The Definition of Fear

Plisken and Jay crept up the pyramid, the presence of such a thing filling them with fear, though Jay didn’t know why. Plisken, ‘thanks’ to his experience with the device, knew exactly why he was scared.
“So what does it do?” asked Jay bravely raising his pistol towards it, “Make GELFS? Hallucinogens?”
“I have no idea, but I know it works…” whisper Plisken, his old eyes unable to break the gaze from the strange monolith. “It some how projects your worse fears, the things that your heart fears the most.”
“Rabbits?”
“No, what your hearts fears, not your mind…”
“What do you mean?” asked Jay, his fear momentarily replaced by confusion.
“The mind doesn’t know what it fears the most. To know that, it would have to have seen and met everything in the universe. But the heart? The heart knows more than it lets the mind know. Keeps a person safe.”
“But you’ve been here before? That’s what you said? What did you see?”
“I – I can’t remember,” stuttered Plisken, his own memory failing him.
“You can’t remember your own worst fear?”
“I – I don’t know.”
Jay placed a reassuring hand on Plisken’s shoulder and quickly changed the subject, “Any idea why it’s here?”
“An experiment, I think. We had planned deploy FEAR gas during the 64th Creed War but I had the Research and Development make something new. This was it. Hell, Artie might actually have been involved, the time period makes sense and it feels like something stupid he’d make. But this was the planet I order it to be tested on – using Flash Clones.”
“What happened?”
Plisken turned to Jay, his eyes deadly serious. “We found them gouging their own eyes out.”
There was a moment of tense silence between the men.
“You don’t think Artie’s kid is in there, do you?” asked Jay.
“I sure as hell hope not.”
A bright flash broke through the night sky, visions of death and war filling the eyes of the men. People lying broken , bleeding, mutated. All by people like them. But it appeared only for a mere second.
“Smeg,” breathed Jay as he recovered from the scare, “Is that the best it’s got?”
“That was a wee scare compared to what it can do.”
Jay and Plisken looked at each other for a moment.
“You out rank me, Plisken,” Jay cried, “Commodore beats Acting Captain.”
“Acting Captain beats Yeoman, which is what I’m listed as.”
There was a pause.
“So, what do we do, Captain?”

<Tag - Jay>

<OOC – Kind of short and not great but I hope that gives some explanation to my last one>