After all, he had just had a rather large shock. He didn't like having no idea what to do, but that was the way it was - so he decided to start with the basics. Leaning back over the coffee table, he picked up the medallion and examined it again.
It was a nice medallion. All that silver, ruby and sapphire - those intricate designs - beautiful. The problem was, there was nothing written on it; not that he could read. There didn't seem to be any writing on it at all - just some wavy, decorative-looking lines around the edges and those golden line markers for the 'duration of the transformation'..
'My god, I hope this note is right about those,' Mark thought. He was exquisitely nervous. But, there was nothing he could do about it - and since he desperately didn't want to mess with the amulet any more than he already had, he carefully put it down.
Then he picked it back up - he had suddenly had a thought. Why not do an Internet search on it? Holding it carefully by the edges, he trotted up the stairs . . . and stopped halfway up.
Mike slowly retraced his steps to the bottom of the stairway, and trotted back to halfway again. Then he went down again, but this time he jumped over six whole stairs, then over another six until he was in the middle again. He wasn't even breathing hard! - or rather, he supposed, panting. His stamina, and his leg muscles, were amazing! Was the rest of him this powerful? He thought of trying it out at the gym - then brought himself back to the subject at hand. For a horrible moment he realized that all his jumping might have jarred the amulet into a new position, but a quick check showed that all was well. Then it was back on upstairs, walking slowly (to avoid accidents) though effortlessly, and soon Mark was in his room powering up his digital camera.
Mark took pictures of the medallion from every angle he could imagine, plus close-ups of the decorative markings, the jeweled patterns, and sections of the gold marking lines. Then he loaded the pictures onto his computer and fired up his web browser.
'picturematch.moc' was entered into the address bar, and then Mark was loading all his pictures into the search fields before hitting "Search". He waited for a moment.
A plethora of picture results burst onto the screen, and he started looking through them
Nothing.
Nothing.
One half-hour gone.
Nothing.
A whole hour.
Nothing.
Hour and fifteen minutes.
Something!