The membrane was thin and permeable, 8cm in diameter. It had an opaque, glossy silver sheen that warped slightly outward whenever she brought her hand near its surface, as though it were drawn to her like ferrofluid. It gave off no byproducts or gasses. It was odorless and had the appearance of liquid with convex surface tension. Its similarities to liquid ended there. It did not shift or pour when tipped. The membrane held its shape and could not be removed from the metallic vessel it was held in.
It was non-reactive to the extreme. Instruments that touched its surface could break the tension and plunge into it. However, the tools could travel beyond its 2mm apparent depth seemingly without limit. A 15 meter plumbing camera had been unfurled into it in the hopes of recording what lay within to no avail. While no images were captured, the entire length of the camera had been submerged. It was recovered without any noticeable damage, but the footage was useless. The camera had successfully recorded, but it was black and had no audio aside from the short moment before it was lowered into the container and the blurry glimpse of when it was removed. Various items had been dropped inside of it and lost, and yet the membrane gained no mass.
Its housing was a round unadorned metal alloy of unknown origin. Its makeup did not align with any materials already present on earth. It was incredibly durable, heavy and equally non-reactive to chemicals. There had been proposals to attempt breaking the outer ring, but there was too much unknown. The research committee had feared the membrane inside might wink out or, worse, expand unfettered without the container.
Caroline wanted to touch it. It was forbidden. There was a lengthy multi-day process to get the approval necessary to be in the same room as the membrane. She had already bypassed that. As a member of the university’s research committee, she had the clearance needed to pull items from the vault. She was not supposed to do so without unanimous approval, but she had grown tired of waiting. A decade. Scientists had been poking and prodding the membrane with all manner of experiments for ten years, and the only apparent reaction was a light magnetism to humans.
Animal testing had gotten approved eventually, but it was uneventful. The backlash from animal rights organizations had not been worth pulling free a dizzy mouse that went on about its life without significant change to its lifespan, diet, or mental faculties. A second mouse was held under the surface for an hour, and it did not suffocate or show any ill effects either. Insects showed no reaction to being dipped. Plants grown in the same room showed no changes, nor did dipping stem, leaf, flower, or root into it produce any abnormalities.
Someone had to touch it, and it would never get approved. Her hand hovered a few centimeters above the membrane’s surface. It bowed slightly, almost imperceptible if one wasn’t looking for it. She could feel no equal pull on her hand.
She touched it before she could think enough to hesitate or talk herself out of it. She would not have known she touched it if she had not been looking at her hand dip below the surface. There was no temperature change or wetness to it. It was as though she had moved her hand through the air beside her. Her fingers vanished down to the first knuckle when she felt something, a pressure at each of her fingertips. She pressed against it, and it pressed against her in kind. Startled, she pulled back and stepped back from the membrane. It remained still, showing no signs of her tampering. Her hand was fine, still attached. No remnants of the membrane clung to it. Yet, she could not shake the distinct feeling that it had felt like own hand reaching from the other side of it.
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