Happiness Core

Hey guys, here's a short story I wrote at work the other day. I'm not sure what genre it would be. Surreal realism? Dark comedy tragedy? I wrote it in one go, no editing. Please enjoy, and leave your thoughts below. 

Happiness Core

1.

We're very, very close to finding the core of happiness. I carved it out of something where it was tucked away, shining like a ruby in the hill. It was beautiful, it was slippery. It has properties unlike anything any of us have seen. It's pink. It's red. It's white. It's blue. It's clean. It's absolutely covered in mud. It's thick and viscous, pungent like egg yolk. It's incredibly hard, harder than diamond or granite. I don't think it can be broken. It glitters like a star, but it's perfectly matte. It's everything. The thing I took it from was awake the whole time. It said "that hurts." I said, "there's no room for personality in concept."

2.

We have it on display; the core of happiness, that is. Once we understand it we think we can give it back to the person we took it from, probably. Then we can go into anyone and tinker unmitigated by stupidity or blindness. Right now it floats majestically in a custom-made plexiglass tank. We have it suspended in a half saline half something-else solution (I can't tell you exactly what the formula is— that would be giving away our secrets). This way, the core floats right in the center of the tank, like a planet, or a fairy. We can't help but stare slack-jawed at this thing, at what we've taken. I know that we were the ones who stole it, we were the ones who created this solution for it to float in, we were the ones who designed the tank, but all of this still just looks so beyond human invention. It's kind of hard to wrap your head around. 

3.

The thing we stole it from weeps quietly in the corner. Not just from its eyes, but from its wounds. You would think coring a human would leave them uttering phrases like "I'm hollow. I'm empty inside." And who knows, maybe it says that stuff when we're not looking. However, when it comes to the physical response of this thing, we can tell it's more focussed than ever before on filling the hole. It has grown blisters, or maybe they're pustules, all over its skin. Slowly, they fill with putrid fluid. It's wound, and the thin layer of skin and scab on top, is raised slightly above its chest and stomach as white blood cells rush to the occasion. I saw it poke the spot on its chest, then it asked me if it would scar. I said Of Course. It asked me if it would still scar if we put the core back. I said Of Course again. It hasn't really said much since we had that conversation; which is good. There's not room for personality when we're talking about concept. 

4.

We try to keep it on the down-low, what we're doing at the lab. We know people will call us criminals, they're mostly right. We're definitely lying to the public. They'll say we're cruel, and I suppose our methods probably are. For example, we probably could have sedated the thing we were coring during the surgery but, haha, we didn't. Lol. So we try to keep it on the down-low while we're still experimenting, at least until we understand happiness and how it works. History can thank us later. 

People know some of what goes on here, of course. If you say nothing it looks too suspicious and causes other problems, but in our case telling the truth also causes problems. So we tell half-truths, and we come up with fun little branded items to give out to the public. Pens we give out have our slogan— Happiness: We're on our way! There's items that preemptively defend some of our practices. Our chapsticks say on the labels— Volunteers make joy possible. Ridiculous to say Volunteers, really. We only have one volunteer, it's the thing presently weeping to itself in the corner. But it is truly a volunteer. We didn't force it to do any of this. It's incredible what people will do in a state of desperation. 

5.

Our tasks right now mostly include staring in awe at the core, as aforementioned. It may seem selfish to spend so much time just lazily indulging in something that caused agony to get, but still, we have it now, we might as well indulge; especially because this core is so rare (at least at this point in time). It's hard not to look. Another task of ours is to poke and prod at the core. We delicately take the black, plastic lid off of the tank and touch the core with long, glass rods, watching as it spins helplessly in its special solution. We wanted to see if, you know, touching it would make the volunteer react; like, maybe there's some quantum entanglement stuff going on? Apparently that is not the case. But we can't think of much else to do with it. We just sit around and watch it ever so slightly glowing; and we postulate as to its origins and nature. 

"It's an organ." Greg says.

"Yes but it's bone, it's like a bone." Jennifer can only ever bring herself to partially agree with Greg. 

"Well I think it's an egg." One of us says. I don't remember his name, but I've known him too long to ask it now.

"But nothing will ever hatch from it." I say.

"Then it's a fossilized egg. A dead egg." The one whose name I do not know replies. 

"It's a gem, no, uh, a pearl!" Mary can't help but chime in.

"Well I think it's a tonsil stone." Says Frank, the most cynical of us. 

Jennifer slips her shoe off and smacks Frank in the arm. The thing whimpers in the corner. So I guess we're not any closer to understanding happiness.

6.

One day the ethics board came by. They stared at the core with pure admiration, and stared at our volunteer with a mixture of pity and disgust. I stood near them, then accidentally said out loud something I meant to keep in my head, "I wonder if we all have a core like that." 

I had been thinking to myself that Greg's idea about a bone was probably the closest to the truth, but then why doesn't it show up on X-Rays? The ethics board asked me Why we took the core if we thought maybe just this thing, eh, person, had it? I explained, Well, we didn't exactly know what we would find, but when we saw the core we thought it looked promising, so we took it out. The ethics board looked aghast. 

"You mean you were just digging around someone and cutting them up without any clue what you were looking for?"

"Well, yes." I said. "Actually, no. We knew what we were looking for. We were looking for the core of happiness. We just didn't know what it looked like yet." I gestured to the sphere in the tank. 

"Well how can you be sure it's the happiness core if you know nothing about it?" I didn't appreciate the board's tone of accusation. 

"Because," I said, looking down at the thing pressing on one of its many swollen pustules, "It hasn't seemed very happy since we took it out." 

The board left seeming extra agitated. When Jennifer heard about what I'd said she took her shoe off and smacked me with it. The thing in the corner looked at me with animalistic eyes. But still, the board passed us with flying colors. We're allowed to continue experimenting as we please. I guess they wanted to find the core of happiness, too.