to meet these Gods again.