The Omega Egg [A Fictionwise Round Robin Novel] by Mike Resnick;Various Authors

Author:Mike Resnick;Various Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Fictionwise, Inc.
Published: 2010-12-15T07:09:35.961000+00:00

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Chapter 11: Choosing Sides

by James Patrick Kelly

Spence stooped down to have a closer look at the glowing metal thing ... what the hell was it? Impossible to describe. Just looking at it made his vision blur, It churned and twisted in on itself like something alive, although its glowing surface had a burnished metallic sheen like burning chrome or silver fire. He gingerly touched the thing with the tip of his finger, afraid it might be molten. But it was just blood hot. The shining surface yielded to his touch and the thing pretzeled into a new and impossible shape that made his head swim. With a quick swipe, he picked it up with his cyber hand and closed his tensteel fist around it.

Slowly he ratcheted up the pressure. He could crush stone with the prosthetics the Navy had built for him, or if need be, he could catch a butterfly by the wing without harming it. But although he could compress the glowing thing to the size of a marble, when he relaxed, it sprang again to its full size and continued to turn itself inside out. With a cry of frustration he smashed it against the cabinet where he had found the med kit. This also had but a momentary effect. He dropped it and tried to pile drive it through the floor with his cyber leg, but although he succeeded in cracking floorboards, he did it no harm whatsoever. He picked it up again and held it in the palm of his hand. It changed size and shape restlessly, went flat and bulged round. He tried to remember exactly what the Paras had said about it.

Destroy the twisted ring, break the circle.

Our gateway between the dimensions, made to withstand the eons.

But it could be torn apart by someone who truly wished it.

Was that it? He hadn't actually tried to tear it apart. He tried to grip the thing with his injured hand and yank at it with his cyber hand. It stretched and incandesced a little before the pain was too much for him. With a gasp, he let it go. Maybe he would have to wait until his hand healed. It struck him as ridiculous; that couldn't be the way that the universe really worked. Then maybe he didn't truly want to destroy the Guardian's dimensional gateway.

He glared at the thing in his hand. “I hate you,” he said. “You're everything that's wrong with my life just now and there is nothing I'd rather see than you in a million shattered pieces.” The thing continued to pleach and wattle as if it didn't have a care in the world. For some reason, this struck Spence as funny and he laughed, whether at himself or the absurdity of his situation he could not tell. Maybe that was the problem, he realized; he wasn't taking this seriously enough. He tried looking deep inside himself.

Did he truly want to destroy the gateway? The Paras has said that the evil Guardians would start messing with physics unless he destroyed this thing.

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