As Troy finished the tale, Carol came over beside him and pulled out two handfuls of tiny fragments from the final drawer. They were a little sticky to the touch. She shook them off her hands and they miraculously flew around the room and coalesced into the ring systems of Saturn and Uranus. She looked at Troy in awe.
“Does that bizarre story have a point?” Carol asked. “I must admit that I am amazed at how nonchalant you are about this whole damn thing. For myself, I’m just about ready to freak out. Completely.”
Troy pointed at the miniature planets floating in the air. “What we are seeing has no explanation in terms of our experience. We’ve either died together or transferred to a new dimension or someone is playing mind games with us.” He smiled at Carol. “If you must know, angel, I’m scared absolutely shitless. But like that old stoned hippie, I keep telling myself, ‘They know.’ Somehow it gives me comfort.”
They heard a soft sliding sound and a shaft of bright light burst into the room from an opening that was forming between two panels, one brown and one white, just to the right of the exit. Carol recoiled automatically and covered her eyes for an instant. Troy also jumped back at first, but then shaded his eyes with his hands and watched. The panels continued to slide until an opening about two feet wide had developed. The room was beginning to fill with light. Troy saw a great illuminated ball coming slowly through the opening. “Here comes the Sun Doot-un-Doo-Doo Doo . . . Here comes the Sun,” he sang anxiously, “And I say . . . it’s all right . . .” He hummed a few more bars of the song as Carol opened her eyes.
“Jesus,” she said. The bright orb, the size of a giant beach ball, lifted itself into its proper place in the orrery and flooded the entire room with its radiance. The spinning, orbiting planets shone with reflected light from their sides facing the Sun. Carol stood transfixed, silent tears running down her face. She could not speak or move. She was completely overwhelmed.
Troy was also frightened, but not yet so much that his ability to function was impaired. However, a moment later he saw something in the exit that sent a bolt of terror through his system. His heart surged into overdrive as he blinked and then squinted, making certain his mind was not playing tricks on him as he looked just around the bright light of the model Sun. Instinctively, he turned to protect Carol and shielded her from what he had just seen.
“Don’t look now,” he whispered, “but we have a visitor.”
“What?” said Carol, confused and still stunned.
Troy held her by the arms and they moved together several steps to the right. He looked over his own shoulder and saw the thing again.
“Over by the exit,” he said, turning around, unable any longer to hide his panic.
Carol’s eyes indicated that she had found the source of Troy’s terror. She had no idea what it was, but she could see that it was large, clearly threatening, and absolutely different from anything that she had ever seen or imagined. It had also moved into the room. She heard Troy’s frantic, incoherent shouts, but their meaning didn’t register. She looked at the thing again and her mind balked. She opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out at first. She dropped to her knees on the floor. She heard the sound of screams in her ear, but they seemed far, far away. Her brain was sending a message that said, ‘You’re screaming,’ but for some reason it didn’t seem possible. It had to be someone else.
The thing was coming toward her Its main body was about eight feet tall at that moment, but it was continually changing its shape and size as it undulated across the room. Whatever it was, Troy and Carol could see into it and even through parts of its structure. A transparent external boundary membrane was wrapped around a permanently seething set of mostly clear fluid matter that ebbed and flowed with each movement. The thing moved like an amoeba, matter simply heading in the right direction, but with astonishing speed. Tiny black dots were scattered just behind all its external surfaces, darting in all directions, apparently supervising the continuous reconfigurations that gave it motion. A half dozen chunks of grayish, opaque matter, objects a foot or so square, were also embedded near the center of the primary body.
But it was not the main body of the thing that was so terrifying. Protruding from its upper portions was a frightening array of a dozen appendages, mostly long and slender in shape, that appeared to be stuck into the main body like sharp objects in a pin cushion. It looked as if the large, clear, amoebalike structure was a versatile transportation system that could carry virtually anything and that the payload, at least for this usage, was this family of constantly active rods, all of which were threatening because their end effectors resembled needles, hands, brushes, teeth, and even swords and guns. In Carol’s mind, she was being attacked by a heavily armored tank that could change size in an instant and move on invisible treads in any direction.
Troy moved to the side, trying to calm his fear and catch his breath, as he watched the thing zero in on Carol. Its longest attachment, a reddish plastic implement which split into two short tines about a foot away from the primary body, suddenly extended itself outward an additional three feet and stopped just six inches in front of Carol’s eyes. She screamed and pushed it away, forcefully, but it popped right back into position. Troy plucked the Jupiter ball out of the air and, with all his might, hurled the sphere at the center of the thing. The shapeless mass fell back on impact and immediately retracted its extended appendages. But in an instant the thing reconfigured itself somehow and adjusted its matter to let the ball pass completely through. Before it hit the floor on the other side, Jupiter rose into the air and came back to take its proper position in the solar system model.
The thing had now stopped advancing toward Carol. It was sitting in the middle of the room, its spindly appendages flailing around in all directions. It seemed to be making a decision. Troy bravely grabbed a rod with an end effector like a brush and tried to pull it away from the main structure. Instantly, core clear material flowed into the joint where that particular rod was attached, strengthening the connection. But Troy’s action definitely caused a change in its pattern. The thing started after him. Ever so carefully, making sure it would follow him while watching out for another quick extension of the red implement with the two tines, Troy edged toward the exit. As the thing continued to move toward him, Troy motioned for Carol to get back. Then he broke for the door, tripping slightly over an extended rod on his way out.
It hardly hesitated. With surprising celerity the thing made itself short and squat. A maximum amount of exposed surface was now on the floor and it could move more quickly and efficiently. The deployed group of attachments were placed into some kind of compact traveling configuration and the thing hustled out the door.
Carol was left alone on her knees on the floor. The solar system model was above her and to the right. For over a minute she didn’t move. She just watched the spinning planets abstractedly and listened for the occasional sound of Troy’s footfalls in the distance. At length there was a long period of silence and Carol rose to her feet. She took several small, slow steps, reassuring herself that she was all right, and then walked over to the exit opening between the panels. The exit opened onto a corridor that ran in both directions.
Troy had gone to the right when he had left the room. After remembering her camera and going back to take a few quick photographs of the suspended planets, Carol followed Troy’s path, also taking the corridor to the right. She walked slowly down the black hall, turning around frequently to locate the light coming from the room that she had just left. There was now a close ceiling over her head. The hall next split into two forks; both directions were dark. Carol listened for sounds. Again she thought she heard music, but she couldn’t begin to identify where it was coming from.
This time she chose the left fork in the hallway. Soon it narrowed and seemed to be circling back in the direction from which she had just come. She was just about to turn around and retrace her steps when she distinctly heard two noises, something like a thud followed by a scraping sound, off to the right in front of her. Drawing her breath slowly and struggling to conquer her fear, Carol moved forward in the dark. After about twenty more feet she came upon a low door that opened to the right. She bent down slightly and peered in. In the dusky light she saw unusual shapes and structures in another small room with walls made of the now familiar curved and colored panels. She crawled through the doorway and stood up.