The Carpet

Taben and Ivan are two antique dealers in the 23rd century. One morning Taben was sifting though a pile of antiques thought to be from the 1970's. He had just finished sorting some valuable early Lego when he came across a roll of old carpet. He unrolled part of the carpet to assess its value. Letting it stand upright in front of him and holding the edge he had just unrolled, he got his first look at a 1970s carpet.     Taben was stunned by the pattern on the carpet. None of his research on the late 20th centaury could have prepared him for what he saw; bizarre swirls of red, green, yellow and brown mixed together in an appalling psycadelic exploration of bad taste. The juxtaposition of the obviously mismatched colours with the swirling pattern was so bad it seemed almost hypnotic. As Taben stared at the carpet he found himself drawn into trance by its shear hideousness. The colors danced around in his mind, he found himself floating above a strange landscape with crazy swirling fields of red, browns, yellows and green below him. Time ceased to exist as he floated there, hypnotized by the surreal landscape.     An hour later Ivan walked into the storeroom looking for Taben. Ivan needed some help with some particularity creative accounting. He saw Taben staring at the carpet and assuming he had found something valuable, he went over to investigate. However, in his trance Taben had loosened his grip on the carpet edge and the unrolled carpet was precariously balanced. Ivan brushed the edge as he went past, and the carpet fell over pattern first onto the floor.     Taben suddenly woke up from his trance. The swirling landscapes was gone, but where? He looked round. Oh, the carpet he realized seeing it lying pattern side down on the floor. But he wondered, what had happen to released him from the trance. It was then that he noticed a hand sticking out from underneath the carpet. Taben lifted it carefully, so as not to expose himself to the hypnotically bad pattern. He saw Ivan lying underneath staring fixedly up at the carpet. Realizing that Ivan's clumsiness had probably saved his life, Taben carefully rolled the carpet back up. As soon as it was away from Ivan's face he came out of the trance. "What the hell is that thing?" Ivan asked as he recovered. "I don't know" Taben said, "It isn't any ordinary carpet, that's for sure. It must be a type of experimental drug, or possibly some kind of weapon. I've heard the 1970s were rife with both." "A weapon makes sense, it could be used to paralyze 1000s of enemy troops" "I know, if you hadn't come in when you did I could have been killed, I could feel myself slowly losing the will to live, but I just could look away from it. This thing is far too dangerous to let anyone get hold of, we'd better burn it in the furnace straight away" So Taben and Ivan hauled the old carpet down to the basement. Resisting a strange urge to have one last look at the design they threw it into the furnace. As they walked away from the burning carpet, they had to wonder at the nature of a mind that could concoct such a design. They considered themselves very lucky to have survived the experience.

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