By

Alfonse Meridian

Dobsen’s manic pace down the hallway confirmed her fears.  He walked like he was trying to exit a burning building without causing a panic.  She saw his eyes dart up frantically to make sure the tiny filament camera was looking the other direction.  The thrill she felt arriving at the giant desert facility named Project Three was replaced with a sense of dread.

              When they drew even with a door marked simply Research, Dobsen said nervously, “Just step in here, Dr. Hayden.”

            He held the door open, smiled crookedly to reassure her like a waiter prompting her to take a first bite of a foreign dish, and then motioned for her to leave the hallway and step into the laboratory.  The security filament glowed alternately red and blue as it continued its sweep up and down the hallway.  She watched him stare at it from the corner of his eye, as though counting the seconds til it refocused on them.

            “Why are we stopping here?”

            “Dr. Hayden, please,” he said.  “Mr. Hovious wants you to spend a moment with someone first so you can get up to speed.”

            She was about to follow him in, but suddenly hesitated, causing Dobsen’s face to blossom a faint pink.

            She looked up and saw Dobsen following the filament eye like his life depended on it.  It turned slowly toward them on its precisely calculated, precisely executed schedule.  Dobsen looked ready for a heart attack. 

There’s more wrong with Project Three, she thought, than a technical problem.

When she stepped by him into the room, he closed the door so quickly it fluffed her fine blond hair.

            “Dobsen,” she asked, “what’s wrong with the lights?”

            They were standing in the Project Three Laser Magnetics Research Lab.  Even without the overhead lighting, they could easily see the laboratory around them.  Throbbing spheres of magenta magnetic light suspended by electrostatic fields levitated above lab benches. They spiraled and spun in their invisible containment, casting bizarre, gyrating shadows that moved across the walls like blood-ghosts. Heddy could feel alternating waves of pressure push against her skin, as though the room itself were a living, breathing entity.

            “Where is this someone I’m supposed to meet?” Heddy asked nervously.

            A stooped man with patchy white hair and thick glasses came out from behind an array of interlocking light grids and hobbled toward them on a rough wooden cane that looked oddly out of place in the high tech laboratory.  His lab coat was pink-hued in the shifting light, and his thick glasses picked up and multiplied the hues like twin prisms.

“Here I am, Heddy,” he said, and walked toward her with his hands outstretched.  His voice was chalk rubbed on concrete, and smiled when they embraced. 

  Dobsen politely looked away.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said when they released.  “How are you?  Are you the one that asked for me to come.  Hovious was so insistent about me coming.  Some kind of technical problem, he kept saying.  He sounded so desperate.”

 “I’m so sorry,” said the professor.  “We are in a terrible situation.”

            “What is going on? You’re beginning to frighten me.”

            “I’m sorry, Heddy.  I’m so sorry.”

            Dobsen looked nervously around the room.  He cocked his head once as though he had heard something.

            “Can we hurry this up?” he said.

            “Karl’s right,” said professor Lomas. “We haven’t much time and I had to speak to you before you see Hovious. I need your help.”

            “Why?  Is something wrong?”

            The old man’s eyes narrowed.

            “Things are more than wrong, Heddy, my dear,” he said.  “We have to shut this place down immediately or there will be a catastrophe you can’t imagine, but Hovious has lost his mind and won’t do it.  He’s been… compromised.  That’s why I had to meet with you first.  You have to find a way to shut the system down before he stops you.  He’ll try to stop you if he knows what you’re up to.  I told him you could fix the system’s instability so he would bring you here, but what I really want you to do is shut this place down before it’s too late.”

            Heddy couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  The professor sounded like he had lost his mind.  His eyes were wild and he looked as though he hadn’t slept for days. She had known him all her adult life but never seen him like this.

            “Professor, I don’t understand.  If what you’re telling me is true, then why don’t you shut it down yourself?  And what exactly is wrong with the system?  What do you mean catastrophe?”

            Professor Lomas wrung his hands together and nibbled unconsciously at the corner of his lip.  His eyes flitted around the room as though trying to find the answers to her questions.  Finally, he lurched forward and clasped her shoulders.  He stared directly into her eyes, his face transfixed with fear.

“Heddy, I know this must all seem crazy to you.  You’re worried that I’m unstable or even ill, but I implore you on the foundation of all the years you studied under me to trust me that I am completely sane and this is really happening just the way I say it is.  Can you do that for me?”

The room was silent except for the hum and whir of the laboratory systems that never slept, but were always processing.

“I need facts,” said Heddy.  “What is so wrong with the system?  It’s the biggest project in history.  You’re on the verge of producing free energy for the entire world if this process works.  And it should work— it has my theoretical underpinnings and your engineering, so what could be the problem?”

The professor took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm his emotions

“During the pilot runs,” he said, “the system worked wonderfully at low power levels.  We were drawing energy from the alternate multiverse into our own just as your hypothetical work predicted we could.  Power output was a bit erratic, it’s true, but when I added the nanoparticle suspension between the Stellae—”

Heddy felt a hot rush of blood fill her face. 

            “Nanoparticle suspension?”

            “It was your suggestion,” said the old man sharply. 

“I said the technology didn’t exist to create such a thing.”

“Well, I created it, so we used it.”

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“Please don’t be angry with me.  What is important is to close the rift to stop the thing trying to get out of the nanotechnology suspension inside the Stellae.  You see—“

            “Professor,” said Dobsen.  “Please.  Get to the point.  Hurry.  Karl will be watching the monitors.  Hurry.  If he and his men find us here, they’ll feed us to the Snakeheads.”

            Heddy jerked her head toward Dobsen.

            “The what?” she demanded.

            “Hurry,” Dobsen said. “Tell her.”

            She turned back to the professor, and saw his face, lined by years of complicated thought, go slack.

            “What? Tell me what?” she demanded.

            “The last test we ran, we took the Stellae to seventy percent of full power, Heddy.  And that’s when something…actually, some things broke through the rift.”

            “Like what?  What got through?  Make some sense, professor.”

            “The Snakeheads,” blurted Dobsen.  “”The Snakeheads and the Other got part-way through.  The Snakeheads come through when the rifts appear.  The Other tried to get through, too, but it’s still stuck in the Stellae suspension— it’s too big to get through yet.  Professor, tell her what to do before Karl comes for us.”

            The professor gripped her shoulders tighter and was about to speak, when suddenly the room was filled with a crackling, static noise and inter-weaving light patterns that materialized in the middle of the room.  Heddy felt the hair on her forearms rise.

            Something silver suddenly snaked past her face and the professor was snapped back out of sight.  From across the room, Dobsen screamed.  Heddy stiffened, her eyes assaulted by segmented silver tentacles that whipped back and forth like curling cutting blades.  Something warm and coppery splashed her cheek. She fell over backward and hit the floor so hard it knocked the air out of her lungs.

*****

Dobsen was helping her to her feet as he kept repeating, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

A pulsing blue light projected from the laser optics chamber, revealing dark pictographs nearly four feet tall, brushed in dried blood. They decorated the laboratory wall like cave paintings of a tribal kill.

            The air thrummed and throbbed with unease. A photovoltaic crystal furnace lay cleaved in two neat halves and partially formed scarlet boulles were scattered across the floor like broken glass.

            “I’m going to be sick,” said Heddy.

She turned, grabbed a lab coat and pressed it against her face.

            “Me too,” said Dobsen.

            She couldn’t bear to look at what was left of Professor Lomas.  One minute her beloved mentor had been standing in front of her, and in the next instant he was attacked and cut to shreds.  She could not scrub the horrific image from her mind.  The alternating pressure waves in the room disoriented her and Heddy felt matching waves of nausea pass through her.

            A sound like a giant bug zapper snapped across the room. Heddy looked wide-eyed at Dobsen. He rested a finger upon his lips, warning her to keep quiet.  Sweat beaded and rolled from the edge of his tangled black hair. When Heddy made a move to lower the lab coat, he urgently thrust his open hand toward her face like a crossing guard.

            “Don’t move,” he mouthed silently.

Panic twisted his face.

            Heddy froze. Her nerves buzzed, telling her to run. Fight or flight.   But movement would be noticed, and what got noticed might get ripped apart like the professor.  She trembled with fear, but did her best to stay still.

            Dobsen looked nervously around the room. Suddenly, he stopped.  Heddy saw him tremble.  She followed his gaze. A shimmering, purple light had reappeared and twisted in the air as though it were alive; it was an inexplicable rift to another world filled with horror. It hovered silently above the mutilated remains of the professor. A hard knot formed in Heddy’s stomach as pulsing silvery tentacles snaked from the opening and coiled around what was left of one leg. Ice flooded her veins as it was jerked upward and through the void as though pulled by invisible wires. As the rift began to fold in on itself, Heddy saw tiny rivulets of dark blood drop in slow motion to the marble counter.

            Her grip on the coat tightened.  She struggled to remain motionless while a primal terror urged her legs to move.

            “That was close,” whispered Dobsen.

            Heddy shuddered. 

            “We’ve got to make a run for it, Dr. Hayden,” said Dobsen. “Are you up for it?”

            “Just get us out of here.”

            Dripping strips of a blood-spattered white shirt hung from the lab benches and oil pools with ripped shreds of human meat covered the floor. Sour sweat broke out on Heddy’s forehead and she felt her teeth chatter like wind-up dentures.

            “Lead the way,” she said nervously.

             “There’s a door behind the flammables cabinet that leads into the maintenance tunnels,” whispered Dobsen.

He rubbed his mouth obsessively with a sleeve as though to wipe away traces of vomit.

 “I’m a dead man.  Because I didn’t take you straight to him, Hovious will think I betrayed him. When they find me, Karl will take me downstairs. Nobody comes back from downstairs.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Later. We should get out of here right now, before those things come back or Karl finds us.  Karl’s the Devil with a gun.”

            The room seemed to fade in and out with each surge of laser light. Heddy’s vision tumbled in on itself with every pulse like a kaleidoscope’s colors collapsing and expanding with each twist of a child’s hand.

“What was that thing, that… that…?”

“No time to explain now,” Dobsen said nervously.  “Follow me.”

            He grabbed her arm and started leading her towards the maintenance door.

            “Careful not to step in anything or they’ll have a bloody trail to follow.  If we don’t leave a trace, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll think we’re dead or sucked into the void.”

            Heddy was in near-shock. She couldn’t resist being tugged along by the manic little man whose eyes darted back and forth like a rabbit on point. To keep from breathing in the awful smell, she held one hand over her nose. Still the odor coated the inside of her mouth and nostrils with a thin film like spoiled lard.

            As Dobsen reached the exit door, she suddenly pulled back and said, “We have to tell Dr. Hovious. He has to shut down the project. He has to be told about those… those awful creatures.”

            With a quick jerk, he brought her close and said fiercely, “That’s what the professor was trying to tell you.  Hovious already knows.  The other is controlling him.  And besides, he’s the one that let them in— using your technology.”

*****

            They ran down concrete tunnels wound with black, shiny rubberized cables thick as her waist. The air was thin and dry and Heddy imagined they were descending into the gullet of a giant snake. Red fiber-optic lightspots illuminated their way.  They burst in erratically patterned pinpoints across the upper circumference of the tunnels like an angry, exploding nebula.

            “I’ve got to stop and catch my breath,” gasped Dobsen.      

“Where are we?” asked Heddy. “What are these tunnels? And those, what are they?” She pointed at the cables that spiraled round the walls and floor.

            “Hovious had them installed after he started to change. This whole complex is more like an anthill. Whatever you see on top— there’s more below.  And those big cables spiderweb the entire complex,” he said. “They’re not on any blueprint, but neither is the holding pen a couple of levels down. That all started after the Snakeheads started coming through.  Downstairs is where they’re keeping anybody that’s still alive but not working on the final phase.”

            “Held for what?” asked Heddy.

            “For the Snakeheads. The things that killed the professor and the others and just about got us. There’s a barbed wire enclosure down below us where they keep whoever is still alive but tagged nonessential by Hovious.”

            “You mean they’re prisoners?” gasped Heddy.

            So much horror in such a short time was too much for her system.  She had never seen anyone die before, but to have it be Professor Lomas was too much.  And now this.  Too much, too fast.

            “I mean they’re food,” said Dobsen.

            “You’re insane.”

            Dobsen laughed bitterly. 

            “You really think this entire facility is empty except for a handful of people? Wake up, doctor.  Did you notice anyone else on our way into the facility other than the pilot, you, and me? We’re pretty much alone here if you don’t count the people down below and I don’t.  They’re not going to make it out.  Once the experiments went bad and people started panicking, Hovious had security round them all up and lock them in the pen. No one on the outside knows what’s been going on here— he wouldn’t allow communications with the rest of the world. National Security considerations and all that crap.”

            “Why didn’t you tell me this when I got off the plane?” demanded Heddy.

            “Because the professor said you were our last hope.  We didn’t want to scare you off.”

*****

Heddy took a step back and away from the little man. 

“I’m nobody’s last hope, Dobsen.  I’m just a scientist.  I’m not a one-woman assault team.  This is way over my head.”

“No one like that could ever get past the automated perimeter security.  This place has got to be stopped from the inside, and the professor said you’re the only one could who might be able to figure out how to do it. You have to do something, doctor. It’s your technology, for God’s sake.”

“What about the government?  What happened to the inspectors and overseers?  Couldn’t you have told them?  They would have stopped him.”

In the back of her mind— Heddy couldn’t deny it— she knew her Nobel Prize was gone forever.

Why couldn’t this have happened after the award?  she thought and then recoiled at her own hubris.

“Overseers? Inspectors?” said Dobsen. “The governments wouldn’t question Hovious.  His company Blackmoore Technology is bigger than most world governments.  He told them he didn’t want inspectors interrupting the construction of the world’s first interdimensional energy technology system.  He said they would only slow his team down and delay getting energy to countries in need.  He’s leading us to a greener world.  No more carbon emissions. Who’s going to question that? They treat him like he’s God because they all think he’s trying to save the planet from global climate change with your energy technology. Well, if he’s God, then you’re like his Angel of Death.”

Heddy pointed her finger in Dobsen’s face.  She didn’t have to put up with this.  What did this little man know?  She was a scientist, after all.  He was a systems programmer.  Why was she listening to him at all?

            “Take me back to see Hovious,” she said. “I’m through running.  We have to do something to stop these things now.  I don’t believe Hovious has been taken over by some… interdimensional alien mind.” 

Heddy began to turn away, but stopped and looked around.  Where could she go?  She was already lost.  And the things might be back at the other end of the tunnel.

            Dobsen ignored her and kept on talking.

            “I told them I would take you up to the control room when you arrived.  Hovious trusted me. He thought I was too wrapped up in fine-tuning the AI that’s running this place to care about what’s been going on. He thinks I’m like you, that I can’t think about anything outside my little technical world.  But he was wrong.  At least I got you to the professor before the Snakeheads got him. At least he talked to you before he died.  But now he’s dead and it’s just you and me.”

            “I don’t believe any of this,” said Heddy.

            “Yeah, well that won’t save us.”

            Dobsen suddenly jerked his head to one side and cocked and held a hand to his ear as though he’d heard something.  His eyes narrowed suspiciously.  Finally after several long, nerve-wracking moments, he dropped down and sat against one of the giant black cables.

            “I’ve got to rest,” he said, rubbing the back of his hand over his eyes.  “I’m hearing things.”

            “What did you hear?”

“Nothing.  I’m just paranoid.  Can you blame me?  I didn’t sleep last night when I found out you were coming.  I thought maybe you could do something.  The Professor and I were going to tell you everything we knew and he said you would know what to do.  That’s what he said.  You’re one that re-invented Tesla’s resonance technology and made this place possible.  So you were our only hope of getting past Hovious’s computer controls.  He will only relinquish them to you- and then only to fix the system to do what he wants but nothing else.  We thought you could figure out a way to use that access to shut the place down.”

            “You’re programming the AI,” she said with a caustic edge to her voice.

            “So?”

            “Why didn’t you do it?”

             “It has built in defenses against being turned off; they’re locked and running unless Hovious overrides it.  He wouldn’t do that for anybody but you because he doesn’t trust the rest of us. He wants you to stabilize it so more Snakeheads can come through and so the rift will continue to grow and that thing stuck in the suspension can break free. He was figuring you’d come in blind.  His mind went bye-be when the Other took over.”

            “You even sound crazy,” said Heddy. 

            “See what I mean?”

            “Why should I believe you?”

 “Aren’t you listening, Dr. Hayden? I’m going to tell you one more time. I don’t know how many, but lots of men and women used to work here. The halls and labs used to be filled with people. Filled with life. Now I can go for days without seeing anyone. When the Snakeheads broke through and started killing people, they left those pictographs behind, painted with the blood of whoever they killed. The only people who seem to be left now are me, you, Hovious, and a few security people like Karl. I’d try to escape, but to where? We’re in a high security facility in the middle of the desert, for God’s sake.”

Heddy straightened her back.

“This is crazy. Is this why Hovious wanted me here? Because the technology is opening random rifts these creatures come through?”

“Exactly,” said Dobsen. “That means it’s unstable.  And because of that, he’s afraid that opening a rift big enough to let the Other through will set off some kind of chain reaction and destroy this whole place.  Game over.  He needs you to stabilize the system while the rift is widening so that doesn’t happen.”

 Heddy looked down for just a second, and when she looked up her eyes were wide with terror.

 “Look… look at my clothes,” she said.  “I’m… I’m covered with blood.”

“Get over it.  They’re looking for us now.  We’re going to have to get moving again or the next blood we see will be ours.”

Dobsen cocked his head to one side again, and then relaxed. 

“I don’t know what to do,” said Heddy.

  “Whatever they are,” Dobsen said, “the Snakeheads have some kind of limited intelligence. When a rift opens they come looking for us. The professor said there was a super-intelligence controlling them that is caught in the nano-particle suspension between the Stellae and trying to get through. That’s the one we call “the Other.” Somehow it took over Hovious’s mind.  You don’t believe me— you should see Hovious.  His eyes.  They’re horrible.  He wears dark glasses, but when he takes them off…. I don’t think he’s completely human anymore.”

Heddy felt as thought the walls of the tunnel were constricting around them. The air felt denser, harder to breathe, and she thought she imagined the acrid smell of burning chrome. Her nerves seemed to misfire and she felt her skin prickle.

“What was that thing we saw in the lab?”

“That was a Snakehead,” said Dobsen.  “When those weird lights appear, they pop through. Then, they disappear back into the rifts. When Project Three comes online, I think all their relatives are going to come squirming through.  This planet will be like a big grocery store to them.”

Dobsen beat his fists against his knees in frustration

“And you expect me to believe Hovious knows this and does nothing because he’s under their control?” asked Heddy. 

“How many times do I have to tell you?  He’s on their side, Dr. Hayden.  He’s never been touched since the day that he changed.  He’s the one had Karl herd everyone into the pen.  What do you think?  Whatever the superintelligence is, it’s using him to finalize the project.  Then it will either kill him, or use him like some kind of slave master.  How the hell would I know the master plan?  All I do know is in their master plan we’ll be dead soon anyway.”

“So what do we do?”

“Keep moving until you come up with a plan,” said Dobsen nervously.  “It’s not safe to stay in one place for too long.”

“I’m not going anywhere til I know what is going on.”

“You’re the brains. You think of something. You’re the one who came up with this new technology.  So you have to figure out a way to do something.  This place is powering up now.  We only have a short time left before it achieves full power.”

“Powering up?  But I thought you said it was unstable.”

“Hovious is a lunatic.”

Dobsen withdrew a photograph from his coat pocket.

“Look at this, Dr. Hayden. Maybe it will help.”

“What is it?”

“The professor wanted me to give it to you,” said Dobsen. “He said that it might help you because you used Tesla’s ideas as the basis for Project Three’s technology.”

“And?” demanded Heddy, taking the photo but not looking at it.

“And Tesla’s laboratory, the one where he did his first experiments transforming static to kinetic electricity, was destroyed in an earth tremor and a fire over a hundred years ago. You remember that?”

“Of course.”

“It shows what little was left of the laboratory’s south wall. Take a good look at it.”

Heddy finally did. At first she could only saw what appeared to be a charred wall with black streaks. As she brought it closer, a puzzled look came across her face. Her eyes widened in surprise. The black streaks looked like pictographs.  At corner of the picture, she saw tiny handwriting that said ref. Pearson. There was no explanation.

“Where did you get this?” she demanded.

“I don’t know where Professor Lomas got it. But these creatures have come through before in Tesla’s lab. I think Tesla destroyed his own laboratory to stop it from ever happening again.  And that was fine until you duplicated and enhanced his discoveries and then sold them to Hovious. You took your thirty pieces of silver and took off.”

“Are you blaming me?”

            “If this facility comes on line tonight,” Dobsen said gravely, “you’ll be as guilty as the team that created the first atom bomb.  Everybody here will have had a hand in letting these monsters loose, but you’re the one came up with the idea in the first place.”

            “You can’t blame me,” said Heddy.  “How was I supposed to know what was going to happen?”

            “You could have stayed around to find out.  Now, we’ve really got to get going, doctor. Karl will be coming after us with his security brown shirts.”

            “No,” said Heddy fiercely. “I won’t go with you. You’re crazy.  This whole thing is crazy.”

            “Or another rift could open and those creatures could find us.  It happens if we stay in one place too long.”

            The air suddenly seemed to come alive, like the static-charged air earlier in the laboratory. Heddy’s face blanched.

            In the heat of their discussions and the sudden fear that gripped them, they had dropped their guard. A harsh voice from very close behind them commanded, “Don’t move, Dobsen. You’ve done quite enough damage for one night.”

*****

            A bulky, well muscled man in a tight fitting suit approached them flanked by two security guards.

            “My name is Karl,” he told Heddy.  “I’ve come to rescue you from this madman, Dr. Hayden, but we have no time to waste. I have to get you back to Mr. Hovious, where you’ll be safe.”

            “Don’t believe a word he says,” said Dobsen. His voice was high pitched with fear.

            Karl motioned to the men beside him. 

            “Put restraining cuffs on Mr. Dobsen. And if he says so much as another word, gag him. If he attempts to run away, shoot him in the leg and drag him. No, better yet, just leave him here if he gives you trouble. You understand, Dobsen, what happens to those who stray from the safe zones?”

            The static in the air increased rapidly, and Heddy cried out.

            “It’s happening again,” she said.

            With a few quick steps, Karl was beside her, wrapping an arm around her and leading her away. The two security guards moved toward Dobsen, but when they heard a high pitched, piercing sound like a tuning fork shattering glass, they froze. A twisting, purple-black void appeared over Dobsen’s head and they bolted, but ran into each other trying to get away.

            “Run,” Karl yelled to her.

            Before Heddy could take a single step, insectile tentacles unfurled from a shiny, writhing mass balled up within the void. They whipped about wildly, slicing off one guard’s head and puncturing another’s chest. The first stood stock still for just a second, then collapsed, headless, to the ground.  Blood squirted from his neck as his heart, not understanding that he was dead, pumped its last beats. The second guard was tossed about in the air in looping circles as though impaled on a conductor’s baton. From his stretched wide mouth came an endless scream that echoed down the tunnels.

            “Dobsen,” cried Heddy.

            A sharp, silvery barb poked through the top of Dobsen’s head as though he had been shiskabobed. Heddy pulled her eyes upward, away from the sight, and, within the rift, she saw a terrifying alien malevolence. A tentacle with tiny metallic barbs ridged into is smoothness was using the open neck of a security guard’s head to paint pictographs along the tunnel wall.  Her vision waivered and she began to fall.

*****

“You are back with us,” said a deep voice.

Heddy opened her eyes slowly to a room softly lit by thin blue light like neon seen through a mist. A man stood looking down at her. 

“You are safe now, Dr. Hayden,” said the voice. “Karl carried you here to the control room. This is a safe zone. Nothing can harm you here. Is your throat dry? Would you like water?”
            Images of Dobsen skewered and lifting in the air suddenly pushed their way up from her memories. She rolled to one side and vomited.

“Karl?” said the voice.

Heddy found herself pulled into a sitting position. A wet towel wiped across her mouth, and then was thrust into her hands.

“Keep this and cover your mouth with it if you have to do it again.”

It was Karl. She remembered his voice.

“Martinson,” said Karl to another security guard.  “Clean up this stinking mess.”

The other man, whom she now recognized as Sterling Hovious, bent down and, handed her a glass.

“Here,” said Hovious. “Take small sips. Don’t drink the entire contents at once.”

Water spilled from the side of her mouth as she raised the glass to her lips and did as she was told. She began to cough and slapped her hand to her throat.

“Careful,” said Hovious. “Careful, I said. Just little sips.”

“Horrible,” said Heddy. “It was horrible. Dobsen is dead. Those security men. They’re dead. Professor Lomas— he’s dead, too. All dead.”

Hovious pulled a chair around to face Heddy’s, and sat. Dark glasses wrapped around his head made him look something like a patrician skier. Like a father reassuring his child, he reached forward and took her hands in his.

“Dr. Hayden,” he said. “There is so little time. We have a crisis here and I believe that you are our only hope.  That is why I sent for you.”

Heddy shrank back in the chair.

“Those horrible, awful creatures. We’ve got to get out of here. You haven’t seen what they can do. They’ll kill us all if we don’t get out of here. The plane. We’ve got to get to the plane.”

A sad shake of his head.  He tightened his grip on her hands.

“We are safe here, Dr. Hayden. May we be friends again? I know that you bear me much ill will over our business dealings, and your first experience here must be quite frightening, but we must put that behind us. We have work to do. May I call you Heddy?”

“Are you crazy? What’s the difference what you call me? We’ve got to get to the plane and get out of here.”

But as she rose from her chair, Heddy felt a strong hand restrain her.

“Karl is cautious, Heddy, because you are still recovering. You cannot get up too quickly or you will faint. He is a good protector. Wherever I am, he keeps the light dimmed for me. For quite a while now, my eyes have been sensitive to light.”

“We have to leave,” she repeated.

He waved a careless hand and said, “As for the pilot, he has taken….quite ill.”

“What about the people Dobsen said are downstairs?” asked Heddy.  “We’ve got to get them out, too.”

As the words left her mouth, Heddy knew that she had made a terrible mistake. Hovious’s face did not incline one way or the other. No hint of emotion crossed it.  She felt her stomach lurch as she realized that Dobsen had been telling the truth.  Something was wrong with Hovious.

“There are no people downstairs,” said Hovious calmly. “Was Dobsen talking to you? He was not… well. His paranoid delusions grew worse over the last month or so.”

“But how do you explain those creatures?”

 “Those creatures, as you call them, are real enough. Thank God, they did not begin appearing until I had sent most of the facility’s personnel home. Project Three was to be a completely automated facility when it came on line, as you know.”

 It was true, Heddy knew, but she instinctively knew that Hovious was not telling the truth.  Dobson had been telling the truth.

“The randomly appearing rifts,” continued Hovious, “are due to instability in the equipment parameters as implemented by Dobson and Professor Lomas, we believe. Fortunately, Project Three will operate completely under the direction of the Artificial Intelligence system Dobsen created while he was, I believe, still sane. Sane save for one critical point— in his incompetence he did not set some of the harmonic stabilization parameters accurately enough.”

Hovious paused, as though for effect, then continued.

“Project Three can not be turned off now that he is dead, as he had the control codes.  Now, we cannot stop the rifts.  My urgent hope is that you can stabilize the fields containing the nanoparticles suspension by calculating and adjusting the resonance before it destroys the Stellae.  I believe that when you have stabilized the Stellae that the rifts will disappear.  If you cannot do this, these creatures will have free access to this planet and humanity as we know it will come to an unfortunate end.”

Heddy tried to look as though she believed him.

If Hovious knew or even suspected that Dobsen was insane, he would never have allowed the man to be her escort in the facility. Yet Hovious had spoken his last words softly, reassuringly and even sadly.  He knew the rifts would not disappear.  He wanted to stabilize the Stellae to keep them open and to free the thing trapped in the suspension.

At that moment, she also realized Hovious would never allow her to leave the facility alive.

Guilty, Dobsen had said.  Just like those who created the atomic bomb. She remembered all the people Dobsen had said were held in a gigantic pen somewhere underground. We’re all guilty. All the way down to the secretaries that typed the memos.

“Now,” said Hovious, “take a deep breath. We can fix this. You can fix this. You are a brilliant woman, Heddy. You created this technology. The solution must be in that abstruse mathematical genius hiding behind that so lovely face of yours.”

The image of Dobsen’s bloody body waving around in the air transfixed on the tip of a silvery whip of alien tentacles appeared to her as Hovious was talking.  Heddy closed her eyes to drive it away.

*****

Ninety minutes before full power.  The tremors shaking the facility were increasing in power.

In ninety minutes, Project Three would be completely online, and, if she didn’t stop it, the rifts would be irreversible. She had settled into the inevitability of finding a way to destroy the facility as Tesla had been forced to destroy his New York laboratory a century before.  Tesla, however, had lived.  Heddy knew that she could not hope for that much in a facility as large as Project Three.

She sat before her portal interface to the AI, asking it questions, delving into the mechanics of the problem. She fervently wished the Great Man himself— Nikola Tesla— were by her side.  It all seemed too much to accomplish by herself in just ninety minutes, especially with Hovious watching over her shoulders.

At one point she looked up and thought she saw Professor Lomas smoking a cigarette.  Then, in a paroxysm of coughing, he disappeared and she returned to working on a solution.

The  crux of the problem was that the three pillars of iridium metal serving as the resonating conductors of power provided by the facilities nuclear unit were experiencing unexpected sympathetic resonance variations.  The three pillars, known as the Stellae because of their resemblance to ancient obelisks, towered twelve stories above the surface of the desert. The energy they consumed to open the rift was nothing compared to the expected yield. Unlimited energies from the interdimensional tear would pour into that time/space opening.

Improving on even the great Tesla’s energy-beaming experiment, the resultant energy for Project Three was to be beamed to receiving dish units all over the world. The energy crisis would be over. The planet would no longer die under the burden of carbon emissions. Everything from cars to factories to microwave ovens could get all the energy they needed simply by mounting a reception dish on their roof.  The success of Project Three was supposed to change the world forever for the better. 

Now, she knew that her ideas were on the verge of destroying the human race if she didn’t destroy her own invention first.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  She was supposed to be a Nobel Prize winner.

 “Are you making progress?” asked Hovious.

“I’m thinking,” said Heddy.

For a moment, Hovious tapped his chin.

“Think harder,” he said.

The tip of his tongue grazed his bottom teeth as he spoke, and Heddy saw that it was sharp, forked, and black as dried blood.

Another tremor took the facility.

“Then leave me alone so I can think,” she said, and tried not to vomit.

Heddy shuddered at the thought of what this new Hovious’s eyes would look like if he removed his dark glasses.

Absently, she smoothed the front of her new white lab coat and saw to her horror that, despite how hard she had scrubbed, there were still traces of blood beneath her fingernails.

With a renewed sense of urgency, she looked back at the computer interface, made a swift adjustment, and brought up a magnified view of the Stellae.  The tremors had given her an idea.  Her fear and nausea were forgotten.  If she could increase the tremors by amplifying the resonance differentials, she could bring down the entire facility in one big earthquake.  But how?

“What are you doing?” asked Hovious.  He leaned over toward her, and his breath was so hot it almost burned her skin.

“Stand back and let me think,” said Heddy nervously.  “There’s not much time.”

As she applied pressure with a thumb, the holographic image enlarged, focused and narrowed the field to reveal more closely the suspended swarm of nanoparticles that hovered between the Stellae like a swarm of bees. Fear washed over her like a wave of blackness. In the center of the image, she could just make out something within the swarm. It was a gigantic, writhing mass— something pythonic seethed within the nanoparticles, raging to break through. She almost screamed.  And at that second, as she held back a scream and instead clicked to another, Heddy knew that she could not hesitate.  She had to destroy the entire facility to prevent that thing from escaping into the world, but she was running out of time.

“What is it?” asked Hovious.

“I think I understand the problem,” said Heddy, carefully controlling her voice to make it sound matter-of-fact. “I was looking for color shifts within the nanoparticles and the Stellae. I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but if you give me a moment, I can work this out.”

Stall, she thought. Stall with confidence.

Hovious was watching her closely, pacing back and forth, clasping and unclasping his hands in a robotic motion.

“You’re running out of time,” said Karl.

“Please, let her think,” reprimanded Hovious gently.  There was nonetheless a slight edge to his voice.

Karl took a step back, clearly unwilling to challenge the Hovious thing.

And Heddy was thinking hard.

The image on Dobsen’s small screen filled her mind suddenly.  Tesla’s lab. What was it about Tesla’s lab that was nagging at her?  Something else that he was working on before the fire…..

It hit her then and she had an idea.

“I think I have it,” she said. “I can stabilize the Stellae.”

“And how is that?” asked Hovious sharply. 

“Hold on,” said Heddy.

She looked down at the floor while she thought. They had been unable to give her another pair of shoes her size and she noticed that, like her hands, they too were spotted with blood. Heddy suddenly wanted to cry.

All guilty, Dobsen said.

Heddy looked at her watch.  The weight of time felt heavy on her shoulders.

Then, with an intuitive mathematical imagery the equal of Einstein’s dream of riding on a beam of light, Heddy saw in instant exactly how to adjust the Stellae’s vibrational parameters.  She knew she had been right; by doing this, she could effectively turn the giant iridium pillars into the equivalent of Tesla’s earthquake oscillating machine. The wave of vibrations resonating through the massive Stellae would literally obliterate the entire complex.

And all of us with it, she thought.

“Heddy?” said Hovious.

I don’t want to die, she thought.

“Heddy? Time is short.”

She recalled Professor Lomas being hacked to pieces by sharp, silvery tentacles.

I did this. I created this technology, then I took the money and turned the other way. Dobsen was right.  I’m guilty.  We’re all guilty.

“Hey, snap out of it,” called Karl.

“I just need to adjust some parameters,” she said. “Be quiet and let me work.”

“And it will stabilize the variations?” inquired Hovious.

“Yes,” she said, and she hoped she lied at least half as well as he did.

*****

“It seems to be holding,” said Hovious.

“It does,” said Heddy. 

She thought of the scientists and workers Dobsen had told her were trapped below in a giant holding pen and again wanted to cry.

“Bravo. You’ve done well, Heddy.”

“It’s my technology,” she said dully.  “It’s your facility.  We would have been responsible if anything went wrong.”

Hovious stood and straightened a sleeve. 

“I suppose we would,” he said.  “But then, who would hold us accountable?”

Heddy said nothing.

By tuning the parameters of the Stellae’s electromagnetic radiation oscillations, she had effectively turned the twelve story tall Stellae into giant Tesla tuning forks.  They would become Tesla’s Geodynamic Oscillating Machine on a gigantic scale. Sympathetic resonations would begin at the molecular level within the Stellae and expand outward from there.  Dr. Heddy Hayden was creating the most devastating earthquake the world would ever know and no one alive would ever appreciate the sheer genius of what she had done. The rifts would mesh together again midst a roar of tectonic destruction and be sealed off forever.

“Karl,” said Hovious with an aristocratic smile, “Now that Dr. Hayden has completed her assigned task, I need you take her somewhere safe.  She is too valuable to be at risk.  I think downstairs would be safest for her, don’t you?”

No one comes back from downstairs, she remembered Dobsen saying.

With a surge of angry energy, Heddy said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Hovious took off his dark glasses, and she saw for the first time the distended, purple-green orbs behind them.  Angry shapes moved in those eyes, like tapeworms burrowing through flesh.

“You’ll go where I send you,” he said.  “Your utility to me is now spent.”

Heddy was too terrified to move. Karl took a step toward her. Suddenly, she felt a terrible vibration rack the floor.  Chairs toppled over and Heddy just barely held her balance.  Karl crashed headfirst onto the sharp corner of a desk and dropped to the floor.  A pool of scarlet seeped from his skull onto the white tile floor. 

The energy radiating through the Stellae had come alive and it was matching quantum rotations to create vicious waves of vibrational energy.  The whole building began to shake.  Heddy wrapped her arms around a conduit to keep her balance.

“What is that?” cried Hovious as he spun around.  “What’s going on?  Something’s wrong.” 

A vicious grinding sound in the walls agreed.

He glared at Heddy.  “What have you done?” 

When she didn’t answer, he ran to the visual projection screen and looked frantically at the operational processes.

“Computer, explain,” he cried into an audio port. But the computer could not interpret his voice over the sudden thunder that cracked through the floor. 

“What do I do to stop this?  Tell me,” he screamed. 

“Go to hell,” Heddy shouted back.

The building shook again and a wall exploded inward, knocking Heddy to the floor. Hovious was showered with white powder and strips of wiring.  Heddy saw silver tentacles thin as clothesline shoot through the wall and wrap around the businessman’s neck.  Without knowing why, she tried to crawl over to help him, but the pain was too much.  Hovious was pulled along the floor toward the opening in the wall with frightening speed.  The last thing she saw before the floor cracked open beneath her was the hatred in his horrible eyes before he was yanked out of sight.

From somewhere down the hall, she heard him scream just as the entire ceiling came crashing down.