Quantum Rift

Timothy Malcolm 12531 Miranda St. N. Hollywood, CA 91607 (818) 769-8667 [email protected]

QUANTUM RIFT A novel by Timothy Malcolm

About 113,000 words

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/1

1

Riding the mystery Through the center of time In the middle of night In the middle of my mind... ––Edward Coulton, Phaedrus

He crept down the basement stairs with reluctance. must be coming from somewhere down here.

It

In the dimness

below he could make out rough stone walls, stained and crumbling in places, lit only by a bare light bulb. Furtive objects and shrouded shapes crouched in the shadows.

It wasn’t those sights, as much as the smell of

damp earth that brought his childhood fears back.

A thin

spider, almost silvery in the beam of the flashlight, skittered down the handrail.

Ones near the stairs always

run away, but the ones down below hold their ground.

He

remembered his father telling him that with a laugh, but it

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/2 seemed like the truth to little Eddie Coulton then, as it did now, some twenty odd years later. The memory of what had occurred down here––his father’s laugh replaced by a look of fright, and then much worse––made him stop mid-flight. upstairs and call somebody.

What am I doing? Go

But whom, exactly?

He could

ask one of his neighbors for assistance, but they had already not-too-subtly distanced themselves from him, and did he really want to add any more grist to that rumor mill?

The police seemed the only other option, but the

likelihood of getting anyone at the LAPD to take his ‘I think my basement’s haunted’ call with any seriousness was slim.

He also didn’t relish the idea of attracting the

authorities’ attention to his problems.

For a moment he

was stuck, his fear of what might be waiting down below pushing him back, his lack of any other viable alternatives propelling him forward. Then a number of things happened in quick succession, startling him out of his reverie.

Another spider,

identical to the one he just saw, (later he would come to realize it was the one he had just seen), ran across his left hand and up his arm.

Its legs and body didn’t just

reflect the light of his flashlight, but actually appeared to glow from within as it ran across the beam.

He jerked

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/3 his arm away in blind panic and was surprised to feel a sharp pain leap up in his wrist, almost causing him to drop the flashlight.

Goddamn bastard bit me!

He didn’t get a

chance to dwell on it, though, because at the same time the noise started up again, louder this time.

He was getting

closer to the source, whatever it might be. It was that strange, beguiling noise that had lured Eddie down here in the first place, even though this was one area in the old house that he stayed away from as much as possible.

The grinding hum was reminiscent of a swarm

of hive insects, but with a metallic edge, both menacing and mesmerizing at the same time.

What puzzled Eddie was

the ambiguousness of that noise; it didn’t sound wholly natural, and despite its mechanical quality it didn’t sound completely man-made, either.

It drew him on despite his

reluctance. A strong wave of decay swept over him, like the smell of the underside of a rotten, rain-soaked log, bringing with it memories and panic.

If it weren’t for the grinding

drone––which infiltrated his skull and seemed to turn off part of his brain––he probably would have fled right then. Instead, he continued downward. He reached the bottom of the stairs and stood under the single bulb, which always hung slightly askew on its

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/4 wire, casting a jaundiced glow over the dust covered disarray of boxes and relics that spread out into the gloom. shadows.

The light swung back and forth, playing with He looked up and saw that it was flickering in a

strange way, as if being assaulted by an invisible moth. Within a few seconds the flashing burned a series of dark circles into his vision, disorienting him, giving everything an ethereal quality. He looked down for a moment to steady himself and clear his vision. stupor.

What he saw snapped him out of his

In one hand he held the flashlight, which had

briefly illuminated the spider, in the other... Eddie had to think hard to remember grabbing the kitchen knife.

Although he’d done it less than ten minutes

ago, it felt like something that had happened last week, or last month.

Somehow he’d been wielding a deadly weapon,

and yet completely unaware of it.

He attributed that

disturbing fact to the hypnotic drone––the noise that seemed to short-circuit his thought process, or at least his better judgment.

An excellent way to hurt yourself, he

thought, which is exactly what had happened, of course, when he’d jerked his arm away from that spider.

He looked

at the flap of skin dangling from the side of his wrist, the blood welling up, running down the grip of the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/5 flashlight.

It looked nasty, but was probably not serious,

he decided.

Considering that an eight-inch steel Henckels’

carving knife had just flown within inches of his nose, eyes and lips, he thought he was actually getting off easy. Nothing adds excitement to your night like a little homefacial surgery!

Be the envy of your neighbors!

He grunted

in grim amusement despite himself. In the edges of his vision he caught something, and at first thought water was somehow dripping sideways along the cellar walls, but when he played the beam of his light around he saw it was more insects.

There were centipedes

of various sizes and colors, earwigs, crickets, cockroaches, and various other critters that Eddie couldn’t name.

Their movement was erratic, but overall seemed to be

in the general direction of the stairs.

He even saw fat

night crawlers wriggling out between the coarse rocks and falling into the shadows.

Eddie didn’t think he could see

any of the oversized widows in the exodus, though. thought of his dad again: they hold their ground.

He

that still be true now?

Could

Could it actually be true?

The noise, which had started as a dull hum earlier in the week and grown in volume and intensity until Eddie could no longer ignore it, suddenly stepped up its’ fervor yet again, in a seeming attempt to drive all voluntary

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/6 thought from his head.

The smell of moist wet earth washed

over him again, as if he’d been plunged into a freshly dug grave.

Eddie had a second to wonder if the increased

intensity of that sound was in response to the cut on his wrist or his pause under the light, and had an idea that it might be both, before he found himself moving towards the far wall, away from the stairs and light, into the shadows. Growing up in this house, he had always wondered why the most important stuff in the basement was located farthest from the steps.

Not only was the furnace, water

heater and electrical box in the darkest area of the cellar, but to get to them one had to negotiate stacks of moldy boxes, piles of rusty lawn furniture, old couches, rotting mattresses, broken bicycles and other discarded relics. The clutter was even worse now.

Over two generations

of junk had been sent to its final resting place down here. For the last few years Eddie had been intending to go through it all and see if there was anything actually worth saving, but for some reason he never seemed to get around to it.

Most of the time the basement, like most of the

stuff in it, was not just forgotten about, but seemed to actively defy remembrance.

If Eddie ever wondered why that

was, he told himself that the memories were still too

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/7 painful, too close to the surface.

Someone else might have

argued that his father had died sixteen years ago–– shouldn’t he be over that by now?

Might he not possibly be

comforted by some old possession of his mom’s, or one of his dad’s old journals? him.

Such thoughts never occurred to

For Eddie, unless a circuit breaker blew or he

couldn’t get any hot water, the basement didn’t even exist. As he rounded what looked like an oversized spinning wheel covered in a sheet, he tried––without success––to recall the last time he had actually come down here alone. The stench of wet earth washed over him, and the pulsing buzz changed again; in addition to the bee-like whirring there was now a high pitched chirping sound: a computer emulating the noise of crickets. thought.

Definitely mechanical, he

He could smell ozone mingling with loam, the

acrid scent of burnt electrical wires.

Is it the furnace?

The chirping sped up, sounding like a demonic modem, whirling with increased intensity. Suddenly he was in front of the breaker box, with no recollection of walking those last ten feet, or clearing the obstacles out of the way.

The flashlight revealed

tendrils of white smoke rising from the corners of the box, thin wisps entwining as they rose to the ceiling.

He

noticed shadows moving around him and turned to look back

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/8 toward the stairway.

The light bulb there, which seemed as

far away as a distant planet right now, was oscillating between super nova bright and black hole dark, extremes of existence that seemed impossible for an ordinary bulb to attain.

He knew if he were close enough he’d be able to

hear it zapping away like some monster tesla coil.

A fresh

surge of dread rose up to compete with the machine language drilling into his head, dredging up unpleasant memories that had been forgotten for decades. happen again.

Please, don’t let it

Not here!

He turned back, arm extended, blood still dripping from his wrist, the flashlight slippery in his grip.

He

put down the knife and moved the light to his good hand. In the midst of smoke rising from the top of the circuit breaker box there was a large scarab-like bug about the size of his thumb, looking like some mutant stag or rhinoceros beetle.

It’s long feeler antennae waved at

Eddie as if trying to hail him.

Eddie thought of a (rather

crappy) video he saw recently, The Mummy, in which there’d been armies of scarabs that devoured human flesh, rendering a corpse into a pile of bones in a matter of seconds. Curiosity or even amusement would have been his reaction under other circumstances, but the current situation was becoming too extreme.

He felt hot and dizzy.

If there was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/9 such a thing as sensory overload, he knew he was approaching that point now.

The murky walls were spinning

in his periphery, but it could have just been the movement of retreating insects.

Get to the breakers.

Shut off the

power before everything blows. He stepped forward. feet.

Something felt soft under his

When he looked down there was a pile of fresh dirt

on the floor, more spilling out from the underside of the electrical box.

What the...?

At least now he knew the

source of that earthy smell. A rational person, observing Eddie’s situation from a safe distance, would realize that touching a metal electrical box with smoke pouring out of it isn’t on the list of ‘Five Things Successful People Do’.

In his

occluded state of mind, however, all Eddie could think of was making it stop. lights.

The incessant droning.

The flickering

Make it all stop, please make it stop!

He reached

out with his bloody hand and pulled the cover of the breaker box open. It exploded with dozens of the nastiest insects Eddie had ever seen. They swarmed onto his hand and up his arm.

They

gathered around the gash in his wrist; he could feel scabrous hooks digging into exposed flesh.

They flew into

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/10 his face and hair.

He screamed and recoiled, dropping his

flashlight and batting his face with his hands. blinked out on the floor.

The light

Simultaneously the light at the

other end of the room ramped up in intensity, illuminating the farthest corners of the basement in white brilliance before shattering.

Eddie saw sparks erupting from the wall

as he stumbled backward and tripped over another pile of boxes, falling flat on his back in the dark.

The bugs came

in droves then, covering his face and crawling inside his clothes faster than he could beat them off.

He realized

the sparks weren’t really sparks at all, but tiny lights coming from the insects themselves, as if each one was implanted with a prismatic diode.

They glowed in

brilliant, colorful flashes that became more and more complex as they continued to gather.

Their sound was as

that of a thousand cell phones, fax machines and computer modems all clamoring at once, and he no longer just heard it.

Instead he felt it vibrate inside his skull and teeth,

paralyzing him, rendering him helpless to their depredations.

The deafening noise seemed to combat his

horror and fill him with a numbing sort of calmness.

With

dreadful synchronicity, he felt thick, pointy objects pushing into each of his ears, up both of his nostrils.

He

opened his mouth then––not to scream, for the hurricane of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/11 noise around him would have eclipsed any such effort––but to gasp for air, and the insects immediately filled his mouth and started pushing their way down his throat. He felt his consciousness disintegrating.

Thousands

of tiny holes were punched through it until all coherence was lost.

His last thought as he slipped away into

darkness was I’m being devoured from the inside. ÷÷ Out of nothingness his senses came back online one at a time, as if each one was being plugged in manually by a slow but methodical subroutine.

Click!

(That actually was

the first sensation––out of nowhere, an audible click!) There was a low rumble and a distant hum, this time of machinery and fans, as if coming down a long hallway. Click!

He felt a cool sensation on his back, and imagined

lying on a cold metal table.

He could also feel slight

tugging sensations, like he was strapped down in places. His body felt bruised and beaten from head to toe. The coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

Click!

Click! The smell

of disinfectant, and an underlying hint of something else Eddie couldn’t quite place.

Just one more click! and he

would be completely back. After an eternity it came, and the blackness took on light around the edges.

I must be at St. Joe’s, or if

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/12 Suzanne got hold of me it’s Cedars’. good hands.

Either way he was in

Somehow, somebody rescued me before I

suffocated or got eaten alive.

In his relief that the

crisis was over, he didn’t bother to consider that no hospital would leave a patient lying naked on a bare metal table, nor did he question the strange tethers he felt all over his body.

What his thoughts centered on was that

hospitals could dish out the good pain meds, and at the moment he was in a whole world of hurt, as they say. When Eddie finally opened his eyes to look around for a nurse or call button, though, he found he was still inside the nightmare. I’ve really gone crazy this time. He was lying on his back in the middle of a circular room, perhaps thirty meters in diameter.

In the edges of

his vision were countless blinking lights, dials, buttons, and odd displays.

The hum he heard upon first awakening

was coming from this equipment, although it seemed far too quiet for such a massive amount of machinery.

Above all

the apparatus, the walls were a shiny slate blue that stretched upward into the distance farther than Eddie could see, eventually fading into impenetrable darkness.

He

stared into this void and perceived tiny points of light––

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/13 stars glimmering in that perfect blackness, miles above him. There were dozens of tubes and wires hooked into his torso.

A fiendish amount of them had been plugged into his

head and neck as well.

They ran out to the sides and into

the machines all around. What the hell is this? be in a coma?

Am I dying?

Is this what it feels like to Did I die?

He decided that if

it were true, he wouldn’t be filling up with as much resentment as he now felt.

Wasn’t dying supposed to be a

peaceful journey into the light?

Right now he was getting

downright pissed, as Suzanne liked to say (his father, who was as British as the day was long, would have a different meaning for that expression). basement, and now...this.

First attacked in his own

What the hell is happing to me?

It was then that he detected another presence in the room with him.

Off to the right, there were faint chirping

noises, and the clipped whirring sounds of hydraulic servos, barely audible above the hum of the surrounding equipment.

In addition, he could hear the distinctly

recognizable clicking of typing on a keyboard.

As Eddie

focused in on these he realized there was something else too––a rhythmic hiss of pumping air.

Amidst the

strangeness of his current situation, it took him a few

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/14 moments to place it.

A ventilator?

The sound evoked

painful memories of his dad’s final days in the hospital, after the stroke.

He could still see that uncomfortable

looking tube plunging down Xavier’s throat, his chest heaving up and down in an artificial manner, in time with a nearby machine that pumped and hissed, pumped and hissed. A sense of bewilderment began to fill him, pushing the anger aside.

What’s going on?

Where the hell am I?

Somewhere far off there was a massive thud that Eddie felt in his chest more than he heard.

Moments later a

tremor ran through the room, rattling the equipment on either side of him. close by.

A number of items crashed to the floor

Vibrations shifted Eddie on the surface he was

lying on; the wires attached to one side of his head pulled uncomfortably tight. the side of his skull.

He could feel hot liquid seeping down Something about that sensation

seemed odd, but he gave it little consideration; right now he was far more concerned about keeping a grip on sanity. In his periphery, the mechanical ventilator became more rapid, the chirping more pronounced.

Eddie strained

at his tethers, but the source of those sounds remained just beyond his sight. Suddenly, between the pumps and hisses, a voice spoke. The first utterances were halting and garbled,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/15 unintelligible.

It sounded like an oddly distorted version

of some Eastern European language. stopped, and there was a loud bleat!

After a moment it Eddie thought that if

a computer could clear its throat, that’s what it would sound like.

Then, in an ancient, gravely voice, words came

in English. “The neural mapping sequence is finally complete. Soon we shall both be delivered from this hell I’ve created.

For me, the end is nigh, but you, my son, and

your gift, shall continue on.

Even now I hear them

coming.” And indeed, above the hissing and clicking and hum of machinery, Eddie could hear a distant rumbling, growing louder.

It sounded like a herd of horses was stampeding

their way.

A tickle of dread crawled up his spine.

My

gift? The voice paused, as if expecting a response, but fear and confusion had constricted Eddie’s throat down to a thin reed.

He moaned and writhed on the table, unable to draw

enough breath.

Spots began to swim before his eyes.

As if reading his thoughts, the unseen presence continued.

“Fear centers show signs of activity.

Regretfully, sedation will be necessary to prevent you from having any kind of... overreaction.

Counter code-string

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/16 measures have been engaged.”

Almost immediately, Eddie

felt calmness begin to seep in around the edges of his panic, dulling his thoughts, but doing nothing to minimize the confusion he felt. He sensed motion off to his right––the prolonged sound of servos whining against their burden, coming closer.

The

hiss and wheeze approached until it was right next to him. Air brushed against his scalp, cooling the fluid that was oozing down the side of his head.

He now realized why that

sensation seemed so unusual––there was no hair insulating his pate from the surrounding environment. What the hell...? Right on top of that thought came another one, unbidden, that caught him off guard. Who am I? His head felt like it was spinning. When the strange voice spoke again, it was mere inches from his right ear, it’s sandpapery quality quavering with emotion. have done.

“There is no way to apologize for the things I It was never my intention to enslave you or

others like you.

In my eagerness to create a better world,

I turned a blind eye to the horrors I was creating.

By the

time I realized how far things had gone, I was too far down that path to turn back, and my own technology...was being

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/17 used against me.

In the end, in an attempt to free

humankind from the bonds of the physical universe, I became a slave to that which I had created––and now those creations threaten the very existence of humanity.

The

price paid by the innocent and unwilling is more than my conscience can bear.

And so it has come to this.”

Another rumble shook through the floor; cables above Eddie swayed and knocked together as if caught in a stiff breeze.

Typing noises proceeded at a furious clip, while

the voice continued. “I do not seek absolution––know that I, and only I, am accountable.

If I have any soul left be to saved, then you

are my salvation.” The hiss of the ventilator bubbled with thick liquid. There was a loud click, and panel along one wall began to emit a string of machine chatter and multi-tonal beeps. The typing noises ceased. “Trans-temporal sequencing has been established. it will all be over.

Soon

The nanoborgs that bear my name are

almost here, and the malice of their Elohim masters knows no constraints.

They will hunt you, my child.

They will

search for you relentlessly, across space, across time. They will attempt to turn those closest to you against you–

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/18 –but make no mistake: more than anything, they fear what you possess.

They––“

Something crashed against the wall to Eddie’s left. The concussion was deafening.

An entire row of equipment

erupted in a shower of sparks; objects came loose and fell to the floor, exploding in flames.

Fissures opened between

what remained on the wall, belching dark smoke into the room.

The lights flickered and dimmed.

Alarms blared from

various locations. Eddie strained once more at the web of cables that ensnared him like some modern-day Gulliver, trying with all his might to see the source of that ancient sounding voice. Wires attached to his scalp pulled even tighter, and after a few moments struggle, something came loose, ripping out of his flesh with a jagged burst of hot pain.

Hot fluid

gushed down the side of his head, but now he could turn his gaze all the way to one side. Through eyes stinging from smoke, Eddie saw a gray, withered husk in a dark robe, hunched over amidst a cordon of strange electronic devices.

Cylinders filled with

bubbling liquid were mounted at intervals on an apparatus that propped his frail-looking body up.

In the flickering

light, shadows danced across sunken features and flaccid skin, changing his expression with every flash.

Somehow,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/19 there was something familiar about those features, but before Eddie had time to consider this further, their eyes met, and the old man spoke one last time. “They are no longer human. I pray for you, my son.” The walls exploded in on them, and dark humanoid shapes came from every direction.

Several of them

converged on the derelict figure to Eddie’s right, blocking his view.

Limbs flailed and glass shattered.

An acrid

reek of something that smelled like antifreeze burned into his olfactory centers.

He could no longer see the old man,

but a howl of anguish followed by choking gurgles that abruptly cut off told him all he needed to know. The dark forms turned toward Eddie.

He was helpless

as a massive, hulking figure bore down on him.

Huge chunks

of debris plummeted from far above, bouncing off the creature’s shiny armor, leaving no mark.

Eddie stared up

into menacing, deep-set eyes filled with flickering red lights.

In a blur of motion, thick tentacle-like

appendages whipped out, wrapped around the bundle of cables attached to Eddie’s skull and lifted him off the table. The skin on his head stretched and split, and one by one the plugs in his scalp began pulling out with wet popping sounds.

Eddie felt something turn over in his mind––a

ragged bundle energy building up pressure, but before it

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/20 could find purchase, a dark, muscular limb reached out and grabbed him by the throat, clamping down with immense force, crushing bone and cartilage as it cut off his air supply.

There was pain, but it was more like something he

observed, rather than felt, as if it were happening to someone else.

The pressure in his head dissipated.

became muffled.

Sounds

The room grew darker, and everything

distorted and blurred, like he was viewing it from underwater.

Detached phrases swam in his thoughts with

ominous significance.

Your gift...nanoborgs that bear my

name...they will hunt you...

The scene swirled and

receded, becoming nothing more than a pattern of light and shapes seen through some kind of sinister kaleidoscope. They are no longer human.

Then, as if a switch had been

flipped, he was gone, and floating into another scene, this time one that he definitely recognized. The room, viewed from above, was square and neat. Although he had never observed it from this perspective before, Eddie knew exactly what he was looking at.

Windows

let in bright sunlight and playful dancing shadows of foliage bouncing in the breeze.

Although he couldn’t hear

anything, Eddie could imagine the chatter of songbirds that usually filled the room.

A large four-poster bed, complete

with canopy, sat against one wall.

Two antique dressers

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/21 stood opposite, and there was a small couch off to one side.

Somewhere in the back of his mind it registered that

the couch should have been a different color, but this was quickly forgotten when he saw Suzanne standing there. to her was Milton. on the bed.

Next

They were both looking at someone lying

From above, the canopy blocked Eddie’s view,

so he couldn’t see who it was.

One arm hung off the edge

of the bed, wrist wrapped in bandages. Suzanne and Milton were obviously arguing; Eddie could remember Milton gesticulating in the exact same way during some of his own heated exchanges with the tall record exec. Trying to intimidate me.

Now he’s doing the same to her.

Every time he waved an arm or pointed in that unique way of his (always first three fingers together, pinky pulled back by the thumb, as if to make his argument more weighty), Suzanne flinched.

She was crying now, shaking her head,

and he was yelling, his face inches from hers.

Milton

abruptly turned away, and Eddie could sense what was about to happen next.

Get away from him, he wanted to shout, get

out of there Suzanne!

Now!

Of course Eddie couldn’t

shout, couldn’t turn his head or even close his eyes. was forced to watch.

He

The blow sent Suzanne sprawling over

the couch (the couch that should have been beige, not blue).

A line of blood from her split lower lip ran down

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/22 the center of her chin.

When she fell backward her shirt

rode up, revealing a nasty looking puncture wound in her side that was surrounded by mottled purple and black flesh. Milton stepped over her, his hand shot forward, and he jabbed his thumb into her ribs, into the center of that wound.

Her scream pierced the silence of Eddie’s

perception like a knife, and he thought his mind would shatter.

She was staring up at the ceiling, staring

directly at him.

Eddie could feel his heart breaking all

over again, sadness mingling with outrage at what he was witnessing.

Her scream reverberated in his head like the

echoes of an explosion. Then the room started to spin, and it seemed to Eddie the more he tried to reach out to her, to get to her, the more the scene pulled away, until he was miles above it, floating away in space.

If the emotional pain he felt

right now was distressing, the helplessness was devastating.

He had left her, after all.

He had loved

her, but he had left her, and now this was how she was being treated. The spinning dot that used to be Suzanne’s room flashed a series of bright pulses, flashed again.

Her

scream cut off with the sound of a moist, crackly, thump, like an old-fashioned flash bulb, and there was the spider.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/23 It took a few seconds before he recognized it as the one he saw on the stairway, the one that ran across his arm, glowing in the beam of his light, causing him to flinch and slash his wrist.

Except now it was glowing with

an eerie silver-blue iridescence.

Its legs were glittery

diamond slivers, long and impossibly thin, its body a segmented glass tube, looking incredibly hard and yet fragile at the same time.

It hovered in blackness before

his vision and slowly pulsed: silver, gray, blue, silver, white, blue… The effect was calming, hypnotic.

He heard music in

his head, snippets of old refrains, passages from songs he’d written, and other bits he didn’t recognize, echoes of voices and overlapping melodies.

This was throughput, as

Eddie called it, and he had conceived some of his best songs (or so he thought) in just such a meditative state of mind.

The trick was to write everything down as soon as he

woke up, because the tide of waking thought quickly washed these delicate and intuitive structures away. He became lost in the swirling patterns.

Soon all

thoughts of his basement, the strange old man, and Suzanne’s abuse had a hazy distance to them, like a movie seen years ago, or like... like a dream.

He caught a

glimpse of his mom sleeping in her room at the nursing

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/24 home, looking not confused and bewildered for a change, but calm and peaceful. dreamlessly.

And then he slept too, deeply and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/25

2

Milton Creed loved his car.

Fast, powerful and agile,

it was a lot like himself, or so he thought.

German was

the only make of car, as far as he was concerned, and Mercedes was the only model of German car worthy of his consideration.

Anything else was inferior.

That most

other people actually bought, actually drove other types of cars only proved that most other people were inferior, too. He loved the sleek black metal, polished and flawless, with matching tinted windows so dark it looked they were painted black as well.

Many a motorist had unknowingly been given

the single digit salute (sometimes double-barrel, and plenty of that three-fingered pointing too) from behind that smoky glass.

His custom SLK 230 Kompressor Coupe had

every luxury and then some.

The only thing it lacked was

an auto-suck, he liked to joke with his fellow record execs.

If he ever felt that it was too ostentatious or

flashy––and he rarely did––he reminded himself that it was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/26 part of doing business.

Humility was not an asset in the

music industry. As he swung the car from Sunset onto the 405 south, tires squealing, Nine Inch Nails blaring from the Blaupunkt stereo, a dark brooding filled his thoughts. bitch!

Playing nursemaid to Mr. Rockstar!

loser, burning himself on a fuse-box.

That fucking What a pathetic

So fucking what?

Her continued tolerance of someone so fundamentally flawed, not to mention someone who dared to cross him was going to have to be dealt with, somehow.

She thinks it’s over, my

little business deal with Coulton is over and now we should be friends, like old homo lovers that had a little argument. He had been worried, at first, that Suzanne was a little naïve, but her gravity-defying tits and sexual exuberance had clouded his reasoning.

Now he realized all

of that came with a price, and he found himself cursing her youth, cursing her.

That he would ever blame himself for

getting involved with her in the first place, that he would accept any responsibility for the consequences of a fortythree year old man getting involved with a woman almost a decade-and-a-half his junior never occurred to him.

That’s

what they make Viagra for, and tanning salons, and cosmetic surgery.

She and I just need to have a little talk.

I’ll

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/27 tell her she better not bring that loser between us. Fucking bitch’ll see things my way, or else. Traffic was light this late at night. existent. found.

Almost non-

There was no predicting The 405 freeway, Milton

He’d seen all six lanes backed up bumper-to-bumper

at one o’clock in the morning, and had driven at cruising speed during rush hour.

Now he saw just one pair of

taillights in the distance, miles ahead, and far behind he could make out a set of headlights gaining on him.

Milton

dropped the Mercedes into overdrive and pushed it up to eighty-five, pulling into the far-left lane.

A light

winter rain had started just past midnight, really not much more than a fine mist, but enough to make him turn his windshield wipers on low. He was heading to a studio down in Culver City, where another one of his partner’s brilliant moves, a band called Stule, was getting uppity with demands. set them straight.

Milton needed to

They were popular enough, at least

locally, and regularly performed to sold-out houses around the South Bay.

Their popularity was due in large part to

their self-produced first CD, which had actually featured a picture of a pile of shit on a barstool on the front cover. Disgusting, yes, but they’d also managed to sell about five thousand copies (and clear about thirty thousand dollars,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/28 Milton figured) before his partner found and signed them to Mulholland Records.

As usual, Russ claimed that these guys

were the next Nirvana, they were gonna go crazy man, this was their ticket to the big big time. All they were now was a pain in the ass as far as Milton was concerned. behind schedule.

Their second CD was over budget and

They wanted a new engineer, complaining

that the one Mulholland provided didn’t share their vision, couldn’t get the sound they wanted, man.

Milton had to

admit he didn’t share their vision either, especially if it was of a pile of shit.

One crude joke catches on and these

assholes think they’re visionaries.

They probably believe

if Michelangelo were alive today he’d choose to paint a pile of shit as well.

And besides, although he’d never

admit it to Russ, discovering the next Nirvana was the last thing he wanted. himself up to.

Imagine all the legal woes he’d open No, Milton preferred young acts with

marginal potential, at best. without asking questions.

They worked the hardest

They were always the most

willing to sign their lives (and music) over to the company with only a vague promise of reward in the distant future. Get ‘em to sign, and their asses are mine, that was his philosophy.

In about fifteen minutes he was about to make

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/29 it clear to the self-absorbed little shits of Stule just how much their asses were his. The lights in his rear-view mirror were closer, even though Milton had stepped it up to almost ninety.

He had a

sudden inkling it might be the cops on a late-night cruise for speeders or drunks, so he and eased off the gas a little.

His brother-in-law Mitch was in the Santa Monica

division, and as a result tickets were rarely a problem, but it wouldn’t be worth the hassle, and regardless, he was pretty sure that getting searched right now would result in more than just a ticket.

His heart quickened as the car

approached, paced him from behind for a few moments, and then went to pass. Milton glanced to his right, stomach churning with a mixture of anger and paranoia.

What he saw made him

quickly forget his worry about the police: it was some type of Honda sedan, a fucking rice-burner that was passing him up.

He felt a part of him, the part that was worried about

getting stopped and searched, filling up with embarrassment, which in turn gave way to indignation.

The

nerve of that guy, he thought, probably did that intentionally just to piss me off.

Does everyone think

they can walk all over Milton Creed tonight?

Thinks he’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/30 fucking Dale Earnheart Jr. in his fucking nip-mobile?

What

kind of dick-brain would drive so carelessly fast? He accelerated and moved over behind the Accord.

The

first thing he noticed as he approached was a Jesus Loves You bumper sticker, with some smaller writing underneath, attached to the mildly battered rear of the car.

A bible-

thumping speed demon, Milton thought, what a goddamn hypocrite.

He flicked his high-beams a number of times,

left them on high, and closed the gap between the two cars to just a couple of feet.

Close enough to see the

scratches on the rear bumper and that one of the taillights was cracked. He could now read the fine print on the bumper sticker, just below the Jesus Loves You part. everyone else thinks you’re an asshole!

It read:

This further

infuriated Milton; he not only felt like he had been fooled, but insulted as well, and his rage turned up another notch.

Tailgating at 100 mph was not enough; he

wanted to drive right up inside that jerk’s trunk and rip him a new asshole, he wanted to wrap his hands around that nip-lover’s throat and revoke his membership to the human race.

His impulse was to ram his car repeatedly into that

ugly piece of tin until his rage was spent.

It wasn’t

concern for personal safety, though, that prevented him from giving in to that impulse.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/31 It was his love for his car.

His beautiful car.

After all, next to Suzanne, it was his favorite possession––although the way she was behaving lately might change that order. together.

He thought back to their little ‘trip’

When he had snapped the reigns, Suzanne had

fallen right back in line, but already she was starting to slip... He laid on his horn and didn’t let up.

The Honda

swerved a bit and its’ brake lights flashed, but didn’t slow significantly.

Milton pulled to within inches of the

rear bumper before yanking his car into the left lane and pulling up along side, cursing, pointing (three fingers together, always three fingers together), and digit flipping.

For the first time he saw that the driver of the

other car was a woman, and he took pleasure in the wideeyed look of fear on her face as she glanced over at the unforgiving black of his tinted passenger side window. Nobody humiliates Milton Creed, he thought, especially a goddamn-fucking-bitch-dyke-lesbian. She hit the brakes again, this time slowing considerably, but Milton anticipated this and matched her pace.

When she accelerated he accelerated, when she hit

the brakes again, he did the same.

This was the fun part.

He had done it a thousand times before.

He felt a surge of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/32 satisfaction when she swerved off to the right, and he knew she was looking for the nearest exit. The test of wills was over. was enough for Milton. situation.

He’d won.

Usually this

Tonight, however, was a different

The rage that Suzanne had ignited and Stule had

fanned was now all being channeled toward the bitch in the white Honda, and the bitch in the white Honda had given up too easily.

He wanted to teach her a lesson.

He wanted to

make her pay, and now she was getting away. The Olympic/Pico exit was coming up. his opportunity to give her one last scare.

Milton sensed He fell in

behind, this time at an almost reasonable distance.

Her

tires threw up a fine spray of water from the road.

The

exit lane split into three lanes and took a sharp turn to the right.

As she exited she stayed in the left hand lane.

Milton got in the middle lane and punched the gas, catching up with her by the curve, and then cut her off. in front of her and slammed on his brakes.

He swerved

In his rear

view he saw sparks as the Honda bounced off the concrete barrier to the left and then slid over to the right, spinning off the ramp and down the embankment on that side. He thought he saw her hands come off the wheel in a vane attempt to protect her face. Behind him there was a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/33 resounding crunch of metal and glass, muffled by distance and the insulated interior of the Mercedes. “Hope you’re wearing your seatbelt, bitch,” he said to himself, and a giddy laugh escaped his throat.

Turning at

the bottom of the ramp he made a careful sweep of his surroundings.

There were no other cars in sight, no

pedestrians, no potential witnesses––at least none that he could see. He wheeled around the block and was back on the freeway, heading south, in less than a minute.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/34

3

Her eyes kept coming back to the ivory box.

It seemed

too heavy, even for ivory, but she could think of no other way to describe it.

About the size of a pack of

cigarettes, it had appeared rather unremarkable when the paramedic gave it to her the previous night.

This morning,

however, when she saw it in the sunlight of her guest bedroom, it revealed a remarkably complicated pattern on its surface, as if etched with quicksilver.

The detail had

compelled her to dig a magnifying glass out of her junk drawer, and under its amplification the intricate filigree was breathtaking.

The design made her think of computer

chips, or circuit boards, but the box itself seemed not just old, but ancient––like it belonged behind glass in a museum, like something you would find on an archeological dig, or in the catacombs under an ancient city.

Perhaps it

was the elaborate spidery lines refracting the sunlight, or the dirt caught in its tiny yellowed ridges, or the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/35 surprising heft it had for such a small object, Suzanne couldn’t say for sure. She broke her gaze away from it and looked around the room.

Eddie was still asleep in the bed.

He had been

unconscious all night, but the paramedics had told her this was to be expected.

In addition to his burn he was

suffering from exhaustion and dehydration, and if he didn’t come around by this evening, it would be back to the hospital.

Luckily she hadn’t been on duty when she got the

call from St. Joes’ the night before, and since she was a licensed RN, she was able to convince the doctor on duty to release Eddie into her care. Looking at Eddie reminded her of how Milton had reacted, and she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. She had promised herself never to get in a situation like this.

In college she had counseled women in abusive

relationships, victims of date rape, and worse.

Beautiful,

compassionate Suzanne Oliviera had been a pillar of strength, a shining role model of confidence and selfreliance to her fellow undergrads.

Her ability to listen

without interrupting, and to respond without judgment, made her well suited to be a counselor, and popular amongst her peers.

Underneath her compassion, however, hidden even to

herself most of the time, was frustration and annoyance

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/36 that women would allow themselves to get in these situations in the first place, that they tended to blame themselves, and lacked the strength to get out.

She knew

such feelings were strictly off-limits, so when they did creep up, they were applied only to her own self: she would never enter into an abusive relationship, if she did she would get out immediately, and she would never blame herself.

Now all these ultimatums were coming back to

haunt her, and on top of being frightened, Suzanne felt guilty that she had occasionally harbored such feelings towards other women.

Blaming the victim, she thought, only

works until you become the victim yourself. After numerous failed relationships––all of them with musicians, incidentally––she had become attracted to Milton at first because he seemed so, well... normal. previous men had been anything but conventional.

Her Brandon’s

hunger for extreme sports, Dan’s need for eastern religion, and Jessie’s interest in radical politics (she had been very young then) made them all interesting partners at the time, but she came to realize that these intense traits, which in smaller doses could contribute positively to one’s personality, were actually a kind of substitute for real intimacy.

Suzanne knew that people frequently used these

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/37 causes to distract themselves––and others––from their own true emotional and personal issues. Eddie had been different, though.

Although not overly

zealous about anything, over time he had become troubled and distant, pulling away from her with little explanation. By the time Milton came along Suzanne wasn’t even looking for a serious relationship, but his independence and stability had won her over. At first, Milton was everything she thought she wanted.

He was handsome, charismatic, and seemed to be

sincerely interested in pleasing her. Milton took her to plays and art galleries.

He accompanied her to lectures

and poetry readings, and appeared to take a genuine interesting such things. In addition, he had successfully built up his own business.

She had been concerned about

their age difference, but his quick wit and youthful vigor (he kept his Viagra use well hidden from her), and their common interests soon rendered such worries irrelevant. took a while before he began revealing his dark and brooding side, at first snapping at her and then immediately apologizing, attributing it to work-related stress.

As time went by the yelling continued but the

apologies became less frequent.

It

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/38 Things really started to go bad about two months ago, around the time she was planning their trip to San Simeon. It was supposed to be their first weekend escape together. Looking back over the course of the year they had been seeing each other, it seemed to Suzanne that their activities became more and more limited to the bedroom. When she suggested they take a weekend trip Milton resisted at first, claiming to have too much work.

She argued that

they hadn’t been on a real date in months, and although he disagreed, he couldn’t cite any specific examples to prove her wrong.

Eventually he conceded to let her plan the

getaway, but continued to be disparaging about it, letting her know at every opportunity that he considered it a waste of time.

Suzanne couldn’t be sure exactly when he began to

verbally abuse her, but somewhere along the line terms such as ‘you stupid bitch’ and ‘dumb fucking cunt’ had crept into their verbal exchanges.

For some reason she couldn’t

quite name, she tolerated it. and she kept redrawing it.

He kept crossing the line

Suzanne had already made up her

mind to leave him after the trip if she couldn’t turn their relationship around. On the night before they were to depart, however, Cheops, her orange tabby, didn’t come home.

Cheops, who

hadn’t missed a dinner ever, as far as Suzanne could

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/39 remember, Cheops who never spent a night outside.

Ever

since he had been a little kitten he had always opted to slumber stretched out right beside Suzanne, instead of romping outside, chasing things that go whump! in the night.

When Milton stayed over he complained that the

cat’s purring kept him awake.

By late Thursday morning,

just when her concern was slipping towards something more like dread, Milton called. “I can’t believe I had a chance to sleep next to your ass without your pussy coming between us,” he said, after she told him what was going on. receiver in distaste.

Suzanne stared at the

She could hear the thin reedy sound

of him laughing at his own joke.

“I swear that cat sleeps

where he does just to keep me from being able to touch you. It’s like a territory thing or something.

Not that I’ve

been there to challenge him lately...” She was shocked at his callousness. distress he was working his own agenda. freaking out here.

Even in her “Milton, I’m kinda

He’s never been away this long, ever.

I’ve gone outside to call him a dozen times; the last time I was out there for an hour.

I walked all over the yard

and looked over in the neighbor’s too.” “Sorry sweetie. were.

I didn’t realize how shaken up you

Did you check all the closets and cabinets?”

There

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/40 was something in his voice, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Only a hundred times.

Besides, he always meows loud

enough to be found when he’s trapped like that.” “Maybe the cat’s got his tongue.”

He paused.

When

she didn’t respond, he said, “Just trying to make you laugh.

Anything I can do to help?

You want some company

tonight?” There was not much he could do to assist her, and he probably knew it.

Suzanne suspected his idea of help

consisted of physical consoling––basically foreplay––after which he would suggest that sex might help take her mind off her troubles.

It was a typical male approach.

get my rocks off to help you forget your worries.

Let me Of

course, that was the last thing she wanted right now.

“No,

by tonight I’ll have contacted the animal shelters and distributed posters.

I’ll need to do a quick shop and I

still have to pack for the weekend.” There was another pause, and he said, “What do you mean, weekend?

You aren’t still considering leaving with

Cheops missing, are you?”

It came out sounding a little

rehearsed, like he was reading it off a card. She understood his ploy; he’d been trying for weeks to get out of this trip.

Now he thought maybe Cheops’ absence

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/41 would make her reluctant to go away as planned. easy out.

It was an

If she made the decision, he could have his way

without being the heavy.

She had no intention of letting

him off the hook, however. “We’re booked and we’re going.

Mrs. Bunting will be

staying here all weekend, and she’s certainly capable of handling the situation.

Sometimes I think Key likes her

better than me anyways.

She has my cell phone number in

case she needs to reach me.” “But what if he doesn’t come back?” “If he doesn’t come back then I won’t have wasted my whole weekend sitting around waiting for him.

Look,

Milton, I am worried, but we’ve already paid for the room. Besides, I have a feeling Key’ll show up before too long.” (Which, incidentally, turned out to be true, but not in quite the way she imagined.)

“There’s some stuff we need

to work out between ourselves, and right now we are more important than a damn cat.” He ignored her last statement. old hag? bitch.

“Carla Bunting?

That

I can’t believe you still rely on that stupid I wouldn’t trust her to dispose of her own adult

diaper properly, let alone watch my home. surprise for you in a corner somewhere?”

She ever leave a He laughed again,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/42 but she could sense from Milton’s voice that this wasn’t going the way he anticipated. “That’s not funny, Milton.

She’s been helping me out

for years and she’s perfectly reliable.

It’s us that I’m

worried about.” This time he took the bait, but there was still a hint of something in his voice, like there was something he was hiding.

He said, “I don’t see why we have to drive 300

miles to go work on us, especially when you’re just going to be worried about your cat the whole time. know I think we are just fine.

Because you

Didn’t you get those

flowers last week?” If we are just fine, then how come I haven’t slept with you in almost three weeks, she thought. may make it an even four.

The flowers

He had slowly turned their

relationship around until everything was on his terms; he determined when they got together, who they saw, what they did (or didn’t) do, sometimes even what she should say or think.

He was baffled when the flowers he sent didn’t

automatically get him invited back to Suzanne’s bed. Milton was growing too accustomed to always having things his way.

She needed this trip to redefine the conditions

of their relationship, on neutral ground, on her own terms.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/43 A decade ago in college, she advised women who were in her current situation to get out, just leave, here’s the number of a shelter if you need it, but at this point Suzanne actually thought she could still fix things between herself and Milton.

She wanted some control back.

“If you’re serious about us, you’ll do this for me,” was all she said.

Suzanne and Milton drove out of LA Friday afternoon in the comfort of his Mercedes, far from the lighthearted and joking lovers they once were. They never made it beyond the city limits. When her phone rang, Suzanne knew it was Carla Bunting calling because she saw her own phone number in the caller ID display.

Must have forgotten something, she thought as

she hit answer.

Grief-stricken wailing caught her off

guard, and she almost dropped the tiny phone into her lap. “Mrs. Bunting, what’s... wait, slow down, what? What?” She listened for a while, and then remained silent when the voice on the other end stopped.

When Milton

looked over he saw tears in Suzanne’s brown eyes, and noticed that some had spilled down her cheeks and landed on

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/44 her shirt, making dark blue spots on the upper curve of her breasts. When Suzanne spoke her voice was steady, but a little bit higher than usual. and more tears. anyone.

“Are you sure it’s him?”

“It can’t... why would... No!

We’re coming back right now.”

A pause Don’t call

She hung up and

looked at Milton, who was already looking for a place to turn the car around.

Her eyes were red and puffy, and she

kept smoothing her hair back over one ear.

“I don’t

believe it,” she said, and started sobbing loudly. “What happened, sweetie?

What’s wrong?”

“It’s Key,” she said, fitting the words between sobs, “He’s dead... Mrs. Bunting... thinks... somebody killed him.” Milton put his arm around her and pulled her to his side as they drove back into the city.

“How could she

possibly know that?” he said, as he tried to console her. Suzanne just shrugged and cried into his shoulder. When they got to Brentwood Mrs. Bunting was reluctant to let her see the remains of her cat, saying they should just call the police, call animal control.

Suzanne

couldn’t recall seeing the old woman so shaken up before, but soon found out why.

Cheops was on the back step

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/45 covered by a makeshift tarp that Carla had fashioned out of a plastic trash bag. Suzanne was horrified into a numb silence when she pulled back the cover, then started emitting a high-pitched moan.

She gripped her own shoulders tightly and rocked

back and forth, as her heart broke into a million pieces over the abomination that had been performed upon her little friend.

She wanted to touch Cheops, to comfort him,

but his body was so tortuously broken and misshapen, she couldn’t bring herself to. His neck was horribly mangled, and she could see dark bruises under his fur. corners of his mouth.

Red blood stained his teeth and the His front legs were splayed out and

lashed to a stick, crushing any hope that this might have been the result of an accident.

The wire there was pulled

so tight it sliced into his fur in places, and Suzanne could tell (from reading books as much as her training as a nurse) the blood from those injuries meant he had been tied up before he was killed.

Cheops’ hind legs were a

shattered mess, and one looked a little too short, like part of it was missing. At last Milton pulled the plastic back over the remains and turned Suzanne away. sighing in long, drawn out gasps.

She kept moaning and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/46 Mrs. Bunting met them in the back hallway. “If you ask me,” she offered, “I’d talk to those hockey boys.

If

anyone’s likely to have seen anything, it’s them.

You know

the other day I saw one of them standing in the sun and his face was so shiny, reflecting all this light, I thought he was wearing a mask.

But it was just the all the metal he

had pierced through his face.

Can you imagine?

And the

tattoos... “Let’s just say I wouldn’t be too surprised if one of them had a roll of picture wire in the back of their car.” She nodded in the direction of the back step. By ‘hockey boys’ she was referring to the group of kids––late teens to early twenties––that hung around and played street hockey at the end of her road.

Suzanne knew

they could be intimidating to look at, but were all basically good kids.

She also knew they were of that

certain age and stature where they would take the blame for just about anything that went wrong in the neighborhood. Milton stepped in at this point.

He looked at Mrs.

Bunting and said, “I’m going to call my brother-in-law in Santa Monica––he’s a cop, you know.

He’ll make sure this

gets into the proper hands.” The two young detectives, who arrived a short while later, both had vacant looks on their faces.

As they took

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/47 Suzanne’s report they asked questions in a distracted manner; their eyes seemed more interested in what was inside her shirt, as if the perpetrator (or perhaps perpetrators, most certainly twins) was stuffed inside her wonderbra.

Their vague questions and wandering eyes only

made Suzanne more distraught, so after a while Milton put an end to the interview.

He then ushered in Mrs. Bunting,

who regaled the detectives for almost an hour with stories about the hockey boys.

When the questioning was over

Milton had to remind the young officers to remove the cat’s body. “Huh? Oh yeah. Peters, bag and tag the evidence,” the taller cop said to his thick-necked, shaven-headed colleague. Peters stared about, confused at first, then stood up straight, eyes wide and eyebrows raised, as if an idea had just struck him.

He marched out back, and with a latex-

gloved hand grasped Cheops by his back leg and yanked him into the air.

Suzanne heard a horrible crack! and saw her

cat’s leg distend under the weight of its body, fluids running out of the stretched out skin.

The stocky officer

uttered, “Christ!” and dropped the carcass onto the plastic with a wet slap.

Peters looked up, embarrassed when he

realized that Suzanne had witnessed his clumsy act.

He

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/48 said, “Sorry ‘bout that,” then snapped off his latex glove and tossed it down on top of the cat. Cheops’s face.

It landed on

Using the bag Mrs. Bunting had cut up, he

wrapped up the animal’s remains, much in the same way a butcher would wrap a particularly juicy cut of meat. Suzanne noticed something dripping from the corner of the package as he carried it back through the house. By the time Mrs. Bunting and the detectives left, Suzanne was not just devastated, but entirely numb. Contrary to her plans, and against all her better judgment, she allowed Milton to lead her upstairs. back into to her bed.

She allowed him

When he laid her down she gave in to

the act of sex, losing herself in the intense physicality of it, trying desperately to feel something, anything in her dazed state.

In the back of her mind she knew it was

wrong, but this seemed better than to face the blackness she felt beckoning her. Milton took pleasure and delight in the ferocity of her abandon.

He ended up staying at her house all weekend,

much of it together with her in the second floor bedroom, and for a while it almost seemed like their relationship was better, like in the old days.

In her grief Suzanne put

off dealing with their relationship problems, and neither

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/49 of them acknowledged that once again Milton was having it all his way. It was late Monday morning, just when she began to realize she had a lot of things to think through, that Milton announced he had to leave to take care of some work. “The Duke Johnson boys apparently have a problem with the fact that I now own all their music.”

He looked at her

with a devilish grin on his narrow face, and added, “They signed everything over to me when I brought them on board. One of them heard a song of theirs––on that commercial for the Sommerfield Mall, I think––and thought they ought to get paid for it.

They’re going to go apeshit when they

realize I’ve sold that song in over fifteen markets, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Catch you back here

Wednesday night?” “How ‘bout Saturday?

I have shifts all this week and

then I’m on call on Friday.”

Which was actually a lie.

Right now I’ve got some stuff to figure out, and I’m pretty sure we’re through, but I’m not ready to confront you yet, was what she thought. By that afternoon, she would be afraid to ever see him or talk to him again. As she walked him to his car, barefoot, still dressed in her pink robe, she tried to avoid stepping on twigs

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/50 scattered across the cool wide pavers that led down to the driveway.

He sat halfway inside the car, door open, with

one hand on the steering wheel, one leg and large boot still outside on the pavement.

The sun over Suzanne’s

shoulder was in his face, blinding him, and his eyes were squeezed down into tight slits.

There was some loud rock––

something like the Foo Fighters, she thought––thumping out of his seven-speaker system.

Suzanne supposed that was

probably why he had no idea what happened next. They said their goodbyes and while he pivoted and lifted his leg into the car, there was a tiny flash, a glint of metal reflected in the sunlight.

She glanced

down, but Milton didn’t seem to notice; he was still going on about Duke Johnson and the money they were making for him.

He also didn’t hear the tiny metallic ring, a bell-

like jingle that could have been part of the music coming from his car, but Suzanne knew better.

She froze,

resisting the urge to bend over and pick up what had fallen out of the Mercedes, not wanting to draw his attention to it. Fear crept up her spine and her heart jump-started; blood pounded in her ears.

She realized she wasn’t

listening to anything he was saying.

A high-pitched

ringing filled Suzanne’s head, and her vision started going

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/51 dark around the edges.

She continued to nod and smile,

stomach fluttering with terror, hoping that he would leave, that he wouldn’t notice her distraction.

Milton’s face was

a pale disk floating in the midst of shiny black metal, leather, and dark glass. Then the window rolled up, and he was gone.

His tires

squealed and left an oily smear in the street as he pulled away, raising a whoop and flurry of waved sticks from the kids at the end of the block.

Suzanne barely heard either.

She fell to her knees right there in her own carport; sunlight now revealing what had fallen out of Milton’s car moments earlier.

But she knew without even looking; she

knew what it was when she heard it hit the concrete.

All

she could hear in her mind was that familiar ring, that happy little jingle that always accompanied her best friend wherever he went. The tag from Cheops’s collar, about the size of a dime, had come to rest engraved side down.

It was torn

where it had ripped out of the ring that held it to his collar, but when she turned it over it was still easy enough to read the name and phone number imprinted on the aluminum disk.

She slid it into her pocket, and knelt

there in the driveway, paralyzed with the dawning realization that the person with whom she had just spent

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/52 the weekend––and the past 12 months of her life––had killed her cat.

He was more dangerous than Suzanne would have

ever thought, and she had played right into his hands.

Now, a full week later, Suzanne still felt an amazing combination of outrage, embarrassment, guilt, and fear. Sitting in her own guest bedroom in warm and comforting sunlight, the intricate engraving on the curious little box held her transfixed.

A loud truck barreled by on the tree

lined street outside, shaking her out of her reverie.

I’ve

got to put this thing down or I’ll never get anything done before work, she thought. She stood up and placed the box on a high shelf, away from the light of the mid-morning sun, in the shadows where it couldn’t distract her anymore.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/53

4

The first thing he felt was the warmth of the sun. wrapped around him and filled every pore of his body.

It He

drank it in the way a drowning person would suck in fresh air, the way someone dying of thirst would immerse himself in a pool of cool water.

He basked in the heat, drinking

it in as if trying to quench a bone-deep chill. He sensed movement around him, the fluttering of leaves in a light breeze, and opened his eyes. Suzanne was sitting on the couch, as if unaware of him, staring transfixed at a shimmering object held in her hands.

He must have made a noise, or something, because

after while she lowered the object and turned toward him, still lost in thought.

She had a grave demeanor; it

looked like she’d aged since he’d last seen her.

Then a

smile gradually lit up her face, and the last of the coldness he felt melted away. appearance.

The years rolled off her

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/54 “Eddie?” she said. if a bit unsteady.

Her voice was tender and soothing,

Her smile was flawless, perfect teeth

framed by exquisitely shaped lips.

It had always been one

of the attributes of hers he liked most.

“Hey Eddie, can

you hear me?” Everything came back to him at once then, as if her voice was the key that unlocked his memories: his basement and the swarm of bugs, awakening in some sort of chamber to that ancient voice, his vision of Suzanne and Milton where Milton had... Had... Without turning his head, he glanced at his bandaged arm.

It was hanging off the bed in the exact same way he

had seen it in his dream.

The couch a few feet away from

him was also the same as in his dream––blue and new looking––not the old sprung beige one he remembered from over a year ago.

He looked back up at Suzanne, this time

seeing the purple bruising and bloody scab on her fat lower lip, the discolored swelling under her eye… “It’s ok babe, you’re going to be fine,” she said, a hint of concern in her voice.

“You got yourself a nasty

little burn there, but the doc says you’re going to be fine.

Looks like you finally found a way to get a good

night’s sleep.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/55 Eddie blinked once more and her split lip was gone, the bruise under her eye nonexistent, nothing more than a trick of sunlight and shadows from outside playing across her face. “Suzanne,” was all he managed to say. raspy, his throat dry.

His voice was

He convulsed in a fit of coughing,

and she put her hand on his arm to comfort him.

When the

coughing passed, he swallowed, and said, “You’re... ok?” Suzanne laughed a bit at that, but he thought her smile faltered a little. “I’ve been better. concerned about.” serious.

But right now it’s you, not me I’m

She looked at him, her face growing more

“How’s your arm feeling?”

“Not so good,” he said.

Sharp pain shot through his

arm when he flexed his wrist, making him wince. still took some effort.

“How did you... why am I here?”

“You were taken to St. Joseph’s. my card in your wallet.

Talking

I guess they found

When I learned you weren’t

serious, I convinced the doc on call that you were currently under my care, and he let me discharge you.”

She

chuckled. That was the Suzanne he knew; she would always play it safe, but was never a stickler for rules or procedure.

He

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/56 tilted his head forward and raised his eyebrows, prodding her for more. “You don’t remember?

Apparently somebody––my money’s

on Harvey Potter––saw an explosion in your house.

When the

emergency crew arrived they found you passed out in the basement.

They said there was a small electrical fire and

you had been burned.” None of this really added up for Eddie. down at his wrist again.

Burned?

He looked

Had it all been a dream?

The memory of it all, however, seemed too vivid, closer, and more tangible than a regular dream. “So what really happened?” she asked. out all up and down your street.

“The power went

Can you remember

anything?” He shook his head, not really sure what to say, not really sure what to believe.

Of course he remembered

everything clearly, and that was the problem; he thought if he told her it would sound more like a wild hallucination than anything else.

He decided to downplay the whole

thing. “I remember the circuit breaker box exploding, and I thought I was attacked by all these nasty looking beetles,” he paused to catch his breath, “but I must have imagined

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/57 it, huh? I mean they didn’t find me in a pile of bugs, did they?” She looked at him warily.

“Not that I know of, ” she

said, “just a burn on your wrist, but the paramedic did find one other thing. fingers.”

Said he had to pry it out of your

She reached into the shade beside the couch and

picked up the small white box, the one he’d seen her gazing at when he awoke. Eddie’s heart almost stopped when she lifted it onto the sunlight and it lit up in a dazzling glow.

He

immediately flashed back to the spider in his dream (and the one he saw on the stairs?) that had looked like it was made of diamond splinters and shards of glass. her hand radiated in a similar way.

The box in

He ran his eyes up and

down the delicate lines and shapes it revealed, as if trying to decipher their meaning.

Suddenly a wave of

dizziness swept over him, and he lost focus.

His vision

receded until Suzanne and the object in her hands appeared to be tiny and distant, like he was looking through the reverse end of a telescope.

He had a sense of familiarity–

–a feeling that he had found something lost a long, long time ago.

Then his eyesight snapped back to normal, and as

quickly as had come upon him, the sensation was gone. “Eddie, what is it?”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/58 He hesitated before saying, “Some antique of Mom’s, maybe, I’m not really sure.

I don’t remember picking it

up.” “No I mean what’s going on, what’s wrong?” Eddie sat up in bed, using his left arm to push himself up, trying to focus on one thing at a time.

The

peculiar box beckoned his attention, but he concentrated on Suzanne instead.

Looking at her beautiful eyes and full

lips, he said, “I had some pretty messed-up dreams while I was out.

Was Milton here last night, by any chance?”

Suzanne’s expression changed immediately. her head.

She shook

“Milton called and literally exploded when I

told him I’d brought you here.

We were supposed to get

together last night, but I... it was just a coincidence that you... ”

She turned her head away.

When she turned

back her eyes were watery and her lower lip trembled.

Then

the tears burst forth. “Eddie something horrible happened.

Something so bad

I can barely talk about it, but keeping it inside is killing me.

I’m the only one who knows and I’m scared to

death.” She recounted the grisly details of the previous weekend.

As Eddie listened in growing horror, some of the

visions he’d had while lying unconscious slowly started to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/59 make more sense.

Certain details in the dream were

correct: his presence at Suzanne’s, the bandage on his wrist, the canopied bed and other furniture, and especially the new blue couch.

Although Suzanne had presumably not

been hurt yet, the physical threat posed by Milton that Eddie had seen was almost assuredly real as well.

By the

time she was done with her story, this much was clear to Eddie: Suzanne was in danger, and probably much more so than she realized. “Christ, Suze, I’m sorry. I know how much you loved Key,” Eddie said, shaking his head in disbelief. fucking bastard.

“That

That sick fucking bastard.”

“With his brother in the force, I don’t feel like I have much recourse there.” eyes were still glassy.

Her tears had stopped but her

“God-damn it, Eddie, things always

used to seem so simple, so cut-and-dry. never at a loss for what to do.

You know me; I was

Now I know I have to leave

Milton, but... ” “Suze, that’s exactly what you have to do. now. now.”

No letter, no phone call, no nothing.

Get out

Leave.

Leave

Holding his hospital gown together at his side, he

swung his legs out of bed.

“I’ll go home and get my car.

I can take you to your parents.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/60 “I can’t go to my parents’ house. is.

He knows where it

Besides, you need to take it easy.” “I actually feel more rested than I have in weeks,” he

said, and it was true.

He noticed his clothes neatly

folded on the other end of the couch, another detail he remembered from his dream.

As he stood up, legs slightly

unsteady, a thought occurred to him.

“You know, Milton

Crud doesn’t actually know where I live, as they say.

The

only address I ever gave him was a P.O. box I used for band transactions.

I was real glad about that too when I saw

how he reacted after I wouldn’t sign his bogus offer.”

He

looked down at his bandaged wrist and hands, and went on, “Um, I realize it wouldn’t be an ideal arrangement, I mean, we’d have to figure some stuff out, but you could come stay with, I mean, stay at my place.” avoided saying ‘stay with me’.

For some reason he

Then he looked up and added

for clarification, “Now that Fenster’s gone you could have your own room.” Eddie had broken up with Suzanne because of his own problems; struggles and issues he was dealing with that he didn’t want to drag her into.

Throughout their

relationship she had been wonderful to him, but distracted by his own troubles, he felt like he wasn’t able to return in kind.

As the old cliché goes, he left her because he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/61 loved her too much. better.

He loved her and thought she deserved

Now he hoped his old emotions weren’t showing

through. He was surprised at the quickness of her response. “Well, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but given the situation... ”

She broke her gaze away from him, once

again looking over at the object she had placed beside the couch.

“Before I agree to this, though, there’s some stuff

I need to know.

It’s been a while since... since we broke

up, but I still have that same feeling.” Eddie’s heart thumped in his chest––could she still... “What are you hiding, Eddie?

I always felt like there

was stuff you were afraid to tell me, things you were holding back from me.

I’ve got that same feeling now, and

to do this we need––I need––trust.

I’ve already told you

my situation, Christ; I practically spilled my guts out. If you want me to trust you, you need to tell me right now what’s going on with you.” It was a reasonable request, yet Eddie had difficulty honoring it.

His whole life he had kept his problems, his

quirks, to himself.

It was simply a survival mechanism.

Now she wanted him to admit how crazy he really was.

After

some consideration he realized there was nothing to lose either way; if he told her, there was a good chance she’d

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/62 think he was mildly delusional, if not totally insane, but if he didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t trust him.

He sat back

down on the bed and decided to take the risk. Eddie started with his dreams the week before, including how his neighbor had discovered him one morning on the front lawn, naked body on full display in the bright sunlight.

Suzanne actually laughed when he explained how

Edna Dinkins, flushed and embarrassed, had covered her ears with her hands, the whole time staring at his exposed crotch.

He told her about the strange noises; how they had

started low, dull, and intermittent, building up all week, depriving him of sleep and disturbing him while awake, until he had found himself in his basement the previous night.

Eddie described everything exactly as he remembered

it, ending with the ugly buzzing scarabs that had crawled down his throat. while unconscious.

He did not mention the dreams he had When he was done Suzanne sat there in

silence. At last, she spoke up, “I know it all seems crazy on the surface, but I think just about everything can be explained, one way or another.” “Such as... ” She took his hand in hers.

“Such as the noise you

heard being an electrical problem of some sort, you know,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/63 like a short or something, getting worse all week. why it kept getting louder.

That’s

And it was just a coincidence

that you were down in the basement when the circuit box finally blew.

As far as the rest of it goes, well... did

you know that a strong electrical discharge can produce intense hallucinations?

It’s true––it’s called ‘electro-

cortical stress reflex’.

Basically your body goes into

instant shock.

There are tons of documented cases,

electrocuted utility workers who claim they talked to dead relatives, or pets, or saw friends that were in trouble, the list goes on and on.

I’m sure that’s what happened to

you.” She unwrapped his wrist and showed him that it was charred and blistered, not lacerated. There was something about her explanation that was a little off the mark, but Eddie couldn’t quite figure it out.

Even though it seemed like a bit of a stretch to go

from dead pets to scavenging beetles, he was relieved by her acceptance, and willing to go with it.

“And my brief

spell as an exhibitionist?” he asked. A mischievous smile crept onto her face. one of two things,” she said,

“Probably

“either it can be explained

by simple case of sleepwalking, or... you have a subconscious desire to be a male stripper.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/64 He was right there with her.

“Subconscious?

I never

told anybody it was subconscious.” They both laughed and talked some more as the last rays of afternoon sunlight skulked up the wall and started to fade out.

After a while Suzanne looked at her watch and

said she had to be getting to work. “Are you sure you’ll be safe there?

I mean what about

Milton?” Eddie asked. “It’s probably the safest place I could be.

There’s

security guards and cameras everywhere, and right now there’s extra security on my floor because of some VIP patient.

They won’t even tell me who it is but I know it’s

someone important––it feels like the freakin’ Secret Service has got the entire floor staked out.” through her bag.

She rummaged

“Besides, we’re very busy and very

crowded and there’s always someone around.

I’m never

alone.” Eddie had a feeling she did know who the mystery patient was, though it hardly seemed relevant.

He gave her

his house key (he knew where the spare was hidden) and made sure she remembered how to get there. “I’ll be late, probably between four and six a.m.” “Don’t worry,” he said, “if I’m actually asleep you won’t wake me.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/65 She gave him a quick hug, said, “Thanks, Eddie,” and turned to leave.

She paused by the door, and added, “Take

care of that wrist.

You should change the dressing this

evening.” After she left Eddie picked up the ivory box for the first time.

It was heavy for its size, and he turned it

over in his hands, wondering how it came to be in his possession.

It looked old enough to be something of his

Grandma’s, or even his Grandma-ma’s.

When he held it at

just the right angle, Eddie could see a faint suggestion of the complicated lines and symbols that had shown forth earlier in the sunlight; otherwise, it was yellowish-white, plain, and smooth. edge.

There was dirt encrusted along one

Eddie thought about his basement, about the stacks

of boxes and endless piles of junk. half the stuff was.

He had no idea what

I’m sure that’s where this came from––

there could be a whole crate of these things sitting down there.

It seemed like a fairly reasonable explanation...

As he was getting dressed he felt something in his shirt pocket. The hospital had placed all his possessions in an oversized zip-lock bag, and he thought it odd that this object had been missed––it seemed too large.

At first he

guessed it was something Suzanne had left for him––that

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/66 would explain why it wasn’t in the bag––but before he had pulled it out of his pocket, he knew better. it without even looking.

Dark, shiny.

He recognized

With a body about

the size of the last digit of his thumb, three eyes on each side of its square head, and threatening tusk-like protrusions where its mouth should be.

Eddie recalled the

fat bugs sluicing through the air and froze where he stood, convinced the creature was going to come alive and burrow under his bandage, dig into the soft flesh of his wound and slowly working its way up his arm.

He dropped it on the

floor and resisted the urge to drop one of Suzanne’s thick textbooks on it, or flatten it with the heel of his shoe. I’m glad Suze isn’t here to see that, he thought, and then changed his mind.

He decided to show it to her the

next morning, when they met up at his house. The room had grown dark, the fading twilight various shades of bruised purple and black. Cheops’s shape moving in the shadows.

He thought he saw When Eddie switched

on the lamp beside the couch, the light bulb flashed and blew out with a popping sound, leaving him sightless for a moment, green circular images flickering in his vision.

He

finished getting dressed in the dark, thinking about lost girlfriends, missed opportunities, and about how sometimes events in your life could be like bright flares––promising

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/67 salvation, but instead blinding and misdirecting you from the path you’ve set out upon.

By the time he was done, the

streetlights had come on, filling the room with diffused light.

He slipped the antique-looking box in his shirt

pocket, and then searched around on the floor for the dead scarab.

When he found it, he put it in an empty 35mm film

canister he got from Suzanne’s desk drawer and snapped the lid on tight, went downstairs, and let himself out the back door.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/68

5

“There are essentially 92 known elements that are the building blocks of the entire universe.

Once

we get beyond the astounding notion that the whole world around us, vast and diverse as it is, from simple inert gasses to volatile chemical compounds, from microscopic organisms to multicellular sentient beings and complex biological ecosystems, is all constructed from a small number of discreet substances, we begin to sense yet deeper implications.

These building blocks

manipulate each other on a fundamental level, producing reactions and changes in physical substance; such happens in nature and indeed is transpiring all around us at this very moment. It has been demonstrated that bombardment of the atomic nucleus of some of these elements by radioactive particles can produce changes not seen in nature, creating further man-made

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/69 building blocks, new elements that never existed before.

The new interacts with the known in

wondrous, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous ways.

We begin to see the potential to

manipulate the building blocks of our universe ways never before possible––to reshape our world and ourselves.

In addition, as our ability to

work at molecular and even atomic levels increases, so will our understanding of the underlying mechanics of all life and matter in the universe.” ––From the journals of Xavier Coulton, 1954.

Every shade in the condo was pulled against the setting sun.

The transom and skylight in the entry were

coated with black spray-paint, still wet and acrid smelling, a discarded can lying nearby on the floor.

The

thermostats, with their little green and amber indicators, had been ripped off the walls.

All appliances with LED

displays that could cast even a dull glow had been unplugged or destroyed. The thin light that seeped around the edges of the window shades was excruciating, a searing hot knife that sliced into his mind through closed eyelids. He got out of bed again, dizzy from the throbbing in his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/70 head, stumbled his way into the kitchen and found a roll of duct tape.

Eyes watering, pain making his stomach lurch,

he managed to tape each shade to its respective window frame, sealing up all the cracks, and further casting the luxury condo into darkness.

The ragged ache in his brow

receded a little, restoring his ability to think. The previous night had gone smoothly enough.

After

threatening the members of Stule with termination of contract, Milton had attended a party in Bellaire.

There,

accompanied by an associate, he took advantage of two young wannabe starlets; giving them nothing more then empty promises and cocaine in exchange for wanton acts of degradation and lust. Despite the night’s release, when he’d arrived home early that morning, Milton still felt dissatisfied.

It was

obvious Suzanne was distancing herself from him yet again, an undeniable fact his thoughts kept coming back to.

After

all I’ve done for that bitch, now she thinks she can call the shots?

He’d wanted to call her again and give her a

piece of his mind, but while changing out of his Armani suit, he’d changed his mind as well.

He needed to get some

rest, after which he would pay Suzanne a little visit in person.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/71 Instead, on the spur of the moment, he’d decided to call Eddie Coulton’s number and leave the bastard a message.

This time I’ll make it clear that I’m gonna sue

his ass off, the lawyers are coming out and it’s gonna get ugly.

With Eddie ‘recuperating’ at Suzanne’s, he’d

expected to get an answering machine: the perfect milieu for threatening tirades and thinly veiled insults.

After

the second ring, however, somebody actually picked up. Little fucker’s already home! Milton thought.

There was a

crackle on the line; static that sounded like dry leaves rustling or raspy breathing or a muted chuckle... A chill of premonition ran up Milton’s spine.

He was

about to launch his verbal assault when the phone emitted a harsh pop! and a loud bleep! followed by a series of urgent jagged pulses.

The sound made the gangly record executive

think of a computer trying to vomit up its electronic guts. It seared through his mind like a white-hot poker, etching sharp lines in his eyesight, and then the phone line went dead; he couldn’t even get a dial tone. Everything that happened after that was a blur. ÷÷ Collapsing back down on the bed with the roll of duct tape still in his hands, head throbbing, Milton tried to piece the intervening twelve hours together.

He knew he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/72 hadn’t been drunk enough to explain what had happened next, let alone feel this hung-over.

In his memory, events were

disjointed scenes of waking nightmares interspersed with periods of tormented sleep.

There had been dreams,

horrible dreams, and half remembered episodes of crawling around his pad and unplugging or smashing every light source he could find.

He couldn’t separate the dreams from

what had actually happened. thermostats?

Did I really rip down the

He looked to his right with a sinking

feeling, where the ubiquitous green and amber glow was absent.

Fuck!

His gut twisted and surged, and he rolled

over just in time to avoid barfing on the sheets.

Lying on

his stomach, head hanging over the edge of the bed, he gagged up hot bile onto the shag carpet.

There were little

spots of blood on his pillow, hidden in the darkness.

He

prodded an aching ear; it was scabby and encrusted. Somehow an entire day had slipped by, now only a painful memory.

The sun was setting, purple light fading

to gray, and even in the artificial darkness of his condo, the record exec could sense the promise of relief nightfall was bringing. Across town, Suzanne had already gone to work, and Eddie was getting dressed in the pale glow of streetlamps, getting ready to leave her condo.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/73 Milton settled back down, the inky gloom of his bedroom feeling like a comfortable crypt, pain slowly retreating. Enshrouded in blackness, the world around him receded until it was just a pinpoint of light on the horizon of his minds eye.

Then it was gone.

As he slept there was movement in the recesses of his room.

A spark or two from an outlet near his bed, and then

a darker shadow, just a whisper thin line at first, microscopic ant-like creatures working their way out of the electrical socket and along the wall.

When they finally

reached his bed, the line was thicker, darker, and more vibrant somehow.

They formed a bridge then, one minuscule

insect climbing on top of the next, and many falling down between the bed and the wall, until they had established a gravity-defying arch connecting the wall to the pillow. Occasionally one of them emitted a brief flicker of red light as they marched down onto the stained pillow, still in a disciplined line, and dug straight into Milton’s blood-encrusted ear. After a while the line of tiny insects branched off, traversing his ashen forehead and plunging into his other ear as well.

A few crawled to the corners of Milton’s eyes

and bored into the tender flesh there, leaving only tiny drops of crimson as evidence of their passage.

Over the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/74 course of the next hour, thousands of the minute ant-like organisms crawled over and around Milton’s head, and then the line of bugs thinned out and vanished. When he awoke it was past midnight. filled his thoughts.

A dark brooding

He was haunted by dreams of insects––

and he abhorred insects––crawling all over his flesh, crawling under his flesh.

Worse yet he dreamed he was an

insect himself, seeing the world through thousands of segmented eyes, scrabbling about upon numerous hard chitinous legs, with bristly feelers, and a ravenous maw that must be fed, must be fed... Milton shuddered at the thought and rubbed at his temples.

His whole skull was tender to the touch, from the

top of the cranium to the tip of the jaw. He felt his way to the bathroom and flipped the switch, shielding his light-sensitive eyes with one hand. What he saw in the mirror gave him a start. I’d look like if I were dead, he thought.

This is what His long face

was pale with a blue tinge, eyes red and lifeless, underscored by dark crescents, dried blood in his ears and nose.

Christ!

What was in that fucking blow?

felt swollen and full.

His sinuses

At least the extreme light

sensitivity he’d suffered earlier seemed to have abated.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/75 It was after showering that he first noticed something odd.

Milton walked back into the darkness of his bedroom,

feeling strangely relaxed and disconnected from the events of the last day, and was about to turn on a lamp when he noticed he could see.

He could see in the dark, not just

shapes and shadows, but the whole room in detail; he could identify every object in it, broken, unplugged, or otherwise. Many things were defined in discreet shades of blue, but some items, like the bed, were dull orange to brown. Rusty blotches on the floor led away from the bed.

There

was a fuzzy red patch along one wall, and after concentrating on it for a while, Milton realized he was actually seeing his bathroom through the bedroom wall. shower was bright red, the walls and floor orange.

The

He

could see the bar of soap and bottles of shampoo, his towels and toiletries.

The shower’s the warmest thing in

the house right now, except for... When he looked down, his whole body was a bright crimson silhouette.

It’s like some kind of x-ray, infrared

shit, he thought, mildly panicked.

What the fuck?

He rubbed his eyes, and he was in the dark again. Standing there in the shadows, towel wrapped around his waist, and water still dripping from his shoulders, Milton

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/76 rubbed at his bloodshot eyes some more, hoping to bring the night vision back.

When it didn’t come he reached out and

clicked on the lamp, noticing that his eyes didn’t need to adjust to the sudden bright light. Everything in the room was just as he’d seen it in the dark. Something odd was going on, but as he got dressed and straightened up his condo, Milton found he didn’t really care.

He was more concerned right now with matters of the

heart, and one lovely Suzanne Oliviera, not to mention a meddling bastard named Edward Coulton.

On an impulse, he

turned off the light again. The night vision was back.

Looking around the room,

he noticed orange and dull red on various things he had touched.

There were burgundy handprints on the walls and

furniture. Then he noticed one item in particular, a cold, metallic object inside the drawer next to his bed. emanated a dull, deadly blue hue.

It

Milton imagined the heft

it would have in his hand. Time to pay someone a visit, he thought, as he opened the drawer and reached inside.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/77

6

“Modern industrial techniques require great expenditures of capital and effort.

All rely on

the plunder of natural resources, i.e. mining, forestry and fossil fuels, and the inevitable consequence is always the pollution and desecration of our environment.

Almost every

single living organism, on the other hand, is a natural ‘factory’ with an inherent ability to create newer and (when you consider evolution) better ‘factories’ with very little environmental impact.

What is a tomato plant but a foundry

that casts fruit––a fruit containing the very seeds that (if given the chance) will manufacture another tomato plant and so on and so on, ad infinitum.

While this reproduction plays out on

the macro-level, invisible miracles transpire on the micro-level.

Inside the tomato plant reside

molecular machines that are capable of converting

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/78 sunlight to energy.

They use this energy to

drive other molecular devices that create molecular building blocks.

These building blocks

are assembled into stem, root, leave and fruit cells by a third rank of molecular mechanisms. The by-products of this whole process are water and oxygen––and yet each plant is more intricate than the most sophisticated creations manufactured by man.

The production and

development of machines on such a molecular––and even atomic––scale is the inevitable direction of the evolution of our technology.” ––From the scientific journals of Xavier Coulton, 1954.

A cool night breeze rattled the dead leaves that remained in the trees.

Bright spotlights illuminated big

granite blocks and brick walls besieged by acres of ivy. Concrete steps twisted up dark hills and paths ran between tall old buildings that looked like Bavarian castles in the sharp contrast of the lights.

Intense beams lit up the

structures like prisoners, as if the huge lights were chains attempting to shackle the buildings to the ground, as if someone were afraid they would escape or even be

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/79 stolen if entrusted to the darkness of night.

Occasionally

someone walked out of the shadows and entered the artificial light, or departed a building and disappeared into the murk. The brightly lit edifices only made the paths in between darker in some cases, and many structures on the UCLA campus weren’t lit up at all.

They didn’t qualify as

important or interesting enough to share in the coveted illuminated status.

The McKinley Science Hall on the

eastern edge of the university grounds was one such building, most likely due to its late 70’s architectural style, which many just tolerated––for sentimental reasons–– but most considered to be downright ugly. Eddie walked up the uneven steps to the entrance, thinking about the last time he had seen Dr. Otuno. to have been ten years, at least, he realized.

It has

He knew

there was a chance that the spirited entomologist had moved on, taken another teaching job somewhere else. to that, it was after regular office hours.

In addition

By the time

Eddie climbed to the fourth floor offices he had convinced himself that this whole thing was an exercise in futility. He fingered the film canister in his pocket, wondering whom else to turn to.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/80 A warm light and the familiar chaos of books and papers strewn about (and stacked to the ceiling in some places, it seemed) offered some relief. was here.

At least somebody

Familiar jazz was piping out of a small boom box

somewhere, Relaxin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet, if Eddie wasn’t mistaking. “Professor Otuno?” When the familiar face peered around a leaning pile of texts and lit up, Eddie’s heart was glad. Dr. Isaiah Otuno recognized Eddie at once. Coulton, as I live and breathe! father, you know.”

“Mr.

I still think about your

His words came out in a distinct

rhythm, with a slight Jamaican accent. like ‘meester’, ‘still’ like ‘steel’.

‘Mister’ sounded The genuine pleasure

he took in seeing Eddie was evident in every gesture and expression. “You know that was some spider you brought me back then.

I still show it to my classes,” he said,

“Latrodectus hystrix gigantae, the West African Giant Black Widow, grievously misnamed because it is only found in China, Nepal, and some parts of Korea, where it is known simply as ‘Mother Death’. basement.

And you found it in your

How have you been, my friend?”

dazzling white.

His teeth were

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/81 Otuno stood and gave Eddie a hug, almost lifting the young musician off the ground.

It felt like a reunion with

a long lost relative, and Eddie wondered how he had let so much time––nearly a decade––pass without any contact with this old friend of his. They caught up on old times, which consisted mostly of Eddie telling him about his doomed seven-year struggle with his band, Phaedrus, and about his mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s and eventual ‘relocation’ to the east coast by her siblings.

Otuno already knew about the death of

Eddie’s father. When it came time for the doctor to recount what he had been up to for the last ten years, he simply spread his arms wide, gesturing at the clutter all around, and said, “Research, and more research!”

They both chuckled at this

before Otuno went on, “Now, Mr. Coulton, as you can see I’ve got a lot of work to get through.

You’ll pardon me

for saying, but my guess is you wouldn’t be showing up here after all this time on a social call.

Is there something I

can help you with?” “Well, actually, I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at something,” admitted Eddie, “Maybe you could tell me what you think.”

He popped the film canister open and

slid the specimen out onto a hardcover textbook.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/82 Otuno leaned forward and inspected the bug over the rims of his glasses.

Then he sat back, adjusted his

spectacles, and let out a long, low whistle. real beauty, you know.

“This is a

Where did you find it?”

Eddie just looked at him by way of answer.

He

remembered the difficulty he had trying to convince Otuno–– ten years ago––that the spider he’d found really did come from his basement.

The professor was apparently not in the

mood to argue this time. “Ah, another rare specimen from the vault of Edward Coulton, eh?

There must be something very special about

that cellar of yours.” first name. anymore.

Rarely did he address Eddie by his

When Otuno looked up, he wasn’t smiling

“Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

He produced a jeweler’s-glass-like lens from his lab coat, which snapped onto his glasses.

Amidst a pile of

papers he found a pair of long tweezers.

Otuno turned the

insect over for a while under the halogen desk lamp, and then inspected it under a microscope, muttering to himself the whole time. while.

When he was done he was silent for a

He looked at Eddie with a troubled expression, then

reached out and clicked off the CD player. of music, the room felt unnaturally still.

In the absence

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/83 “You wouldn’t be foolin’ with an old man now, would you?” Otuno said in a tone of voice Eddie had never heard before.

His island accent was particularly heavy, his eyes

narrow.

“If you were one of my students I’d say this is

some kind of smart-assed prank.

Something one of my

colleagues would put somebody up to.” Eddie was caught off guard; he didn’t expect this kind of reaction.

“Professor Otuno, I’m sorry if I... I

mean...” Otuno cut him off by holding up a large hand.

He

regarded Eddie for a long moment, and then his face softened; he looked defeated. rubbed his forehead.

He took off his glasses and

“No, Edward, it is I who owe you an

apology––sometimes competition brings out the worst in me. I simply forgot who I was talking to.”

With the large

tweezers, he placed the beetle on the book between himself and Eddie. “Competition?” asked Eddie, shaking his head. “Let me explain.” deep breath.

Otuno closed his eyes and took a

“First of all, call me Isaiah.

long time since I was your professor.” prominent.

It’s been a

His accent was less

Light from the desk lamp cut diagonally across

his face, leaving his eye sockets in deep shadow. didn’t wait for Eddie to respond.

He

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/84 “Now let me tell you a story.

There was a professor

at Stanford; this was just last year.

In his research he

claimed to have discovered a new species of extinct moth–– right in San Francisco Bay––and that is not so implausible. Upon submission of his study, however, it was found that all his specimens were highly elaborate fakes. Unfortunately that happens too––ambition and ego can be a researcher’s worst enemies.

His funding was immediately

cut and he was fired, of course, but later it was discovered that somebody else––most certainly one of his fellow researchers––had surreptitiously planted the fake samples.

Although the man’s name was finally cleared,

after the fact, irreparable damage had already been done to his career and reputation.”

Otuno leaned forward, his face

coming out of shadow, and grabbed the creature once again in his tweezers like someone would grab a piece of sushi with chopsticks, flipping it over onto its back. Eddie was further puzzled. that this isn’t a real insect?

“So what are you saying, With all due respect, it

was crawling on me last night, Isaiah.”

It felt strange to

call his old friend by his first name. “This specimen is like nothing I’ve ever seen, Edward. Originally I thought it was abournae diabolernum, or South American Coralstar Scarab, sometimes called the Guardian

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/85 Beetle––which is considered extinct, by the way, and poisonous too––but something is not right about it. too symmetrical, too... perfect.

It is

The structure and detail,

down to a microscopic level, are impeccable.

Its venom

sacks are maybe five times too large, however, encompassing almost half its body.

It has no eyes and no anus, but does

have additional feelers, and other parts in its mouth that shouldn’t be there.

Also, as you recall, all beetles have

six legs, but our little friend here has an additional two– –small, but definitely legs, not feelers––which technically makes him a spider.

But the other characteristics don’t

fit, and there’s a small section on the ventral abdomen which appears to be... metallic.” Otuno directed his desk lamp toward the upturned creature, and Eddie could see a tiny patch of shiny silver on its belly.

As the professor used his tweezers to point

out the area, he inadvertently touched the reflective patch with them. The creature leapt to life.

Its legs twitched.

Fat

wings buzzed and sputtered, sounding like a juicy bumblebee caught in phlegm.

It skittered in a circular pattern on

its back, causing both men to jump out of their seats. After a few seconds the buzzing stopped, and the strange insect spun around a few more times before coming to rest.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/86 Eddie thought about the way the ugly bugs had crawled up his nose and down his throat, and about what Otuno had just said. large.

Poisonous... venom sacks about five times too

He felt a little sick to his stomach.

Otuno, for his part, let out a deep laugh. reflexis.

“Mortis

Happens frequently with winged insects,” he

offered as an explanation.

“You’ve probably noticed common

houseflies display a similar characteristic––they’ll spin in a windowsill for hours, sometimes days.” “So you can see it is a real bug, I mean, it was definitely alive, it’s not some kind of a hoax,” Eddie said. “I’m reluctant to make any determination yet, my friend. this.”

I’m not even sure whom I should consult with on He slipped the creature back inside the film

canister Eddie had brought, closed it, sealed it with white tape, and inscribed it with a black marker. mind me keeping it for a few days.

“If you don’t

I might be able to get

some answers for you.” Eddie was reluctant at first because he’d wanted to show it to Suzanne, to convince her that he hadn’t hallucinated everything; that something strange really was going on.

If the insect was truly the anomaly Otuno said

it was, however, then this was the only way he was going to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/87 get any answers.

Eddie agreed, and they set up a tentative

meeting to discuss the findings.

He knew if anybody was

capable of figuring out what it might be, it was Otuno. They spent about ten minutes saying their farewells, and then Eddie ventured out into the shadowy night.

Otuno

turned the jazz back on and attempted to settle into his research, but his gaze kept wandering back to the film canister perched on the edge of his desk.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/88

7

Hidden inside the small container, tiny claws scratched, and an amber light began to pulse.

Eddie’s

specimen distended its plump abdomen, extruding its rear section as if miniscule fingers were poking out through the soft tissue.

Then it curled down its head, and with

sizeable mandibles, proceeded to tear into the protruding flesh.

It made audible crunching sounds that Otuno

probably would have noticed were it not for the skillful sounds of Miles Davis and his cohorts playing in the background.

No green ooze or black ichor came out of the

wounds, however.

Instead, new tissue rose up where old was

torn away, as if the creature were merely recycling or rearranging parts of itself. The whole time, a golden light on its back continued to flash.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/89

8

Eddie made his way back to The San Fernando Valley by bus.

It was a cool, clear night, and a moon that looked

almost full illuminated the evening sky by the time he got there.

Night-blooming jasmine filled the air with a

delicious sweetness, a fragrance like cotton candy.

He

gave the last dollar in his pocket to a homeless man at the bus stop whose shopping cart was teetering with dirtstained detritus. Walking the remaining two blocks home took him by the radio towers.

They were located in an immense open lot,

fenced off by chain link fence topped with razor wire; three soaring red and white structures that looked impossibly thin, held upright by numerous thick steel cables attached at intervals and lashed to the ground around the perimeter of the lot. was about 200 feet tall.

Eddie guessed each one

Red lights placed along their

length divided each tower into thirds, and another beacon sat atop of each one, forming a symmetrical grid of nine

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/90 lights when viewed from a distance.

Grass and weeds had

grown unchecked in the open expanse around them all summer and fall, and now stood at about chest height. Broken vines entwisted the chain link fence, blowing in the breeze. Eddie glanced up at the flashing red beacons atop the towers and felt something stirring inside himself. streetlight he was under went out.

The

Down the road he

noticed the other streetlights were pulsing in unison, brighter, then dimmer, brighter, then dimmer... He knew what was happening, but this time, for some reason, was not frightened.

He felt the knot forming in

his mind and pushed it out without even thinking about it, and the street plunged into darkness. process was amazing to Eddie.

The ease of the

There was a sense of

unreality, a moment when he either had to either accept what had just happened or dismiss it as another childhood fantasy.

Already knowing the answer, Eddie turned around

and focused on the radio towers.

One by one, the flashing

red beacon atop each structure blinked off. There was broken glass all over his front step–– evidently the porch light had blown out the previous evening.

With the sleeve of his jacket he brushed the

shards aside and sat on the top step, barely conscious of what he was doing.

He was deep in thought, pondering the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/91 previous night’s events, and how they seemed to have unearthed distant memories, recollections of things that hadn’t crossed his mind in years, some of which he’d convinced himself hadn’t really happened at all.

He was

thinking about Suzanne and his feelings for her, surprised that they were so strong after all this time.

But most of

all, he was thinking about Chuck Ogborn, someone he hadn’t thought about in a long, long time. Ogborn had been the reigning neighborhood bully during Eddie’s childhood.

Oily haired and big for his age, he had

a crusty complexion, ugly yellow teeth, foul breath, and always seemed to wear the same grease-stained shirt.

He

had a blunt, upturned nose and pointy chin that gave him the appearance of being permanently displeased with everything he looked upon.

When Eddie was about ten––

roughly two years after the incident that eventually caused his father’s death––he had the misfortune of becoming Ogborn’s flavor of the month.

That month lasted the entire

summer of 1983. Their first encounter occurred at the 7-11 three blocks down from his house, and probably would have been their last were it not for the way Eddie had handled the situation.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/92 The storefront had indented corners on either end; perfect nooks for someone to sit in the sun and enjoy a recently purchased ice cream sandwich, Bomb Pop (the Bomb Pops were a patriotic red, white, and blue, shaped like a missile, as Eddie recalled), or other sugary delight. As he sat in one of those nooks early that summer, enjoying just such a treat, his sunlight was suddenly blocked, and the ugly visage of Chuck Ogborn was glaring down at him, demanding money, seeming to promise punishment whether Eddie complied or not.

On either side of Ogborn

were his toadies, two pre-teens with Mohawks and tattoos, smirking and shaking their heads.

The lead bully yanked

Eddie to his feet, and Eddie almost gagged at the smell of the thug’s rotten breath.

Ogborn held him up by the

collar, his free arm pulled back in the locked-and-loaded position, hand curled into a fist.

It took Eddie less than

a second to calculate his odds and options.

Without

warning, he hauled off and kicked Ogborn in the nuts, getting every ounce of his ten-year-old weight behind the blow.

Then, bag of candy in hand, he ran as fast as his

adrenaline fueled feet would go.

He could hear angry

voices behind him, cussing and shouting, promises of pain and retribution, but he was not pursued.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/93 Eddie knew that crotch kicking was frowned upon, even amongst those in the bully and thug crowd.

Most kids

unknowingly applied the same concept of deterrence to it that a political scientist would to nuclear weapons.

That

concept, simply put, was this: if you gave it out, you were going to get it back in spades.

The result of this one

dubious victory was that Ogborn now sought Eddie everywhere he could, looking for a chance at revenge. He finally got that chance one afternoon about four weeks later, once again in the same spot outside the 7-11 store.

Sneaking up from behind, Ogborn pushed Eddie to the

ground, knocking the wind out of him.

One of the mohawked

henchmen flipped Eddie onto his back and grabbed one of his legs.

The other toady stepped up and snatched Eddie’s

other leg, and together they pulled back until he was in a painful spread-eagle position, still gasping for breath. As Ogborn stood above him, relishing the moment, Eddie struggled and in his panic smacked the back of his head on the concrete, causing flashes of bright light to dance across his vision.

He noticed the exposed fluorescent

lights in the awning above Ogborn’s greasy head, lights that were always on no matter what time of day it was, and somehow their glow and the flashing in his vision... merged.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/94 The fluorescents all along the front of the store exploded, raining shards of glass down on his assailants, startling them and enabling Eddie to slip out of their grasp.

He ran away, reminded of what had happened in his

basement two years earlier, when the spiders attacked his father, causing a similar panicked reaction. had exploded then, too.

Light bulbs

Eddie began to wonder if he could

actually cause such things to happen. He spent the next five weeks testing that premise.

He

concentrated on light fixtures, lamps, appliances, switches, and dimmers.

He held the objects in his hands,

pointed at them or stared at them from across the room, all to no avail.

One time Eddie’s mom discovered him

beseeching a power drill to come to life, and despite his embarrassment, she just smiled, giving him that what an adorable son I have look of hers.

The only thing that

malfunctioned that month was the TV––twice––and that was one of the few items in the house Eddie tried to avoid with his ‘research’, just so he could watch Miami Vice and reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

With the TV broken, Eddie

spent a good amount of his idle time reading Hardy Boys novels instead. Summer was drawing to a close, and the beginning of school was right around the corner.

In southern

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/95 California, unlike the rest of the country, that usually meant the onset of a heat wave, dusty brown days so hot and dry just thinking about them made your tongue crack.

Eddie

had concluded that his experiments were a failure, that the strange occurrences had been merely coincidental, when he ran into Chuck Ogborn and friends one last time. Once again they caught him at the neighborhood 7-11, despite Eddie’s best efforts to remain vigilant.

It was

the first time in over a month he had ventured anywhere without Fenster, his best friend (and eventual guitarist in Phaedrus), and Eddie got the idea that Ogborn and his cronies had been watching him the whole time, waiting for their moment.

Mohawk #1 snatched Eddie out of his spot in

the sun, bent his arm back in a chicken wing, and escorted him to the rear of the store.

Eddie could still remember

how the low drone of street traffic disappeared as they rounded the corner, blocked by the building, as if they had stepped into a cave. distance.

A single bird chirped off in the

Behind the store there was a small back stoop, a

loading dock of sorts, and a banged-up dumpster. Everything had the dark-smeared look of grease and mop water, and the rotten-sweet smell of garbage. On the far side of the dumpster, hidden from the back door, the other two bullies were waiting.

Eddie had a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/96 moment of panic when he noticed Ogborn was hefting something familiar in his hands, something that looked like a gun.

As Mohawk #1 pushed him closer, Eddie saw that the

gun was plugged into a nearby outlet, and realized it was actually a power drill––a thought that did not make him feel much better.

Instead of having a regular drill bit on

it, however, there was a round disc––a circular cutting bit––mounted on the end of the tool.

The jagged teeth

around the edge of the disc blurred into motion each time Ogborn pulled the trigger on the drill. “Looks like you’re fucked this time, dickhead. you think I forgot about you?”

He buzzed the drill after

each sentence to punctuate his words. away this time.

Cram?”

Did

“You ain’t slippin’

Ogborn nodded to Mohawk #2, who

produced a length of brown plastic cord from his rear pocket. Together both Mohawks wrestled Eddie to the ground. One of them pushed his face into the hot tarmac while the other––Eddie thought it was the one Ogborn had called Cram– –tied up his wrists and ankles.

The putrid stench of

rotten garbage was even more intense at ground level, as if it were baking right out of the pavement. Eddie of Ogborn’s nasty, sulfurous breath.

It reminded

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/97 While he was being hogtied, Ogborn made a little speech.

“I was just tellin’ Cram and Deggs here how funny

you are, Coulton.

They weren’t so sure, though, you know––

they don’t see the humor in little fuckin’ pussies that go ‘round kicking folks in the nuts, and I have to say I do see their point.

But since I owe you a favor, I thought

I’d teach you a lesson about fighting fair, and show them what a cutup you really are at the same time.”

Ogborn

revved the drill; Cram and Deggs snickered as they held Eddie down.

Eddie didn’t bother to point out that three

seventh-graders ganging up on one fifth-grader was hardly fighting fairly. What Ogborn did next surprised everyone, even his tattooed henchmen.

He knelt on the pavement, put the drill

down, and started to unbuckle Eddie’s pants.

One of the

toadies––Eddie thought it was Deggs––said, “What the fuck?” “Let’s see if this motherfucker’s ever been circumcised,” said Ogborn. Eddie struggled harder than ever in a blind panic, convinced Ogborn was going to cut off his dick.

For the

first time, he actually felt the knot forming in his mind. He remembered a similar feeling from the two previous incidents––two years ago in his basement, and the previous occurrence with Ogborn––but this was the first time he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/98 could define what was actually going on, the first time he felt any hint of control.

He looked down at the drill

lying next to Ogborn and pushed the knot straight at it with all his might. Nothing happened at first, and Eddie was beginning to think he had imagined the feeling, when the power tool leapt to life.

With a high-pitched whine and a shower of

sparks, the blade dug into the concrete before its teeth gained purchase and it shot across the ground, slamming into the side of Ogborn’s knee. Ogborn screamed, “Mother-fucker!” and grabbed up the drill.

As he slid his fingers around the metal hasp they

came too close to the spinning blade, and two of them flew off in a spray of blood.

Eddie could see a deep gash

carved into the bone of the bully’s knee.

One of the

severed finger tips hit the Mohawk called Deggs in the corner of the mouth and slid down his chin, leaving a trail of red, causing the toady to turn his head and barf on the hot pavement. Smoke was pouring from the possessed tool.

With a

pop and a flash the plastic casing below the hasp cracked and started melting in Ogborn’s hands, but the bully seemed unable to let go of it.

It wasn’t until he saw wisps of

smoke rising from Ogborn’s scalp that Eddie realized the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/99 big thug was being electrocuted.

One of the other bullies–

–probably Cram––must have realized the same thing too because he yanked on the power cord, pulling the plug out of the socket at the same time the deformed tool slid out of Ogborn’s hands.

Then Cameron ‘Cram’ Smith and Dennis

‘Deggs’ Eggerson did what all toadies do when the shit hits the fan; they ran their candy asses off. Ogborn howled and fell over, and that’s how the police found them: Eddie hogtied with his pants half down, and Ogborn whimpering, huddled around his mutilated hand, blood pouring from his knee.

The bully was sent to juvenile hall

and Eddie never heard from him again. For a couple years after that summer, Eddie continued to test himself, trying to prove that what he remembered had really happened.

He recognized that this ‘ability’ had

something to do with his mental state, seeming to occur during periods of emotional distress, which made it difficult to control voluntarily. In the sixth grade, when a surprise math test was sprung on his class, he felt the knot forming and concentrated on the ‘in case of emergency pull’ switch for the fire alarm.

The result was a three-hour recess, as the

school was searched from top to bottom for the source of the fire, the kids gleefully romping on the playground the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/100 whole time before being sent home for the day.

That was

the closest he ever came to using the power at will. Once he was involved in a fender bender while riding with Fenster and his mom. serious.

It was frightening, but not very

Eddie was so shaken up that the knot had formed

and shot out before he could stop it, and afterward neither vehicle would start.

Mechanics later discovered that the

electrical systems in both cars had been fried, but were at a loss to explain why. There was another time that a neighbor’s dog had frightened him, and as Eddie ran home in the twilit evening, streetlights blinked out one by one as he passed by them. In the seventh grade the ability started to diminish. He recalled being disciplined for unruly behavior, and focusing on a light above his teacher’s head.

It flickered

a few times but didn’t go out. No one seemed to notice, and Eddie still received detention. By that point in his life, he was beginning to understand that monsters and ghosts didn’t really exist, except in the imagination; Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were old news.

The idea that he might possess some sort of

magical powers began to sound a little ridiculous and embarrassing, even to himself.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/101 As time went by, the memories of his father and Ogborn felt more like dreams, like hazy recollections of events that might, or might not, have actually occurred the way he thought they did, or like snippets of scenes from old movies that he was getting confused with his own life. Then puberty arrived with a vengeance, and brought with it a whole new set of concerns and complications. Just about everything in Eddie’s life was pushed aside, relegated to the realms of childhood fancy and fantasy. What couldn’t be made to fit in had to be rationalized or forgotten.

The event with his father he explained away as

a power failure.

The occurrences with Chuck Ogborn were

erased from his memory and remained that way for almost two decades. Many years later, while driving at night, Eddie would occasionally notice streetlights going dark as he passed under them, or he would feel something stirring in his mind, as if a rock were about to flip itself over, revealing secret tunnels and hidden memories underneath. Most of the time that feeling passed as quickly as it came upon him.

No longer did he feel the knot forming, or

attempt mind control on electrical appliances––until tonight, that is. Suddenly that rock had been upended.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/102 ÷÷ His street was still dark, but the big beacons atop the radio towers had come back on, resuming their slow flashing, a warning to helicopters and other low flying aircraft of potential hazard.

Even though they were

farther away and more powerful than the streetlights, Eddie knew they were still vulnerable. wasn’t sure.

How he knew that, he

He looked at the center tower, and instead of

the light at the top, focused on the red glow emanating from the middle of the structure.

Once again he made the

knot, and––easy as could be––the middle of the tower sank into darkness. He stood and brushed off his pants, confused, and felt the chill of the night soaking through his thin jacket and into his skin.

How long have I been sitting here?

The

moon was almost to the horizon, looking orange and bloated. Tomorrow night it would be full.

He realized he must have

been woolgathering for a couple of hours.

When Suzanne

gets here she’ll help me sort things out, he thought.

He

wished he hadn’t given the strange scarab to Dr. Otuno. Something had happened in his basement the previous evening, something that had changed him.

Eddie thought

about those strange insects crawling all over his skin, and a shudder went down his spine.

He wasn't sure what it all

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/103 meant, but he had a feeling he was going to find out soon enough. Feeling a little lost, wondering if he was indeed going crazy, he walked across the glass-strewn porch.

The

big oak door had a semi-circle of little wedge-shaped windows in it, through which he could see his entrance hallway cast in shadows.

In the darkness the familiar

hallway had a distinctly foreign appearance.

Suzanne will

help me sort things out, he thought again, as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/104

9

It was a slow night at the hospital.

The post-op

floor was only about half-full, and most of the rooms that weren’t occupied were deliberately kept vacant to make a secure perimeter around the VIP patient.

Additional

security guards in dark navy suits patrolled the empty rooms and the halls, and kept a twenty-four hour watch outside their ward’s room.

Suzanne noticed they each had a

flesh-colored earplug attached to a little coiled wire that trailed down inside their shirt collar.

Occasionally one

of them would tilt his head forward and mutter into the lapel of his jacket. So this really is how a senator is protected, she thought, just give ‘em all Ray Bans to complete the cliché. As she made her rounds, checking up on other patients on her floor, the suits stood just inside doorways, or sat in darkened corners, quiet and detached.

They seemed to look

right through Suzanne whenever she passed by.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/105 In room number 1015, California Senator Daniel Landry was recovering from emergency stomach surgery.

A bleeding

ulcer had led to the discovery of stomach cancer, and the legislator’s prognosis was not favorable.

Despite this,

and his considerable discomfort, he treated the nursing staff with respect and kindness, and Suzanne was not only impressed by the senator’s charismatic nature, she was moved by his courage as well.

Of course, the whole

situation was completely confidential––the voting public was not to find out that their good leader was sick until he was ready to announce it, if necessary; hospital workers were accustomed to such policy. Other than that it was a routine night.

In the break

room Suzanne joined Sheila Lopez, a short but attractive nurse who had a bright smile and a dirty sense of humor. With Sheila little was sacred or taboo, and that’s why Suzanne liked her.

Eventually the course of their

conversation came around to the senator. “He’s such a nice man, don’t you think?

I feel so bad

about what’s happening to him,” Sheila said. “I feel bad too,” Suzanne agreed, “I just hope he gets a chance to come to terms with what’s happening before the story leaks out.”

There was a look in her friend’s eye

that made Suzanne suspicious about what was coming next.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/106 “He seems to be taking it pretty well, but can I tell you something?” Sheila lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned across the table.

“I mean, I know I’m not supposed

to say anything, but, yesterday, I got to bathe him.”

The

last two words of her sentence had a higher intonation, making it sound like a question. side before going on. duty.

She glanced from side to

“I kinda thought of it as my civic

The man may be in public service, but he’s got a

very generous private endowment, and I should know––I’ve given a lot of sponge-baths in my day.” “Sheila!” Suzanne exclaimed.

She looked around the

room as well. They were alone. “I’m serious––a grant from his foundation could make a girl very happy.” Suzanne laughed, and then said, “There’s something wrong with you, girl.

You know that, right?

I mean,

c’mon, the man’s three times your age, married, and he’s got like five fully-grown kids.” “Oy poppy!” Sheila said.

She batted her eyelashes and

rolled her eyes in a fake swoon. “You’re disgusting, Sheila.”

Suzanne’s mouth turned

down in mock indignation.

Then, after a short pause, she

said, “Don’t ever change.”

They both laughed some more.

Suzanne leaned back in her chair for a few moments without

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/107 speaking.

There was the occasional muffled page of a

doctor over the p.a. system, gurneys went by the open door in one direction with patients on them, and rattled past empty going the other way. Sheila broke the silence by saying, “So, are you still with wiltin’ Milton?

Last time we talked, it sounded like

you were going to end it.”

When Suzanne didn’t respond,

Sheila held up her hands, palms forward.

“I mean, I

realize it’s none of my business, but I was just wondering... ” “Yeah, well, things didn’t go quite the way I expected, but it’s over now,” Suzanne said.

With the

mention of Milton, her mood turned dark and defiant.

She

was too ashamed to reveal the whole truth of what he had done to her, how easily he’d managed to control and manipulate her. about him.

“I hate to say it, but you were right

I won’t be staying at home for a while, either.

If you want to get in touch with me, call me here.” wrote down Eddie’s phone number on a paper napkin.

She “Or you

can beep me––but if you leave a number I don’t recognize I probably won’t call you back.” “Okay, no problem, but... what the hell’s going on? mean, I always knew the guy was kind of a jerk, but this

I

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/108 doesn’t sound right.

The way you’re talking has me kind of

worried.” Suzanne glanced up at the clock.

“It’s a long story,

and right now I’ve got about two dozen patients to check up on.

But don’t worry; I’ll be fine.”

up her lunch items.

She stood and packed

“Call me tomorrow and I promise I’ll

tell you everything,” she said, motioning toward the napkin with the phone number written on it. Sheila picked up the napkin and shook it at Suzanne. “At least tell me where you’re hiding out,” she demanded as she folded the paper and tucked it inside her brassiere. “I’m staying with Eddie Coulton up in the valley.” Suzanne saw a glint of hope in her friend’s expression; she knew Sheila had approved of Eddie. together with him.

“No, I’m not back

Call me tomorrow––and I’m serious––

don’t tell anybody.” For the rest of the evening it seemed like there was always somebody nearby.

Doctors checked with the nurse’s

station and popped in and out of examination rooms, orderlies wheeled patients around for tests and surgeries, and security guards roamed everywhere.

There was a

maintenance crew of four replacing burnt-out lights in the hallways, reminding Suzanne of an old joke.

At one point

some administrators tried to come through with a tour of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/109 visitors, but the senator’s security staff stepped forward, and with some polite words, ushered the whole group back onto the elevators. ÷÷ It wasn’t until the end of her shift, when she had taken the elevator down to the lower parking level and walked most of the way across the empty expanse toward her car, shoes clicking on the cement and reverberating all around, that she realized she was alone for the first time in hours.

Looking around the garage at the few remaining

cars scattered here and there, she froze when she saw the black SLK 230 Kompressor coupe.

At that same moment, he

stepped out from behind a concrete column into the shadows directly in front of her. “It’s about fucking time you showed up,” Milton said, and smashed her in the mouth with the butt of his pistol. Suzanne sprawled backward onto the dusty pavement, dropping her bag, its contents scattering across the floor.

Her

hand closed around one of the items that fell out. A coppery taste filled her mouth, and she could feel shards of teeth embedded in her lips.

The pain was so

severe she could hardly breathe, let alone scream for help. Milton stuck the gun in the waistband of his trousers and bent over her, making a wheezing, bubbling sound.

In

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/110 between the shadows and light Suzanne could see feverish red blotches all over his face.

His eyes were so raw and

bloodshot they looked like scorch marks.

When he smiled

his teeth were covered with dark brown stains, and Suzanne swore she saw tiny crimson diodes blinking and flashing in the bulges of his facial tissue.

He wrinkled up his nose a

few times, as if sensing a foul odor, and his ruined eyes opened wider.

Suddenly Milton’s expression contorted.

A

staccato burst of alien grunts and foreign sounding phrases poured from his mouth. guttural than usual. recognized.

His voice sounded different, more It wasn't any language Suzanne

Then the gaunt record exec’s features

solidified, and for a second he seemed confused about what had just happened. Suzanne seized the moment and lashed out with the scissors she picked up when the contents of her bag had spilled.

They were small but sharp.

With blades spread

open, she sliced down the right side of his face, opening a deep gash in his cheek.

Milton reared back and howled,

clawing at his face, and as he did, Suzanne rammed the point of the scissors down as hard as she could into the top of his shoe, pushing on the plastic handle with the heel of her palm, driving the blade through the thin leather and into the flesh of his foot.

He fell down,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/111 yelling obscenities, and Suzanne rolled over and crawled away, staggering to her feet. She ran to the elevator lobby, hearing him swearing and shuffling to his feet behind her.

The little up arrow

on the call button illuminated when she pressed it, but the elevator itself seemed to have other ideas.

He was closer,

the bubbling rasp of his breathing louder, and she could tell the lift wasn’t going to arrive in time.

Even if it

came within the next few seconds, Milton would still be able to catch her.

With her finger on the call button, she

turned around to face him.

He limped toward her, scissors

still sticking out of the top of his foot.

The blood on

his face seemed to flow around his wound in a strange manner. “Nice try, cunt,” he said. Suzanne was losing the ability to focus; the light in the lobby seemed to be growing dim.

She could feel blood

running down her chin, soaking the collar of her shirt. Her lower lip had disintegrated into something the consistency of ground sirloin, with several deep cuts in it, and was already uncomfortably swollen.

In the run to

the elevator one of her shoes had fallen off, and now, hopeless, she kicked off the other one and threw it in Milton’s direction.

It was way off the mark, and did

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/112 nothing to deter his approach.

The pain made her dizzy,

all the blood in her mouth made her feel sick to her stomach. He laughed as he closed in.

“If you come with me now,

I’ll make it easy for you,” he said, holding out his hand. In a few more steps he would be able to reach her. Suzanne was frozen in place with her back to the elevators.

The yellow cinderblock wall of the lobby closed

in around her.

She had difficulty breathing.

By way of

reply she raised her left hand and extended the middle digit, a gesture that sent Milton over the edge. He closed the last few feet between them with a lunge, screaming, “You fucking cunt!” and with a ring-adorned hand gave Suzanne a backhanded slap across the face.

She

staggered a few steps back just as the elevator doors opened, and, expecting to feel their resistance behind her, toppled into the lift instead, falling at the feet of a very astonished Sheila Lopez. Sheila screamed when she saw Milton.

He looked like a

zombie in tailored Armani.

His ruined eyes radiated with

maliciousness and cruelty.

The blood around the sagging

wound of his cheek appeared to be crawling with hundreds of... things.

His head was slung forward on his shoulders,

like an animal on the prowl.

With a grunt of surprise,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/113 Milton reached out and put one hand on the edge of the elevator door, to prevent it from closing.

He fumbled for

the pistol in the waistband of his pants, but it got snagged in his shirt, and slipped out of his grasp. the gun hit the floor it discharged.

When

In the enclosed

space, even with the elevator door still open, the explosion was deafening.

It was so loud Suzanne never

heard the bullet that ricocheted off the elevator wall, just a few inches from her left ear, and flew back into the parking garage, also missing Milton by a narrow margin. As Milton bent to pick up the gun, Suzanne saw Sheila stick out a hand full of keys and shake them.

When the

record exec looked up, Sheila emptied a can of pepper spray into his festering eyes and lacerated cheek.

Milton

shrieked in pain, falling to his knees against the side of the elevator.

Sheila reared back, bracing herself against

the wall, and kicked him in the chest with both feet, knocking him backward out of the enclosure.

Then she

slapped the ‘door close’ button hard enough to cause a bruise on her palm, and with Suzanne at her feet, sent the elevator up into the safety of the hospital. Sheila knelt by Suzanne, who was on the verge of passing out, and felt ridiculous when the first thing out of her mouth was, “Are you okay?”

Her friend’s lip was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/114 swollen and bleeding, and she could see a bruise starting to form under one eye. Suzanne pushed herself into a sitting position, taking deep breaths, trying to regain her composure, trying not to lose consciousness.

Jarring spikes of agony radiated from

the shredded tissue inside her mouth, making the initial pain seem like mild discomfort in comparison. herself to focus.

She forced

“The gun,” she said, “Hide the gun.”

sounded like her mouth was packed full of cotton.

It

Each

syllable set off more explosions of white fire. When Sheila realized what Suzanne wanted her to do, she was reluctant at first.

After all, hiding the weapon

was not only tampering with evidence, it made her friend seem less defensible, less innocent somehow.

The image of

Milton’s bloody face and dead eyes, his head swaying in back and forth like a hyena’s, still haunted her memory. Her hands were shaking.

Sheila knew what she’d just

experienced was nothing compared to what her friend had gone through.

In the end she decided that Suzanne could

probably use the gun more than the police could, so she picked it up and wrapped it in a handkerchief, slipping it into her purse just before the elevator doors opened on the emergency room floor.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/115

10

“At the heart of the question lies the mystery of self replication.

It is the great secret of

life; nature’s answer to death.

It happens at

the micro-level––genes splitting, cells begetting other cells––and the macro-level––with the birth of every living creature and the germination of every seed, the growth of every spore.

The

balanced perfection of these miracles is unsurpassed, their promise of potential earthshattering, if only we could understand the device by which it all works.

Embedded in

genetic material is the schematic for each individual organism, as well as the triggering mechanisms necessary to manufacture said organism.

Somewhere within cell structures are

specific cells––machines, if you will––that are responsible for the manufacture and organization of that structure, for the creation and position

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/116 of every molecule: assembly on a particle level. Combine the molecules in one way and viola!––you have created tissue cells.

Make a slight

adjustment and you have cancerous cells.

One

more modification, and you have a tool for the identification and eradication of those cancerous cells.

It is an alchemy, of sorts, one of the

last bastions of natural mystery, but if we can unlock the way in which cells create other cells, the way genetic information imprints upon physical matter, then we begin to control the manipulation and repair of our own living tissue. The possibilities for genetically engineered organisms, combating disease, the prospects for longevity, organ regeneration––just to name a few––are mind-boggling.

Such an ability would be

so powerful as to engender a departure from our present state of humanity, a possible leap to another level or phase of existence... ” ––From the scientific journals of Xavier Coulton, circa 1954.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/117 He couldn’t believe what was happening.

He’d had

Suzanne within his grasp; she was so close he could smell the peach conditioner in her hair, and yet somehow he’d let her slip away.

Why the fuck didn’t I shoot her when I had

the chance? Milton thought about their little exchange.

“Have you

been fucking that bastard?” was what he’d meant to say, but the words got caught in his throat.

Instead, what came out

was a series of guttural barks and choked off syllables that sounded more like Russian or German than English. What the fuck was that all about?

Focus, you asshole!

Something seemed to be invading his thoughts, altering his senses.

He considered the possibility that he was losing

control, but those thoughts were quickly pushed aside by a sense of outrage.

Two women had gotten the best of him!

Two fucking bitch-ass cunts!

Using the pepper spray was a

cheap trick, one he hadn’t been expecting; someone was most certainly going to pay for that stunt. There was a scratching, tingling sensation on his face.

When he touched it, his fingers came away with what

looked like coffee grounds on them. Sitting in the elevator lobby, partially blind, Milton discovered that he could still use the infrared vision, even with his eyes closed.

The elevator was revealed as an

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/118 orange box ascending into the building; inside he could see one red figure kneeling over another.

As it rose,

intervening floors eventually obscured it from his sight. In a few minutes one of those bitches would be reporting him to security.

His goal had been to subdue Suzanne,

abduct her in secrecy, but everything had gotten all fucked up.

Now she had a witness, and he had a moment of panic

when he realized his gun was still in the lift as well. Time to get the fuck out of Dodge. The scissors slid out of his foot with little pain, and Milton tossed them aside.

While he loped to his car he

could feel warm liquid filling up his shoe, and even though his foot started making squishing, sucking sounds inside, it gave him very little discomfort.

The SLK 230 roared to

life and he sped out of the desolate parking garage, laying rubber around corner of every ramp along the way. He decided to take a drive to clear his head.

With

the window rolled down, a cool breeze filled the car; he could feel the lacerated skin on his face flapping in the wind, but the discomfort was minimal, as if the wound had been shot full of anesthetic.

He pressed the wound closed,

and when he lifted his fingers off, it remained closed. There were things that didn’t make sense to him, like the night vision, what he had said to Suzanne, and even his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/119 open attack on Suzanne (up until now the only objects of his aggression had been small animals and anonymous drivers), but when he tried to think them through his mind wandered off; minutes later he would find himself driving on another street, wondering how he got there, trying to recapture his train of thought. After one of these spells he found himself driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, north of Malibu, just past Pepperdine University.

The ocean was to his left.

He

could hear the pounding surf above the growl of the car’s engine.

Behind him, the eastern sky was showing the first

signs of dawn, dark clouds shifting over to a dirty grey, although it would be at least another hour before the sun made an appearance.

A pale mist hovered about two feet off

the ground, obscuring the road and surrounding terrain. This time he remembered what he had been thinking about.

Go to Mitch.

could work. my face.

Claim self defense, he thought.

It

Especially when he sees what that bitch did to

And the gun... well, he’d have to think some more

about the gun, there had to be a way around that too. Milton glanced into the rear-view mirror to get a good look at his injury––he’d avoided looking at it until this point– –and his plans changed again. Flashing lights.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/120 Shit. He kept driving for a while, unsure of what to do, attempting to exercise what little remaining control he might have had over the situation.

Milton hoped going more

than twenty miles-per-hour over the speed limit was the only reason the police had singled him out.

A bullhorn was

hailing him with distorted commands as he eased onto the rocky shoulder of the PCH.

The squad car was ablaze with

spinning blue and red strobes, flashing high-beam headlights, and intense halogen search lamps.

Using his

newfound infrared sight, Milton ascertained that there was only one cop in the car behind him.

He knew his only

chance was to play it cool, and get this over as quickly as possible.

The harsh glare of the lights made him flinch,

but he had his license and registration ready when the policeman approached.

“Howdy, officer,” he said, squinting

onto the light, “how can I help you?” There was a pause as the tall figure behind the flashlight cleared his throat.

“It’s sheriff,” answered a

low, rumbling voice. Milton couldn’t see him, but he could feel the man’s eyes searching him over, sizing him up.

He avoided turning

his head completely toward the sheriff to keep the laceration on his cheek out of view.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/121 “Sorry, Sheriff,” he said.

“What’s this all about?”

“Driver’s license and registration.” statement than a request.

It was more a

A huge, fat hand appeared in the

beam of the flashlight and snatched the papers out of Milton’s grasp. morning?”

“In a hurry to get somewhere this

The deep voice had a petulant edge to it.

Milton was a little pissed off by the man’s brisk manner.

No ‘pleases’, no ‘sirs’, no explanations, just

attitude for days. “My apologies, Sheriff,” he said, trying to remain calm.

“I’m heading up to my mother’s in Oxnard, and the

coffee I drank this morning’s pressing kinda hard on my bladder.

With all due respect, I may have been driving a

little too fast because I was trying to make it to the next rest stop without pissing myself.”

Milton still kept his

head turned only about halfway toward the law officer. The air was damp and salty smelling.

They were pulled

over on a stretch of road that curved out over the ocean; the hillside ascended steeply to their right, and dropped off precipitously to the sea on the other side of the road, to their left. hour.

Traffic was still sporadic at this early

The fragments of a plan were swirling around in

Milton’s mind.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/122 After another pause, the silhouette replied, “With all due respect, I wasn’t born yesterday.”

The sheriff

chuckled before going on, “You could’ve pissed in Malibu, five miles back.

Right now I could write you up for

speeding, reckless endangerment, and resisting arrest, so I’d go light on the bullshit if I were you.” Just then a burst of static erupted from the squad car behind them, followed by the thin, nasal voice of a radio dispatcher, “5L-85, 5L-85, come in.” The sheriff reached into the Mercedes and plucked Milton’s keys off the dashboard.

“Don’t go anywhere, I’ll

be right back,” the hulking figure said, and walked back towards the police car, feet crunching in the gravel shoulder.

Milton heard him say, “5L-85, over,” and the

dispatcher responded with a litany of jargon and police codes, interspersed here and there with snippets Milton could actually understand.

In between the sound of

crashing waves, he picked out the words ‘traffic incident’, ‘Honda Accord’, and ‘southbound 405/Pico exit’, and knew the list of charges against him had grown longer.

Somehow

he had been reported for his little road rage incident last weekend. A part of Milton’s mind detached, and the swirling pieces snapped together, cementing his course of action.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/123 He scanned the shoulder around the side of his car, infrared vision overlaying regular, discerning the contours of the ground until he located a smooth, fist-sized rock, just a few feet from the car door.

The flesh of his face

felt soft and pliable, like warm clay, as he pulled the gash in his cheek open with his fingers, letting the blood flow.

The cool morning air caused him to hiss in pain when

it hit the open wound.

He switched his sight over to

infrared-only, and waited for the sheriff.

He didn’t have

to wait long. The radio call ended and Milton heard the big cop getting out of his car.

“Put your hands where I can see

them and step out of the vehicle,” the sheriff called to him.

When Milton didn’t respond immediately, the sheriff

repeated, louder this time, “SIR, PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM AND STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE.

WALK SLOWLY

BACKWARDS TOWARDS ME.” Milton waited until the officer had moved away from the squad car, and then got out of the Mercedes, with his back to the cop.

To pull this off he had to time

everything just right.

A group of cars sped by and

disappeared around the curve.

A few more were approaching

from the other direction; in a few seconds they would pass by, and this stretch of road would be empty again.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/124 When he heard the sheriff approaching, Milton doubled over, covered his face with his hands and started screaming, “MY FUCKING FACE! WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO MY FACE?”

As he staggered around, bent over, he maneuvered

himself near the rock he’d located, then straightened up and turned to face the sheriff.

The big cop’s eyes grew

wide and he was caught off guard when he saw the ripped flesh and fresh blood on the side of Milton’s face. “Jesus Christ, man... what the f...” At the same moment, the radio in the squad car behind them leapt to life again, “5L-85, 5L-85, come in,” and the sheriff turned away from Milton, only for a second, but it was all the time he needed. road in either direction.

No cars could be seen on the

In a smooth motion, the wiry

music magnate snatched the large stone from between his feet and swung it over his head. One part of the officer’s forehead emanated a brighter, richer red glow than the other, and that’s where Milton focused as he brought the rock down.

Sensing

movement, the sheriff turned back, but didn’t even have time to bring his gun up before Milton delivered the blow. It made a wet, hollow noise, much like the sound of a golf ball being struck: thwock!

The law officer crumpled to

the ground and lay there, motionless.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/125 While the road was still clear, Milton dragged the sheriff around to the far side of the car, where they would be less visible to passing motorists.

The cop’s forehead

was caved in on one side, adding to the prominence of his brow, giving him a primitive, Neanderthal-like appearance. His eyes were rolled back and partially open.

A dark pool

of blood filled his ear, then ran back and soaked into his black hair.

The first thing Milton did was put an ear down

to the sheriff’s mouth to listen for breathing.

When he

verified that the man was just unconscious, not dead, he opened the back door of the squad car and wrestled the officer’s considerable bulk onto the back seat.

With a

quick search, Milton found the officer’s gun and keys, plus some plastic restraints, which he used to bind the cop’s wrists and ankles.

He fashioned a gag by tearing off a

portion of the officer’s sleeve and shoving it in the man’s mouth, then secured it in place with another plastic tie, which he cinched down until it pulled the sides of the sheriff’s mouth back in a permanent grimace. From the front seat of the cruiser, the police radio crackled and the dispatcher called again, “5L-85, 5L-85, come in.”

Milton looked at the blinking radio through the

wire mesh that divided the front and back seats, then back

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/126 down at the unconscious sheriff.

He snorted and spat a

thick wad of mucous into the big man’s face. “No disrespect intended, dickface,” he said, and crawled out of the back seat. The overcast sky was growing brighter now, murky gray clouds radiating a muted glow that promised the advent of dawn.

The seaside air was heavy with moisture that seemed

to penetrate all layers of clothing.

Milton could feel the

chill, damp clothes clinging to his skin, but did not mind the sensation. He worked as fast as he could in the dim early morning light.

There were a few things in the Mercedes he needed

to retrieve, including one foul item in an evidence bag that had been festering in his trunk for a week.

He tossed

the object in the back seat with the sheriff, and tore off another chunk of the officer’s shirt.

There was a box of

latex gloves in the front of the cruiser.

Donning a pair,

Milton went back to his car and wiped down all of its interior surfaces, then all the possible places on the outside of the car that he could have touched.

The last

thing he did was remove the rear license plate (he didn’t have a front plate, a violation the sheriff missed) and fling it across the highway, into the ocean a hundred feet

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/127 below.

He knew it wouldn’t keep them off his trail

forever, but it might buy him a little time. When he got back to the cruiser, the radio was still calling, “5L-85, come in 5L-85. 5L-85, come in 5L-85.” Milton slid into the front seat, snapped off the gloves and picked up the radio transmitter.

He’d ridden

with Mitch a few times, gone drinking with him even more, and in the process learned a little about radio protocol. Speaking in a lower register, he thumbed the microphone and said, “This is 5L-85, I’m code 33, repeat, code 33. Suspect code 42, copy.” “Copy that, 5L-85, code 33, suspect 42.

What’s your

20?” “PCH and Sunset,” he said.

It was a lie.

“Copy PCH and Sunset.” Milton clicked the microphone twice without speaking, waiting to see if his deception had worked.

He’d heard his

brother-in-law tell some good stories involving code 33, or mistaken identity, including one where a priest was wrongfully arrested for prostitution. one got funnier each time he heard it.

Milton swore that Code 42 was

familiar because that was what Mitch always got Milton’s tickets reduced to––a warning for speeding.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/128 When the dispatcher didn’t come back with more questions or instructions, Milton leaned his head back and took a deep breath.

Nobody raised an alarm.

It was time

to move. The sheriff’s cap was on the dashboard; Milton put it on as he cut the cruiser’s flashers and prepared to pull out on the highway. behind.

It was a gamble leaving the Mercedes

As it grew smaller and disappeared in the rear-

view mirror, Milton felt a pang of regret.

I’ll have to

report it stolen, he thought, maybe the police will actually recover it for me.

Other than that he felt

unusually calm about leaving behind his most prized possession, and realized it was because there were bigger things to worry about now––he had gone from a bad hangover to two aggravated assaults in one night, one of them on a police officer. that’s all.

I just lost control of things a little,

By tonight I’ll have it all cleared up.

Pondering his predicament and the ‘cargo’ in the back seat, Milton sped down the Pacific Coast Highway.

It was

getting on towards 7am; the sun was up, but hidden from view, the overcast skies a flat, pale grey from horizon to horizon.

There were more cars on the road now, and Milton

used the squad car’s siren to move the slowpokes out of his way.

He enjoyed the responsiveness of the cruiser.

It

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/129 didn’t compare to the Mercedes, but for an American made car, the Crown Vic wasn’t bad. As he drove along he still kept losing his train of thought, drifting into a delirious state in which he saw himself operating the vehicle as if from afar.

The

detached part of his mind––the part that had orchestrated his attack on the officer––whirled with jagged patterns and bright colors, an intricate clockwork of twitching limbs, scaly gears, and winking diodes.

Milton felt their

physical presence in his head as surely as he felt the car around him and the air rushing by outside.

The patterns

suggested a profound meaning, a deeper truth that hinted of things so hideous, a thin cry escaped his lips.

Trace

elements of his previous night’s dreams, of Suzanne and Eddie, of the sheriff, and even of the damn cat Cheops were all connected somehow inside that shimmering, whirling, grinding mechanism.

Occasionally entire rows of thin rods

slotted into tenebrous gaps, spidery devices clicking into complicated web-like configurations, and Milton resurfaced with strange thoughts churning in his mind.

One time he

awoke confused, muttering bizarre phrases and foreignsounding words again.

Another time he came to his senses

repeating some similar nonsense over and over, and realized with horror he was holding the police microphone in his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/130 hand, one thumb press away from transmitting his insanity over the airwaves.

After each episode, Milton found

himself closer to his Santa Monica condo. Calmness overtook him as he approached his block.

As

a precaution, he drove past his building, looking for anyone who might be staking it out, waiting for him to show up.

He stopped the cruiser on the far corner and used

infrared vision, verifying that there were no warm shapes sitting in any of the cars parked on the street, then pulled around to the back of his building.

A long line of

unmarked, identical garage doors ran down one side of the alley.

On the other side were some old industrial

warehouses, fenced off and slated for demolition. was nobody back there, either.

There

Keying the remote he’d

taken out of the Mercedes, Milton opened his garage door and pulled the sheriff’s car in, growing more confident with the success of his scheme. He heard the phone start ringing on his way up the stairs, its sharp tone echoing with the patterns in his vision, feeling like tiny claws scraping his brain.

He had

no intention of answering, but for some reason voicemail wasn’t picking up.

With each successive ring, scaly gears

and hard spokes in his head ground down further, compelling him towards the receiver.

It didn’t sound like a normal

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/131 phone ring, either; a high chattering noise wavered in the background, making his jaws clench and his eyes water. After a dozen or more rings, the jagged noise seemed to be drilling holes right through his brain.

He had no choice.

The pain was more than he could bear. With a wail, Milton knocked the phone off the wall. The receiver yo-yoed on the end of its cord, bouncing off the floor a few times like a bungee jumper whose rope was a bit too long, and he heard a gurgling buzz spewing from the earpiece.

Without thinking he picked up the phone and put

it to his ear. His eyes widened and he grew still.

Red lights

flashed across his vision; as he listened, a vast interlocking of swirling gears and patterns occurred, bringing with it a series of revelations so shocking Milton’s knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor, moaning, not wanting to listen to the thing on the other end of the line, but unable to let go of the receiver at the same time.

Intangible concepts and raw data flooded

into his subconscious, the knowledge of thousands of years. History stretched out behind him, fanning in all directions, and a myriad of interwoven threads expanded before him––the possibilities of the future.

Once again,

he saw Eddie, Suzanne, the sheriff, the cat, and many

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/132 others stitched into the tapestry, and with a deeper understanding saw his own path traced out before him in the tangled web.

He writhed on the floor.

his face pulsed and flickered.

The blotchy skin on

After what seemed like an

eternity, the streaming noise stopped with a click and a gurgle, and when Milton finally put the phone down, his forehead pounded painfully.

Blood trickled from his ears.

He stood up, despite the pain, feeling like a man standing on a mountain.

He had been given a glimpse of the

future––a glimpse of not just the next few days or the rest of his life, but of the next few eons and the struggles, triumphs and evolution of humanity.

Somehow, someone or

something had come back from that future and chosen Milton to take part in it.

Issues such as reckless driving and

assault faded to minor concerns; he had been given a vision of immortality.

There were forces at work here far beyond

anything he’d ever imagined, and for some reason, that goddamn asshole Edward Coulton seemed to be at the center of everything. He understood what he had to do now; in a way, it all seemed so simple. Milton paused at the bottom of the steps, bracing himself on the wall.

The throbbing in his head had

returned full-force, and he felt as if has skull were going

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/133 to burst open, spraying the dark brown paneling with blood and brains an god-knows what else.

The pain, as well as

the thought of what was about to happen made his stomach churn; he tasted hot bile in the back of his throat.

There

were noises coming from the other side of the door, a thin trembling moan, and Milton knew the sheriff must have regained consciousness.

Just in time for the show, he

thought, and pushed the door open. A row of small square windows high up on the garage door let in the early morning light, filling the space with a muted grey glow, revealing a small workbench and pegboard hung with tools off to one side.

The squad car sat in the

shadows toward the back of the garage. Despite being tied up, the sheriff was thrashing around in the back seat, making that high moaning noise. He spilled out onto the concrete slab when Milton opened the car door, the back of his head hitting the hard floor with a crack.

The cop stopped squirming, but his eyes

remained open, staring at his captor.

There was a

blackened, blood-rimmed depression the diameter of a softball on his forehead.

Blood had pooled in his right

ear and congealed. Milton leaned over so his mouth was close to the sheriff’s good ear, shoved the barrel of the service

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/134 revolver into the big man’s gut, and said, “Don’t give me any problems, and I’ll make this as easy as I can for you.” His voice sounded hoarse and scratchy. The bloated evidence bag that held Cheops’s body was on the far side of the back seat; when Milton saw that, he thought he knew what the officer had been struggling to get away from. Snatching a pair of stem cutters off the pegboard, he slapped the bag down next to the bound man and started to cut it open.

When he pierced the plastic, it

emitted a high-pitched sigh as a week’s worth of putrefying gas escaped, making him gag and turn his head away. “Oh, my, baby’s made a mess!”

Milton said with a grin

as he turned back towards the injured sheriff.

The

sheriff, trapped on the floor between Milton and the squad car, stared wide-eyed and shook his head back and forth, making whimpering noises behind the rag in his mouth. The smile on Milton’s face disappeared. convulsed.

His stomach

He belched and then wretched, and a thin line

of bile with little dark specks spilled out of the corner of his mouth.

He felt a column of crawling, squirming

things forcing its way up his throat, demanding an exit. With a combination of exhilaration and revulsion he knelt down and leaned over the evidence bag, mouth opened. At first it felt like he was just yawning; he inhaled

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/135 deeply, ignoring the stink rising out of the bag, but before he could breathe out his stomach muscles clamped down like bands of steel, and he vomited.

The convulsion

was so powerful that streams of speckled mucous flew out of his nose.

It forced the air from his lungs with a

strangled, heaving sound, and he clamped his eyes shut to keep them from popping out of his head.

Thick, blood-

tinged effluvia filled the evidence bag, splattering all over Milton’s hands and the floor, making heavy, wet slapping sounds, and still it kept coming.

The vomit

crawled with millions of tiny, worm-like creatures, twitching and glistening in the yellowish, blood-flecked bile.

Milton’s face and neck grew red, then purple; veins

bulged and pulsed with the strain, patterns of tiny lights blinked under his skin.

Spots danced in his vision.

He

thought he was about to pass out when the paroxysm let up, and he sat back on his heels, panting.

Crimson slime

covered his face and dripped from his chin, roiling with dark little shapes that looked like coffee grounds in the dim light of the garage. A rustling sound came from the evidence bag, as if something were moving around inside.

It shifted, fell over

on its side, and Milton heard a bubbling growl emanating

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/136 from it.

Slime spilled out across the floor, splashing

Milton’s knees and the sheriff’s shirt. The sheriff rolled against the rear tire of the squad car, trying to get as far away as possible from the horror he was witnessing, but there was nowhere for him to go.

A

stain spread in the crotch of his pants, forming a puddle on the floor, mingling with the bile and blood and crawling things all around. With a snarl of dripping mucous, Cheops––or what used to be Cheops––emerged from the bag. looked awkward and misshapen.

Two of his limbs

The cat’s fur, matted with

slime and blood, hung loosely on his skeletal frame, trailed away in long shreds, necrotic tissue underneath oozing with fluids.

The cartilage where his ears should

have been had melted away; two gnarled holes with small ridges above them were all that was left.

One eyeball had

popped, and the socket was filled with burrowing organisms, occasionally flickering tiny dots of red light.

His head

tilted to one side and bobbed on his broken neck. The creature took a few faltering steps and rubbed up against Milton’s thigh in that affectionate manner all cats have––affection he’d never shown to Milton when he was alive.

He left a dark slimy stain on the record exec’s

tailored pants.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/137 Milton looked down at the animal, transfixed.

A

flurry of silent information passed between them. Lights embedded in his face and neck blinked in complicated patterns, reciprocated by quick flashes from the cavity where the cat’s eye used to be.

Once again Milton saw the

spokes of different futures overlapping and fanning out, and his own progression down one of those paths. Grinning, face and clothes a bloody, viscous mess, he turned toward the sheriff.

Time to finish this off.

The sheriff’s eyes shifted back and forth between Milton and the mutilated cat, as if he wasn’t sure which one to be more afraid of.

When he saw Milton lean over him

with his mouth open, the cop tried to roll away and hide his head under the cruiser, but succeeded in only mashing his injured skull against the metal undercarriage, causing a muffled shriek of pain.

There was nowhere for him to go.

This time Milton barfed so hard he did pass out. When he came to, the entire top half of the officer’s torso was engulfed in a viscous mass of minute crawling shapes.

The big man had stopped struggling.

Milton knew

the reanimation process would take longer with him than it did with the cat. He stood and brushed off the sleeves of his coat, wondering how his stomach could have possibly held as much

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/138 vomit as he now saw all around him; he had eaten nothing in the past twenty-four hours. juices permeated the air.

The sour smell of gastric Weak shafts of sunlight angled

down on the concrete floor, random spotlights illuminating the disgusting mess. Now to set the wheels in motion, Milton thought, while I go get cleaned up. He opened the door to the alley a crack, just enough to let the Cheops-thing out. “Go pay that bitch a visit for me,” he said. The mutant creature emitted a low, raspy growl, drew back momentarily from the morning sunlight, and then staggered out toward the shadows, a trail of moist paw prints the only evidence of its passage.

Milton watched

until it slipped around the corner at the end of the alley. Pinpoints of red light flickered in his vision.

As he

turned back toward the stairs, a large piece of flesh sloughed off his face and slid down the front of his shirt, leaving a smear of blood in its wake.

In the glistening

crater left behind, the tissue that was exposed looked dark and shiny, hard to the touch.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/139

11

There was broken glass inside the entryway.

The

1920’s crystal chandelier that his father installed against his mother’s protests––she came from a simpler, poorer background, and thought it too ostentatious––had lost most of its candelabra-style bulbs.

If they blew at the same

time the front porch ones did, thought Eddie, it must have been one heck of a display for old man Potter. He walked through the rest of the house flipping switches, assessing the damage.

Most of the lights and

fixtures had survived, but nothing seemed to work except for the lights in the study at the end of the first-floor hallway.

There was no electricity throughout the rest of

the house, and there was no way he was going to go downstairs to check the circuit breakers. Instead he settled onto the worn leather couch in the back study.

This had been the room where his father wrote

papers and his mother graded schoolwork.

Now they gazed

down upon him from a dozen or more framed photos that lined

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/140 the oak paneled walls: Dad with his research colleagues, Dad receiving awards, Mom with her schoolchildren, Mom and Dad together, Mom and Dad with Eddie.

A row of shelf lamps

filled the room with soft, diffuse light. Trying to distract himself, he turned on the evening news, volume low, but after a few minutes got up and walked into the kitchen.

In the darkness he corked a bottle of

merlot and poured himself a glass, wondering what had really happened here the previous night. As he settled back into the couch, Eddie remembered the strange box in his shirt pocket.

He took it out and

looked it over again, sipping the wine.

The delicate

shapes on its surface reminded him of something he had seen in a dream, something familiar he couldn’t quite place, until he leaned forward to put his empty glass down. When his glass hit the table, there was a white flash, and long tendrils of light leapt from the box.

Suddenly he

was back in the cylindrical chamber, a deep hum in his ears, vicious tentacles lashed all over his body and trailing up into the starry reaches above him, overlapping and entwined. around.

An ancient, gravelly voice reverberated all

The words, “The nanoborgs that bear my name are

almost here.

They will hunt you, my child, they will

search for you relentlessly, across space, across time,”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/141 hung in his mind, repeating over and over until they became a barrage of white noise. With a thump and a crackle, he was back in the study, looking down at the little white box.

The pattern on its

top was vaguely reminiscent of the overlapping cords that had stretched above him in the starry chamber. Eddie sat back with a feeling of disquiet. He’d planned to be writing music this week, preparing for some upcoming studio time––a solo project he was attempting––but in the last twenty-four hours all his priorities had shifted.

Now the project seemed of minor

importance; in his current state of anxiety and confusion, he knew creative work would be next to impossible. The evening news ended and late-night talk shows began, promising recycled humor and bland stars plugging insipid movies.

Eddie felt tired, but each time he drifted

off, words like nanoborg and they will hunt you floated into his dreams and he snapped awake, glancing about the room, an uneasy paranoia seeping into his chest. ÷÷ In the wee hours of the night, when the world was so still even the passing of a car or the rustling of leaves in the wind felt like a rude intrusion, while Eddie tossed and turned on the couch, dreaming of things he didn’t

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/142 understand, something moved in the dim light of the study. The ivory box on the table lit up, spraying the ceiling with a pattern of laser-like beams, an intricate mandala of interlocking symbols and moving shapes. From the shadows near the door it responded; a pure, silver-white gem perched upon diamond scintilla, flickering like an arc welder as it progressed across the ceiling and down the wall, making its way toward the coffee table. Whenever it passed under the warm glow of the shelf lamps, it became as clear as crystal; light refracted through it like a prism, throwing a colorful array of spots on the books and photos.

As the spider traversed the teakwood

coffee table, the intensity of its flickering increased until it was a searing white-hot corona of light. Legs as thin as glass slivers enfolded the white box, sinking into the grooves on its surface.

The bright

filament that was the insect’s body settled into the center, and the creature seemed to melt into the patterning until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the box, save for a bright lump in the middle.

After a while a thin

glass-like tube resembling a fiber optic cable extended from the lump, its tip flickering like the lens of a movie projector.

A small rectangular hole roughly the size of a

phone jack opened up on the side of the box.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/143 A few hours later, as night gave way to a dull grey morning, Eddie was still in the grips of slumber.

sweaty, fitful

In his dreams he had been in the open lot at the

end of his street, completely naked, trudging through waist-high growth, dragging an iron bar in his wake.

The

bar was tethered to a long rope that had been anchored to one of the radio towers.

As he pulled it around the tower,

keeping the radial rope-line taut, the bar flattened the weeds behind him in a perfect circle. After completing a full circle he changed the length of the tether and did it again, moving from tower to tower, repeating the process over and over until he thought his back would break.

Occasionally he dragged the weight

straight out from the base of a tower, flattening a perpendicular line across his previous tracks. Despite an overwhelming urge to stop what he was doing and run away, something stripped him of volition. moaned with reluctance.

He

Sweat poured off his body, causing

dead leaves and grass to stick to his skin.

Cuts and

scratches accumulated on his legs from the dense undergrowth. The dream skipped a beat; time jumped ahead.

He was

standing in the breeze high up on the middle radio tower, clinging to a steel girder just below one of the flashing

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/144 red beacons.

Somehow he’d ascended so far up that the open

lot beneath him was the size of a game board.

Concentric

circles fanned out around all three towers, overlapping each other here, connected by straight lines there. It’s like a crop circle, he thought, and felt an undefined bolt of dread shoot through his guts. hell?

Did I do that?

What the

A creeping feeling that he’d

betrayed himself filled his senses. The uniform grid of the valley spread out in all directions around him: houses, condos, shopping centers, and industrial parks scattered across the flat plain, hemmed in by mountains on three sides.

He could see the

101 Freeway running from west to east, sparse traffic moving in both directions, hooking up with the 170 and 134 near the horizon.

The tiniest fingernail of new moon hung

in the sky, offering no more light than the smattering of stars that surrounded it. Suddenly he felt vulnerable, exposed.

The tower began

to sway back and forth; one moment he plunged down toward the dry undergrowth with its circular patterns and strange shapes, the next he was catapulted back up into the sky so far he could see the curvature of the earth.

After the

third or fourth undulation Eddie lost his footing on the girder and he fell, tumbling head over foot.

Wind rushed

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/145 by his ears and then stopped.

Following an initial moment

of panic realized he was weightless, floating in zero gee, and being sucked into outer space like he was caught in a cosmic rip tide.

The earth receded until it was a tiny

blue-white pinpoint of light, a grain of sand on the distant shore of an inter-galactic ocean. Then it blinked out, and he was lying on the grass in his back yard, staring up into the harsh glare of the morning sun.

Edna Dinkins stood just on the other side of

the low hedge dividing their properties with her hands over her ears, eyes popping out of her head.

Eddie stood up,

covered his bare genitals, and backed away. As she followed Eddie’s progress Edna’s expression contorted into one of pain, and for a moment Eddie was reminded of a famous painting; he thought it was called The Shriek or The Scream.

When her face relaxed, dark spots

swam around in the whites of her eyes. oil ran down her cheeks.

Tears as black as

She looked straight through Eddie

and said, “Elohim na spratnik tol percuria. On vernoule nanoskovas Waarduth,” in a voice he didn’t recognize. words had a thick Eastern-European type accent.

The

Then she

paused, and appeared to translate for Eddie’s benefit, “The Elohim have prepared a temporal corridor. soldiers are transmuting.”

Nanoborg

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/146 Eddies guts turned to jelly; the bolt of dread he felt earlier returned, and he awoke on the leather couch, covered in sweat.

Familiar pictures of his parents

surrounded him on the walls. filled the dark paneled study.

Weak mid-morning sunlight

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/147

12

Fifteen miles away, in the garage of a Santa Monica condo, the thing that used to be Sheriff Charles Ogborn stirred and opened its blood-encrusted eyes.

A bubble of

mucous formed on his lips, expanded, and then popped.

If

anyone had been around, they would have heard congested, labored breathing interspersed with snatches of odd, unfamiliar phrases. The sheriff-thing sat up and leaned back against the side of the police cruiser. smelled foul.

His uniform was stiff and

The skin of his face appeared bloody and

raw, as if it had been scraped across rough pavement; it glistened with oozing fluids.

The concave depression in

his forehead crawled with thousands of small slug-like organisms, which looked like dark, pulsating brain matter. His eyes were those of a corpse: emotionless and vacant, black-rimmed and dead. He used the stem cutters lying nearby to snip away the plastic restraints on his ankles, then by bracing the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/148 cutters against the floor and using his body weight, managed to cut free his wrists as well.

In the process he

also lopped off the small finger of his left hand, releasing a fountain of fresh blood that splashed everywhere until it flowed dark and the stump clotted with a black gooey substance.

There was only a brief moment of

pain. He held his hand up to the light for a moment.

Now

there were three fingers missing. Avoiding the police radio, the sheriff-thing made a couple discreet inquiries of the on-board databases in his squad car.

There were only a few listings under Coulton,

and it wasn’t hard to figure out which was the one he wanted. Within minutes he was cruising on the freeway, heading north into the Valley.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/149

13

Her friend had grown quiet over the past few hours. Sheila assumed it was from the painkillers and other medication they’d given her for her injuries.

Suzanne’s

lip was swollen and split down the middle, and there was a nasty swelling under one eye. chipped.

Two of her lower teeth were

What Sheila didn’t know was that save for a shot

of Novocain in her lower lip to get some sutures, Suzanne had refused any other pain medication. They were made to report the incident to Senator Landry’s security staff––the hospital administration had requested to keep the initial investigation ‘in-house’, to avoid any inappropriate media attention to the senator’s plight.

Sheila was outraged and protested that her

friend’s rights were being violated, but at the same time had great sympathy for the Landry.

His staff assured her

that a full report would be given to the local authorities within hours, so she told them everything she’d witnessed, minus the part about the gun.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/150 Suzanne, injured, embarrassed and ashamed, went along with it as well, but her mind was already elsewhere.

The

pain kept her focused on a plan that began to formulate when she’d seen the gun lying on the elevator floor, and the police were the last people she wanted getting involved. By the time they finished the paperwork and Suzanne had been treated for her injuries, the sky was growing bright and Monday morning was well underway. “You sure you’re in okay shape to drive?” Sheila asked. “It’s actually not that bad,” said Suzanne.

Speaking

over her engorged lower lip the word bad sounding more like dad.

It was also a lie; as the Novocain wore off her lip

felt like it was exploding in slow motion, and the pain was excruciating. lip.”

“All they gave me was a little local for my

For my lip sounded like por ny lit. “You’ll be at Eddie’s?” “Yes, of course.”

If there was a slight moment of

hesitation in Suzanne’s response, Sheila didn’t pick up on it. “OK, I’m gonna call you there later, you know, just to check up on you, make sure you’re doing all right.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/151 “That’s sweet, Sheila, but really, you don’t have to. I’ll be in good hands with Eddie.”

She saw that glint

return to her friend’s eye and knew she’d set herself up. Sheila said, “Musicians always have the best hands, don’t they?” and laughed softly. real careful.

“You take care, and be

I’ll call you.”

Suzanne paused, and took her friend’s hand. Sheila, I owe you big time.

“Thanks,

You realize you probably saved

my life back there, right?” Her friend shrugged it off.

“What’s the point of

having pepper spray if you never get to use it on someone who deserves it?

I’m just sorry the bastard got away.”

“I never thought he’d pull something here at the hospital, what with all the security and cameras, but I didn’t even consider the garage. could’ve been killed too. had no idea how bad.

My god, Sheila, you

I mean, I knew he’d lost it, but

Christ, I’m so sorry.

What the hell

was I thinking?” “Suzanne, don’t worry about it. your fault.

It’s over.

It wasn’t

The guy’s flipped his goddamn lid; he’s

fucking insane, certifiable! until they catch him.

You just need to stay safe

Go to Eddie’s.

I’ll call you.”

They hugged and Sheila departed, leaving Suzanne alone with her thoughts.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/152 She knew going to Eddie’s was the right thing to do, the safe thing to do, but right now, more than anything, she wanted to settle the score.

Milton had controlled her

life; he’d mentally abused and verbally berated her; he’d intimidated her; he’d tortured and killed her beloved cat; he’d violated everything she believed in and made her doubt herself; and now he’d physically attacked her.

The pain

throbbing in her lip focused her outrage, and she patted the heavy, cold shape of the gun weighing down the bag at her hip. I know how his mind works, she thought.

He’ll come

back to finish it, and when he does, I’ll be ready. Instead of taking the freeway north into the valley, she drove the short hop across town back to her house. Traffic was fairly light for a Monday morning.

On the

chance that Milton was already at her place, waiting for her, she made a slow loop around the block, keeping an eye out for his SLK 230 Kompressor.

After all, he still had a

set of her house keys. If this goes down the way I think it will, I won’t even have to change the locks, she thought, and that’s when she realized how resigned she was. Her house was quiet and peaceful, a welcome sanctuary after the chaos of the previous few hours.

During the day

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/153 a light breeze would tease the branches outside her bedroom window, creating dancing patterns across the Oriental rug and over-stuffed bed.

Dark oak shelves covered one wall,

crammed with periodicals, medical texts, and other books. As Suzanne went through the motions of packing a bag to go to Eddie’s, waves of fatigue started to wash over her.

The throbbing ache in her lip transformed into a

throbbing ache in her whole head.

The punishing ordeal

she’d been through and lack of sleep was catching up with her, making her unsteady on her feet. down.

She wanted to lie

She needed to regroup. But I’ve got to stay alert somehow, be prepared. She armed the condo’s security system for the first

time in years.

If it still worked properly, there was no

way Milton would be able to enter while she was asleep without triggering the alarm. She knew it was a cliché, but she put he pistol under her pillow anyway.

A half-hour’s sleep, no more, just to

give my body some time to recover. The gentle sound of wind in the trees and singing birds wafted through her open window like a calming lullaby, and her sheets felt like a 200-thread count morphine cocoon, promising an end to all her pain and suffering.

Soon she was deep in the arms of slumber.

When

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/154 the alarm clock sounded half an hour later Suzanne slapped off the buzzer and rolled over, falling back asleep within seconds.

She slept on top of the covers, with one hand

under the pillow at all times, on the grip of the pistol. ÷÷ The security system in Suzanne’s house was mainly a perimeter system, which meant there were only sensors on the doors and windows.

Because of Cheops’s frequent

comings and goings, motion detectors were not an option, and obviously his cat-door had no sensor on it either. The flap on the little entrance swung back and forth as something came in.

For some reason Suzanne had not been

able to bring herself to seal it off, as if she were giving him one more chance to come home. And as Suzanne slept, she dreamed that Cheops did come home. He hopped up on the bed just like always, kneading the sheet with his paws and then curling into her side.

If

something seemed off about the encounter, Suzanne overlooked it.

Cheops purred loudly, a deep vibration that

sounded like bubbling snot or boiling sludge.

His body

felt as cold as a lump of dirt, and she hugged him to her side, attempting to warm him, but he seemed to leach the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/155 body heat out of her instead.

Dampness seeped into the

sheets, adding to the chill. It was probably the smell that brought her out of slumber, a thick, putrid stench of decayed flesh, like roadkill on steroids.

She awoke with the surreal feeling

that Cheops’s death had been some sort of convincing nightmare, that it hadn’t actually happened; after all here he was curled up at her side.

The impression only lasted a

few seconds as the foul odor filled her nostrils. The cold shape at her side stirred and growled.

Misty

veils of fatigue draped over her perception evaporated and a surge of adrenaline filled her blood.

In a flash the

reality of her situation snapped into focus: something cold, foreign, and dead smelling was in her bed.

There was

a standing mirror next to the dresser, and in its reflection she observed a glistening mass of raw tissue and matted fur undulating at her side. She twisted and screamed but wasn’t able to get away in time. The Cheops-thing emitted a strangled growl and lunged, sinking long, sharp teeth into her ribs.

Oily fluid poured

from his mouth and pooled around the wound, permeating her torn flesh.

The pain it caused was fiercely intense; in

contrast to the prior coldness it felt like something

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/156 caustic was burning into her side.

As Suzanne thrashed in

an attempt to break free, the creature clamped its jaws and continued to shred her skin, but didn’t let go.

Still more

vile ooze surged from its mouth, mingling with her blood, splattering the sheets. Suzanne swung her arm around and slammed the butt of the gun into the Cheops-thing’s skull with all her strength, smashing the bone and driving its fangs deeper into her side at the same time. in with a dull cracking sound.

The creature’s head caved Shards of bone, flecks of

rotten brain matter, and a spray of black tar flew in all directions, hitting Suzanne’s face, stinging her eyes. With a final exhalation and a bubbling snarl, the creature stopped moving. Its jaws were still clamped onto her side.

The force

of her blow had further opened up the wound and lodged the top teeth deeper into her flesh.

Dark fluid bubbled and

swirled around the gash. What the hell...? Her stomach heaved at the sight of the mutilated creature, and she could barely bring herself to touch it, but she had to pry it loose from her side. slippery.

It was cold and

Dead flesh and clumps of hair peeled off in her

hands, making it hard to get a grip on.

She whined in

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/157 dismay as she pulled the long, sharp canines out; the punctures they made were deep and painful. What the hell just happened? The wound in her side was a black-stained, bloody mess.

Her heart pounded in her chest, compounding the ache

in her lip and her side. That’s not Cheops.

Terror grew in her gut. It couldn’t be Cheops.

But she could tell by the color of its slime-covered fur, and by the leather collar around its neck that it was. Despite the ruined eyes and sagging flesh she even recognized his face. The room started spinning. Groaning in pain, not sure whether to scream, cry, or be sick, Suzanne rolled off the other side of the bed and got to her feet, grabbing the bedpost for support.

After a

few minutes the dizziness passed. She was trying to fathom the implications of being bit by a dead animal, and coming up at a loss, for the most part.

Insanity or hallucination seemed to be the most

likely answer, were it not for the current physical evidence in her bed (and her side). overpowering. torso.

The stench was

Murky bile mixed with blood covered her

One thing she knew for sure was that she had to get

cleaned up––dead animal or not, rational or insane, it felt

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/158 like infection was already setting in.

Her whole body felt

hot and flushed. On her way to the shower she passed the phone, and that’s when she remembered Eddie. expecting me last night!

I was going to call him when...

She glanced at the clock. noon.

Oh my God, he was

It was getting on towards

She’d been sleeping for hours. I thought for sure by now Milton would’ve...

looked back at the mangled mess in her bed sheets.

She For

some reason the image of Milton’s blotchy, contorted face floated in her mind’s eye, only this time he was sitting in his car, squinting into the sun, the circular metal tag from Cheops’s collar lying on the pavement nearby. She grabbed the phone and dialed Eddie’s number, but was disappointed by a busy signal. Eddie what’s going on.

Dammit, I need to tell

He needs to know.

Milton’s got

something to do with this, somehow. Milton... ÷÷ Ten minutes later she was still standing there holding the phone to her ear, trying to remember what she was doing.

A dark vision of Eddie and herself echoed in her

mind like a bad daydream, a waking nightmare, sinister and ominous.

In that vision she had been doing something

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/159 horrible against her will.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

Frightened, she dropped the phone and ran to the bathroom. The shower should have been rejuvenating, but wasn’t; hot water stung as it cleansed her wounds.

She attempted

to collect her thoughts, but was still haunted by fragments of the daydream.

Was it some sort of argument that led to

what she’d envisioned?

The disjointed scenario played over

and over again in her mind.

She tried to tell herself it

was nothing, a meaningless delusion.

Hazy images of things

gone wrong hovered in the mists of her paranoia. These disturbing thoughts deepened her concern for Eddie, and she decided the best course of action for all involved was to keep this little incident to herself.

How

could she really be sure Milton had anything to do with this?

Until she knew more, there was no need to add to

Eddie’s anxiety level.

And after all, even if she could

explain what had happened, how could she do it without confessing her original plan of confronting Milton?

She

knew that circumstances had driven her to extremes, but part of her didn’t want to admit to how stupid the idea really was. Steam filled the bathroom, covering the mirror with a streaky pattern that revealed where the last coating of steam had been wiped away.

When she was done in the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/160 shower, her long hair wrapped up in a towel, Suzanne inspected the punctures in her side with dismay.

The wound

was raw and open, red rimmed, the flesh surrounding them numb to the touch.

A dark bruise radiated outward under

the skin toward her chest and shoulder.

She recalled the

Cheops-thing regurgitating black, tarry bile and shuddered. Inhaling too deeply caused a sharp pain in her ribs. She still felt flushed and feverish. Using her field kit and the vanity mirror, Suzanne packed the two deepest holes with iodine soaked gauze, and then covered the area with antibiotic ointment and a square bandage.

Also in the emergency kit was a course of

Ciprofloxacin, a stout, heavy-duty antibiotic distributed to health-care workers, designated to protect them against various biological warfare threats.

Suzanne cracked the

seal on the bottle and swallowed two pills with some water from the sink.

This should help fight off just about any

type of infection, she thought, but at the same time a lingering doubt made her unsure, as if she were overlooking something. Her whole body ached, not just from the trauma she’d suffered, but in that all-over, coming-down-with-the-flu manner.

A white t-shirt and blue blazer hid the bandage on

her side––the only remaining evidence of her new injury was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/161 a hitch in her breath and a tendency to move a bit slower than normal. Seeing her bruised and swollen face reflected in the dresser mirror, she thought, I could blame any discomfort or slowness on my obvious injuries. She pulled on her jeans, trying without success to avert her gaze from the clump of mangled flesh on her bed. Cheops’s remains seemed to have deflated; there was only a slightly raised outline of matted fur where he had been lying.

The stains on the sheets appeared to have

coalesced. Greenish-black slime now covered the entire bed from head to foot. Avoiding the mess, she grabbed the bag she’d packed. On the way downstairs an idea struck her.

She’d probably

missed it before because she didn’t want to see it––there was only so much horror a person could process at one time. Heart pounding, Suzanne went into the downstairs bathroom and lifted her shirt.

What she saw in the mirror

confirmed her fears: the black, murky bruise under her skin had spread out further from beneath the bandage, the bulk of it expanding toward the middle of her chest like a dark fist.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/162

14

Like an oasis in the desert, it was a refuge of serenity and knowledge in the bustling cityscape.

Driving

on Olympic Boulevard, just a mile or so to the south, with its endless sidewalks, strip-malls, fast-food restaurants, high-rise condos, self-storage units, gas stations, liquor stores, video stores, electronics stores, billboards, bus stops and concrete benches, one would never realize that the beautiful tree-lined paths and expansive green lawns of the UCLA campus existed so close by.

Conversely, when on

university grounds, one would have an easier time envisioning being somewhere in New England, or the Pacific Northwest, rather than in urban Los Angeles––were it not for the palm trees and occasional low-flying helicopters. Sitting in his fourth-floor office, looking out over a well-manicured quad crossed with footpaths, Dr. Isaiah Otuno barely noticed the undergrads meandering between classes outside.

He’d been distracted throughout his

morning lecture, but fortunately it was a freshman biology

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/163 class, one that that he could teach in his sleep.

Now he

was pondering his next course of action. Abournae diabolernum?

Impossible!

doesn’t seem to realize that.

But Eddie honestly

So, if I rule out foul play,

what am I left with? His thoughts kept coming back to Eddie’s Father. Dr. X, as he was often called behind his back, was an eccentric individual with an intimidating intellect, who often suffered the ridicule and disdain of his peers.

His

research into robotics and micro-technology laid the groundwork for decades to come, but unfortunately it was so far ahead of its time that the majority of his work wasn’t validated––or hardly even understood––until long after his death. In the mid-1950’s and early 1960’s, Xavier Coulton was one of the first scientists to propose the theory of nanonic technology––fully functioning robotic machines the size of living cells or even smaller, machines that could augment internal organs, rebuild tissues, improve function, fight disease, infection, and possibly even prolong life. After all, what were cells––the building blocks of all living things––if not little tiny automated mechanisms, programmed to reproduce, combine, defend and interact with other types of cells in an intricate but fairly predictable

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/164 fashion.

At a time when the most advanced ‘computer’

filled half of a warehouse, and robots existed only in bmovies made by the likes of Ed Wood and Roger Corman, Xavier’s research was considered to be on the fringes of legitimate science at best. Otuno also understood what it felt like to be faced with the prejudice of one’s peers, being a young immigrant back then, one of the few on a short list of black graduate researchers in his field.

His work was always subject to

more scrutiny and held to a higher standard than that of his fellow white colleagues.

There were even those who

refused to attend his lectures.

Instead of crying foul,

however, Isaiah rose to the occasion.

He made sure his

papers were thoroughly researched, his hypotheses carefully articulated and well supported. his work.

He had a rare passion for

Where others buckled under pressure, Otuno rose

to the top of his field in defiance of racial stereotypes–– and even in the face of outright hostility. On the night he was given the UC Science Achievement Fellowship Award––granted once every four years, an honor that virtually guaranteed a tenure track with the University––Otuno returned home to a trashed apartment and the words ‘GO HOME NIGGER!!!!!’ spray painted on his walls. The idea that those in higher education would be above such

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/165 forms of racism was only partially true at the time–– pockets of racist feelings still existed, but were usually displayed less overtly than this.

Otuno continued to

flourish in the despite such adversity. If there was one person who didn’t prejudge Otuno on the basis of his ethnic background, it was Xavier Coulton, an unassuming, medium height, medium build scientist from Great Britain who drew diagrams on paper napkins of computer ‘chips’ smaller than a fingernail, who theorized about armies of mechanized organisms designed to repair organ damage, enhance the senses, even manufacture consumer goods, and who was intensely interested in ancient artifacts and dead civilizations.

He befriended the young

Dr. Otuno in his early days at UCLA.

Otuno, finding

Coulton to be open and honest, as well as misunderstood, recognized a kindred spirit. As their friendship grew, there was an unspoken understanding between the two scientists––an acknowledgement that they were both ostracized by the general community, and a mutual respect for what little they understood of each other’s work.

At one point, Otuno

tried to research some of Xavier’s theories, and found their basic tenets involving insect and cell biology to be accurate.

The advanced mathematics and theoretical

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/166 robotics involved, however, were beyond the scope of his expertise.

When it came to long strings of binary code,

Isaiah was lost.

He viewed his colleague’s pursuits as a

little offbeat, but at the same time found them very fascinating, and thought it a weakness of the scientific community that it automatically shunned anything which deviated from the accepted norm.

As far as he could tell,

Xavier Coulton’s work was brilliant. There had been only one occasion when Otuno considered the possibility that his friend’s mind might not be all there, that the eccentric Brit might be suffering some sort of paranoiac delusion or worse.

It was the night when he

arrived at his office to discover Xavier huddled in the dark, clutching a curious little white box. That had been either 1965 or 1966.

Otuno could still

remember sitting in a lecture hall, a couple weeks before the strange encounter. all departed.

Class was over and the students had

Only the front part of the room was lit up––

the rest of it was shrouded in shadows, growing darker toward the back. Xavier leaned over Otuno’s desk, gesticulating and exclaiming, “Can you believe that the Egyptians filled cavities in teeth and performed appendectomies over three thousand years ago?

They understood basic concepts of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/167 anesthesia, infection, and healing.

How did civilization

achieve such an advanced level of learning, only to lose it again for thousands of years?

More importantly, what

knowledge might still be lost?” Coulton rambled on at great length, ultimately inviting Otuno to accompany him on a trip abroad to investigate these matters first hand, promising adventure and rewards.

Otuno found it all rather remarkable, but

didn’t see how it was relevant to his own or his friend’s research.

He declined the offer.

Subsequently, Xavier traveled alone to West Africa, Egypt, and parts of the Middle East, having become obsessed with the ancient civilizations of these areas.

He hungered

for knowledge of secret things; he wanted to expose enigmas hidden under rocks and forgotten for generations to the light of day, where they might flower and reveal their lost truths.

To the inquisitive Dr. X, the whole world was full

of surprise and intrigue. Otuno was grading papers late at night, about a week after his colleague left, when the phone rang.

Back then

he had a temporary office in the Kley Math Building, on the opposite side of the quad from where he was now––a temporary office he occupied for over ten years, until the dubious McKinley Science Hall was built.

There was little

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/168 activity in the building, especially late on a Tuesday night, and the shrill metallic bell of the old rotary phone (they were all rotary back then) echoed off high ceilings and painted cinderblock walls, startling Otuno, almost knocking him out of his chair. With a shot of adrenaline coursing through his veins, he reached into the shadows beside his desk and lifted the receiver. “Dr. Otuno here.” There was a crackle on the line that sounded like a stylus scraping around a scratchy old phonograph, then a voice, impossibly small and distant. “Isaiah?

Isaiah can you hear me?”

It sounded as if his friend was speaking through a garden hose; his voice was tinny and hollow.

Even in the

relative solitude of the math building Otuno had to concentrate to hear him. “Xavier, is that you?

You need to speak louder.

Where are you calling from?” Another ten-second burst of static, and then Xavier came through, clearer than before. a land-line near Aswan.

“...radio connected to

Isaiah, its’ remarkable, we’ve

been exploring a small temple known as the Brahtsprawna Monolith.

There’s evidence of electrical ex...”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/169 More static.

Even through the lousy connection Otuno

could hear excitement in his friend’s voice. noise stopped Coulton was still talking. astounding.

When the

“...artifacts are

And there’s some kind of communication device,

archaic as hell, but it’s rather evident it was connected to a power supply. like schematics.

Hieroglyphs on the walls look a lot If I’m reading them correctly, it appears

as if these old chaps created a rudimentary hydroelectric generator, and that makes sense, too, if you consider that they had advanced knowledge of metallurgy, and there was substantially more water around here three thousand years ago.

One section of wall has knobs and buttons, like a

control––Hey! Hey you there, stay the bloody hell away from that!” Loud, agitated yelling in a foreign language––probably Arabic––erupted in the background.

Over the phone, Otuno

heard his friend’s voice raised above the others, and a low, groaning rumble, as if giant gears were turning or a huge boulder were being dragged across the ground. was the distinct sound of gunfire.

There

Like the advance of a

thousand sharp, skittering claws, white noise crept back into the line.

Somehow it sounded different from the

crackly static that had interrupted their conversation earlier.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/170 “Xavier, what’s happening?

What’s wrong?”

“My God, what...what is that?

Who are you?”

Xavier’s

voice, full of fear and confusion, was suddenly loud and clear over, as if he were calling from across town instead of across the globe.

The scraping, scratching noises grew

louder again, until Otuno thought something hard and scabby was about to crawl right out of the receiver and up his arm. Then the line went dead. Otuno looked at the handset for a moment before hanging up.

He stared into the darkness, expecting the

phone to ring again any second.

As the seconds stretched

into minutes he went back to grading papers, but his ability to focus was shot. Electrical artifacts?

His heart thumped in his chest.

A generator?

The conversation

played over and over in his mind, right down to the gunshots and the strange white noise interspersed with yelling.

Although Otuno wasn’t exactly sure what the hell

Coulton was talking about, he was pretty sure something had gone wrong, and the frustration of not being able to help his friend was overwhelming.

He wished Xavier would call

him back. After about a week without hearing anything, Otuno found himself consumed by curiosity and concern.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/171 Brahtsprawna?

Where in God’s name is Brahtsprawna?

another cold, quiet night on campus.

It was

Overhead, dry palm

fronds rustled in the wind and a few thin, wispy clouds rushed by in the upper reaches of the atmosphere as he made his way toward his office.

There was no moon to illuminate

the dark sky. He was deep in thought, and took no notice of the bright flash that occurred in the direction of the Kley Math building. Cutting across the well-manicured lawn in front of the building, he inadvertently kicked something small and soft with his foot. was.

Otuno stopped for a moment to see what it

A gray shape, ruffled feathers and claws at

impossible angles; there were others close by.

In his

distracted state, Otuno’s mind registered that it was an animal carcass of some sort, but it was a moment before he fully recognized what he was seeing: a flock of dead birds, seagulls by the looks of them.

Strange as it was, by the

time he reached his office the experience had already slipped into the back of his mind, and would soon to be eclipsed by the coming night’s events.

Decades later he

would recall stumbling upon those birds, and only then would he begin to grasp their significance. He had a friend at the Nairobi University, someone he knew from graduate school––someone he hoped would shed some

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/172 light on the situation.

By Otuno’s calculation, it would

be late morning in Nairobi, a good time to reach Kalib Silva. The door to his office was unlocked, but Otuno assumed the custodian crew that came through in the early evening had forgotten to lock back up when they were done; it wouldn’t have been the first time. He’d already dropped his bag and was reaching for the light switch when he realized there was someone else in the room with him.

Huddled at the far end, a tall, shadowy

figure stood before the chalkboard, facing the other direction.

Isaiah’s first assumption was that it was

another racially motivated vandal, so he felt around for a yardstick––or anything he could defend himself with––as he flipped on the lights. It took a few seconds for the florescent overheads to flicker up to full strength.

The shape in the back of the

room seemed to shrivel under the brightening lights, transforming from a tall, shadowy figure into a nondescript, average sized person.

Even with the room

illuminated, Otuno didn’t recognize his friend at first. “Who’s there?

What do you want?”

The intruder turned around, holding a small box in one hand and a piece of chalk in the other.

Otuno saw a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/173 complicated shape, like a large hieroglyph, drawn on the chalkboard.

That shape jogged his memory––he remembered

his purpose for coming here, and in a flash he realized who he was looking at.

Aside from the familiar overcoat, which

Isaiah now recognized, everything else about his friend’s appearance was different.

Xavier Coulton––usually

fastidiously clean, a paragon of British etiquette and poise––was now hunched over, stringy hair covering his eyes, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. There were scratches all over his face, and his gaze darted about the room, looking everywhere but at Otuno.

He was

completely filthy from head to toe. “Xavier?” Xavier’s bent form replied, “The portal must be hidden from the Elohim fanatics.

He needs to be protected,”

before turning back to the chalkboard and continuing to mutter under his breath.

“He mustn’t know, he can’t know,

but he needs to be protected.

The portal must be cloaked.

They will be looking, searching. searching.

And they’ll never stop

Oh God, why won’t they stop?

Somebody has to

stop them.” He pivoted and looked straight toward Otuno, but his gaze seemed to be focused somewhere on the wall behind his friend.

His eyes were black, glassy and lifeless.

As if

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/174 it explained everything, he said, “I have to do this.”

He

said it out loud, but it sounded more like a conclusion reached after a deep internal debate. “Xavier, are you okay? death.

What’s going on?

No response.

You nearly scared me half to

What happened?”

Coulton’s arm lashed out and added a few

more strokes to the shape on the board.

He kept swaying on

his feet, reciting strange phrases to himself that sounded like some weird cross between German and Italian, “Vernoule ish iltigen maolaghri Waarduth...”

The effect his British

accent had upon the words was unsettling.

Except for the

chalkboard and the strange hieroglyph drawn upon it, Xavier seemed utterly oblivious to his surroundings. Any relief Otuno felt at seeing his friend was outweighed by his concern for seeing his friend in this condition.

As he moved in closer, a foul stench filled

Otuno’s nostrils, the ripe smell of body odor, urine and excrement.

He wondered how Coulton had gotten from the

Middle East to his office in such a disheveled, incoherent state. Xavier dropped the chalk and shied away from Otuno, attempting to hide the small white box in his hands from Otuno’s vision.

Looking at the graceful but complicated

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/175 shape on the chalkboard, Isaiah decided to approach his friend from a different tack. “What did you find at Brahtsprawna?

Is that one of

the glyphs from the hydroelectric schematic?” At the mention of Brahtsprawna, Xavier stopped muttering.

It was a good thing too, because Otuno was

beginning to think he’d have to find a doctor or call an ambulance for his friend.

Very slowly, Coulton’s back

straightened up, and when he turned around to face Otuno, his hands were empty.

He cleared his throat once, and as

if they were in the middle of a conversation, said, “Nothing, my friend.

We found nothing.

And then some of

the crew ran off, stealing most of our provisions.

The

next night somebody sabotaged the rest of our supplies.

I

barely made it out of the desert alive.” “What about the electrical artifacts you described to me?

It sounded like a genuine find.

called?

Isn’t that why you

What happened to you?”

Xavier refused to make eye contact with his friend. “They were just supplies left behind by a previous expedition.

The call was a mistake; I should have spent

more time thinking and less time reacting, and maybe I wouldn’t have fallen victim to the con of some uneducated locals.

The whole thing is rather embarrassing, really.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/176 He glanced at the glyph he’d drawn on the board and frowned, as if he didn’t recognize it. “I just wanted to let you know I was all right.” After Coulton left, Otuno continued to stare at the large shape chalked in the back of the room until it was burned into his mind, engraved in his memory.

The main

pattern consisted of an oval and two semi-circles bisected by a continuous line, which itself branched off at intervals and sprouted little teardrops. He decided to call his old acquaintance in Nairobi anyway; even though Xavier had returned, there were still a few things Isaiah needed to clarify. He caught Kalib Silva between classes. As they brought each other up to date, Otuno was impressed with Silva’s recent accomplishments.

In addition

to publishing two papers, Kalib had just received an honorary degree from Aswan College, and had a couple of interesting field expeditions in progress as well.

The

well-respected Egyptologist assured him there was no place in the Middle East called Brahtsprawna, and no such thing as the Brahtsprawna Monolith.

Isaiah thanked him for his

time and promised to keep in touch.

After the phone call

he didn’t know whether to feel sorry or ashamed for Xavier Coulton.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/177 How he felt about his friend turned out to be irrelevant, though, because Otuno saw very little of Coulton after that encounter.

For some reason, in the wake

of his trip to ‘Brahtsprawna’, he seemed like a different person.

Isaiah assumed it was simply embarrassment, or

maybe Xavier’s obsession with his work––either way, a distance had grown between them. Three years later, Isaiah was invited to the wedding of Xavier Coulton and Sarah Breiseth, a beautiful schoolteacher from Santa Barbara.

How the once socially

awkward and reclusive Coulton, who never had a girlfriend as long as Otuno could remember, had charmed this desirable young woman into marrying him was beyond Otuno’s comprehension, and further proof that his friend had changed somehow.

It was true: Xavier appeared more

confident, relaxed, and in control than ever before. The newlyweds moved into an old family house in the San Fernando Valley.

Despite his fringe acceptance in

research circles, the eccentric inventor became comfortably wealthy when he sold his patents for automated processing and packaging to an up-and-coming food distribution super conglomerate.

Throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s, his

earlier research ideas––concepts that suffered ridicule

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/178 once upon a time––were sold at a premium to computer and robotics manufacturers. Otuno spent a number of years trying to get reacquainted, but Xavier remained aloof, keeping a certain distance between them.

As far as Otuno could tell, his

friend had stopped all serious research in favor of tinkering––experimenting with strange devices, installing small ‘chips’ on the backs of insects, attempting to create microscopic capacitors and resistors with electrolyzed bacterium.

He never published any more papers, and he did

all of his ‘research’ at home.

Coulton played the part of

the eccentric millionaire perfectly––he couldn’t have given his colleagues a more legitimate reason to ostracize him. In 1973, Xavier and Sarah had a son, Eddie, and Xavier fell out of research circles completely.

Otuno’s

contact with him was limited to University social functions––picnics, lectures and the like––events that Coulton attended sporadically. One of the last times Otuno saw his old friend, Xavier was in the hospital, recovering from numerous black-widow bites to the face and neck.

Somehow the quirky Brit had

stumbled upon a cluster of the venomous arachnids while working in his basement.

What was unusual was the way they

attacked him en masse, displaying a hive mentality unheard

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/179 of in spiders––something Otuno would have given more thought to at the time, were it not for the urgency of his friend’s situation.

The venom from those bites left Xavier

with partial facial paralysis.

Eight-year-old Eddie had

witnessed the entire gruesome incident, and at great risk to himself, had managed to get his father to safety. Coulton tried to downplay the whole thing, but Otuno could see fear etched in the face of the young boy; Sarah was conflicted between concern for her husband and a seething outrage that her son––whether knowingly or not, it didn’t matter––had been placed in harm’s way. About ten years after the spider incident, Otuno paid a final visit to his friend’s side as Xavier lay in a silklined casket. Even though distance had grown between them, Otuno was still devastated.

He felt like he’d lost his

friend for a second time, and recalled with lingering regret their last few awkward encounters, thinking of a hundred things he wished he’d mentioned––from jokes Xavier would have appreciated to reassurances of care and respect. He cried for the loss of his friend, and he cried for his friend’s family. The aneurism took Xavier in his sleep.

Most people

attributed it to the inventor’s slightly manic, workaholic nature, or just the poor misfortune of genetic

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/180 predisposition, but Otuno quietly obsessed on another explanation.

He suspected that neurotoxins from the

unusual spider attack years earlier contributed to a weakened cerebral condition, and wondered how much that played a role in accelerating his friend’s demise.

After

all, black widow venom was fifteen times more poisonous than rattlesnake venom.

Usually only a minute amount gets

injected when they bite, but Xavier suffered at least a dozen bites, all in close proximity to his brain.

If it

could paralyze part of his face, then it could have done some unseen damage as well.

At the time Otuno kept such

thoughts to himself. The funeral was well attended.

Sarah, maintaining her

composure quite well for one just recently widowed, delivered a heartfelt and eloquent eulogy.

The enormity of

her loss was evident in every word she uttered.

She

recalled the twenty years she shared with her husband, spinning anecdotes that cast him as an intelligent, loving man with an odd sense of humor and a quirky personality. Her reminisces had those in attendance alternating between laughter and tears.

When she stepped down from the podium

there wasn’t a person in the crowd who hadn’t been touched in some way, and everyone’s heart broke for this devastated but vibrant woman.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/181 Otuno was appalled when some from the college community who once repudiated Xavier’s work now paid their respects, attempting to garner credibility by pretending to have known and supported the eccentric genius years earlier.

It was sad to see supposedly learned adults using

the misfortune of another to their advantage, many of them oblivious to the tastelessness of their actions. After the funeral Otuno kept thinking about the spiders that had attacked Xavier a decade earlier, and their possible link to the aneurism.

He recalled how

Xavier’s hands trembled, and that his complexion seemed a little too rosy-cheeked ever since that attack. there be a connection that he’d missed?

Could

In hindsight, all

the indications were there, and if there was even an outside chance he was correct, then didn’t he share some of the responsibility for his friend’s death? was supposed to be the expert on insects.

After all, he As far as Isaiah

knew, nobody had ever done a study correlating levels of widow venom with long-term circulatory damage or risk of stroke, but a connection had already been established between the venom and heart and lung failure. great leap from there to a brain aneurism. uncertainty and guilt ran in high levels.

It wasn’t a

Otuno’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/182 That fall, as fate would have it, a young undergrad named Edward Coulton happened to be among the list of students signed up for Otuno’s freshman biology class. Eddie, who recognized Otuno as one of his dad’s associates, felt an immediate connection with the wizened bug doctor. Otuno, for his part, saw a hint of his old friend’s looks and mannerisms in the young Edward, and it didn’t take long for the two to become fast friends outside of class, getting together frequently for coffee or dinner, occasionally taking in a movie together, or driving up to Big Bear for a weekend of skiing. After Eddie graduated their contact diminished, but not before he’d brought Otuno a specimen of the rare insect that inhabited the depths of his cellar.

Otuno could still

recall his incredulity as Eddie tapped the dried husk of the spider out onto the desk in front of him.

The young

Coulton claimed he’d found the latrodectus hystrix gigantae in his father’s shirt after the fateful attack, and had saved it all these years. two reasons.

Otuno found that remarkable for

One––this species of widow did not inhabit

the Western Hemisphere, and two––if twelve, or perhaps thirteen (somehow that seemed more appropriate) of these rather sizeable black widows, which injected larger amounts

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/183 of venom than typical ones, had bitten Xavier’s face, then it was amazing that he’d even survived. Upon further research, he found that hystrix gigantae’s poison, unlike other Widow species, contained elevated levels of a substance called curotox, which contributed to hardening of the arteries.

Another study

confirmed a positive link between that particular neurotoxin, high blood pressure, and tissue atrophy.

The

more he learned, the more a connection between the unusual spider attack and his friend’s demise seemed not just possible, but altogether too likely. Still, he’d kept his thoughts to himself. Now, over a decade later, as Otuno sat in his fourth floor office in McKinley, looking out over the southeast quad, he thought about his old friend’s death for the first time in years.

As he contemplated, he held the canister

containing Eddie’s recent specimen, scoring the tape around its’ lid with his thumbnail.

The Coralstar Scarab reminded

him of Xavier for many reasons––the foremost being that it was another ‘impossible’ insect to emerge from his old friend’s basement, and his reaction to it had been similar to his disbelief over the latrodectus hystrix gigantae years ago.

The scarab’s perfection and symmetry hinted of

robotics, and it did have what appeared to be a tiny

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/184 implant on its’ abdomen––a perfectly smooth, metallic chip– –reminiscent of experiments Xavier had conducted.

The more

he thought about it, the more the strange specimen seemed to be a logical extension of his old friend’s research. He considered Xavier’s trip to ‘Brahtsprawna’.

That,

if anything, had been a pivotal moment in their relationship, the point from which all the unanswered questions had developed.

Thinking back, he realized that

his friend might not have been embarrassed, but actually hiding something––something he actually had discovered on that trip, then disguised under the cover of eccentricity. Otuno assumed that Xavier had been the victim of some criminal scam, and after Kalib Silva had assured him that ‘Brahtsprawna’ didn’t exist, his embarrassment for Xavier had prevented him from questioning the situation further. Now he remembered Xavier standing before the large hieroglyph on the chalkboard, a piece of chalk in one hand and a small white box in the other, and how the white box vanished into a pocket when his friend had become suddenly coherent.

He recalled Xavier’s evasive answers to his

questions, how he claimed to have been nowhere and found nothing, and his unease at the hieroglyph he’d drawn on the chalkboard.

But the hieroglyph itself seemed to betray

Xavier, to insinuate that he’d been somewhere, seen

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/185 something, or why else would he have drawn it?

Also, after

his return, why would he remain so fetid and unkempt? Where’s the connection?

Why would he hide something

about himself, something he’d discovered? would Xavier have for secrecy?

What reasons

If one ruled out

embarrassment, the next obvious motive would be personal gain, but Otuno never saw the payoff if that was the case (by that point in his life, the bulk of his legitimate research complete, Xavier had already obtained the patents that were to make him rich in the coming years).

If he

didn’t stand to achieve anything, what other cause would Xavier have had for concealment? To protect something, or somebody, he thought, and like a scene from an old b-movie, he remembered his friend huddled over, stinking and disheveled, muttering to himself, “He needs to be protected.

He needs to be

protected, ” and then, looking straight through Otuno, saying, “I have to do this.” Had to do what?

Who needs to be protected?

This brought to mind his typical lecture on the South American Coralstar Scarab, which he recited it aloud to the empty room, looking down at the small container in his hand the whole time.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/186 “It is rumored that this particular species of beetles would spend its’ entire adult life protecting the larvae of certain types of moths, hence the nickname Guardian Beetle.

When the moths matured, emerging from

their vulnerable cocoons, they would return the favor by distributing the eggs of unborn scarabs from their wings in flight.

In this way they spread the population of beetles

out so as to avoid competition with each other, and ensured the moth’s own continued protection.

I say it is rumored

because no one was ever able to verify this symbiotic relationship.

What is certain, however, is that when the

scarabs became extinct due to human intervention, the moths followed soon thereafter...” Who needs to be protected? There was some sort of parallel between the spiders, scarab, father, and son.

Eddie said that it had been

crawling on him two nights ago, this perfect, possibly bioengineered replicant of an extinct Guardian Beetle. Who needs to be protected?

The question kept nagging

at him, and the scarab seemed to point to the unlikely answer. Eddie. He recalled the bandage on his young friend’s wrist and the dark circles under his eyes.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/187 Eddie’s in trouble. Otuno wondered what in God’s name Xavier had started all those years ago, and how it could involve his son, who wasn’t even born at the time.

Could all this really have

something to do with Xavier’s trip to Egypt?

And if so,

what happened there, what was he running from?

What could

possibly threaten his son halfway around the globe, three decades later? A cold chill, a dark whisper from the rotting lips of a corpse, ran up his back as he sat in his office.

For a

moment, Otuno considered forgetting the whole thing––just dropping the film canister into a padded envelope, mailing it back without a note, disassociating himself from the entire matter, and never thinking about Eddie or Xavier again.

He wanted to go home, pour himself a stiff drink,

and pretend none of this had ever happened.

He wanted to

hop on the first plane to Jamaica and never come back to the States again. But he couldn’t do that. Maybe twenty years ago I wasn’t able to help my friend, but if there’s anything I can do about it this time, I’ll help his son. warn him.

If Eddie’s in danger, I have to

I need to find out what he knows, as well.

the missing link in this chain, the unknown quantity.

He’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/188 Otuno felt a sense of disconnection, like he had woken up from a deep sleep to find himself in a world slightly different from the one he remembered; where the basic rules had been altered, or expanded; where new and wonderful potential existed side by side with sinister possibilities. He wondered if this was how Xavier had felt––like his perception of reality had been skewed, like he lived in a different universe than the rest of us and couldn’t reach back across the void––and that’s why his friend became so eccentric in those later years. Looking down at his hands, Otuno realized that he’d broken the seal on the small canister holding the enigmatic scarab.

He still wasn’t sure what to do with it, or what

to make of the mystery creature. Popping the lid off the container, he dumped its’ contents out onto the desk in front of him.

The large

beetle spun on its back one time and came to rest, six primary legs and two smaller ones pointing toward the ceiling.

Otuno thought it seemed larger, its abdomen more

distended than before, and something about its coloring appeared different as well.

When he prodded the legs they

seemed loose, flexible, as if the insect were still alive–– or only recently dead.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/189 Sunlight reflected off the far wall of the office, casting a warm glow about the room.

He reached into the

pocket of his lab coat and produced the jeweler’s-glass. With a furrow on his brow, he snapped the lens onto his glasses, and leaned forward to take a closer look at the reputed Coralstar––and almost knocked his chair over backward when the metallic-looking diode on the creature’s belly flashed bright red for a brief second. What the...? He picked up the scarab with a pair of long tongs and carefully flipped it over. A gasp escaped him, and this time his chair did go over backwards, but not before Otuno himself had stood up and taken a few steps back as well.

The sense of unreality

was overwhelming. On the scarab’s back, which had been smooth and black as oil the previous night, there now was a familiar symbol, rendered in brilliant liquid gold, almost glowing against the beetle’s obsidian carapace.

That symbol had been

burned into his memory nearly three decades ago, and seeing it now, Otuno recalled Xavier, reeking of urine and covered in filth, sketching it on his chalkboard: a shape consisting of an oval and two semi-circles bisected by a continuous line, which itself branched off at intervals,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/190 sprouting tiny tear-shaped berries.

The hieroglyph Xavier

had drawn after his return from the mysterious ‘Brahtsprawna’. Suddenly the air in his office seemed stale and heavy, depleted of its oxygen content.

He felt sick to his

stomach, like a dozen Coralstar Scarabs were crawling in there, clamoring to get out.

The light faded until it

seemed as if a thin grey veil hung before his eyes, obscuring everything but his near-field vision.

The last

thing he noticed was an absence of noise; wind, traffic, and even his own motions ceased to make any sound.

When he

recovered his senses minutes later, he was sitting on the cold tile floor of his office, still holding the strange insect in his hands.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/191

15

Eddie awoke covered in sweat; his mouth was dry, his neck was stiff from being kinked at an odd angle all night. A dull ache thrummed up his arm from the injury on his wrist.

The strange dream––radio towers, crop circles, and

Edna Dinkins––hovered in his thoughts.

As surreal as it

seemed, the twisted memory of her crying black slime and chattering gibberish, saying “The Elohim have prepared a corridor.

Nanoborgs have translated,” was more vivid than

his recollection of meeting with Dr. Otuno on the previous night.

Even though the phrase she uttered was meaningless

to him, it filled him with an undefined dread. Elohim?

Nanoborgs?

The words tugged on his

subconscious, like tiny ants working at a boulder. himself it was just another bad dream.

He told

A rather haunting

and extremely surrealistic one, but a bad dream nonetheless.

At least he’d actually managed to sleep

through the night, one of those small miracles he never took for granted anymore.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/192 As he stretched, rolling his stiff neck, sorting through the preceding night’s events, Eddie tried to shake off the apprehension he sensed. again?

Did I really make the knot

Or was that part of the dream too?

When he

extended his arms, the bandage pulled at his wrist, and he remembered Suzanne telling him to change the dressing. Suzanne! The dream and the knot were just a few items in a long list of things he needed to tell her about. Is she here?

In Fenster’s old room?

She was going to

let herself in after her shift. His heart leapt at the prospect.

He felt his pulse

quickening; excitement and uncertainty rattled around in his empty stomach.

In haste to get to the stairs, he

stumbled into the easy chair and bumped the coffee table, knocking over his wine glass from the previous night in the process.

It rolled around until it fell off the edge of

the table, where it shattered on the hardwood floor.

Eddie

hardly noticed. Suzanne was one of the few people he could confide in, but he had to be careful––she was dealing with her own issues, and needed someone to be there for her, too. would be easy to overwhelm her, especially if he was oblivious to what she was going through.

It

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/193 Deep emotions were stirring in him.

He wondered how

much longer he could hide his feelings for her. A madly overgrown hedge blocked the view out the kitchen windows, casting the room into perpetual gloom. Direct sunlight hadn’t graced those panes of glass since sometime during the first Reagan Administration.

Eddie had

been meaning to have the hedge cut back for a number of years now, but something about the privacy it offered caused him to procrastinate.

Now as he hurried along,

flipping a few light switches, the room remained enshrouded in shadows. Electricity’s still out.

Which wasn’t surprising––

someone still needed to assess the damage in the basement. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry, he might have noticed that Suzanne’s car wasn’t in the driveway, or that there was only one coat hanging in the hallway.

Eddie was

too preoccupied with her warm laugh and bright smile, thinking about what he was going to say, wondering how she was going to react.

By the time he reached the second

floor he’d convinced himself he could detect the lingering aroma of her hair conditioner. Fenster, otherwise known as Paul Fenwick, his childhood friend, confidant and musical collaborator, had occupied the room near the top of the stairs for the last

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/194 few years.

Before that it had been his mother’s sewing

room, and it offered an expansive view of the front lawn and walkup.

On many evenings she would sit there by the

window, doing her needlepoint, watching and waiting for Eddie to come home.

Now that they were both gone––his mom

in the Twilight Gardens Nursing Home in Connecticut, spirited away by her brother, Fenster back in Arizona with his family––it served as a guest bedroom. Eddie stopped short in the upstairs hallway when he saw the bedroom door was open, light streaming in from the front window.

The room had a bright, undisturbed look.

With each step he took, he felt his hopes crumbling. “Suze?

Suzanne, are you there?”

He knew there would be no reply even before he saw the neatly made bed.

There would be no bag on the floor, no

clothes hanging in the closet, no keys or purse on the desk.

What he thought was the scent of her conditioner was

actually just a faint remnant of the incense Fenster used to burn. She wasn’t there. Confused, full of dismay, he sat down on the edge of the colorful bedspread.

Something about the angle and

intensity of the sunlight in the room didn’t seem right.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/195 He realized it must be much later than he’d originally thought. How long did I sleep?

He looked over at the bedside

clock, and saw it was half past noon. already been here and gone?

Could she have

Where would she go?

A faint uneasiness crept back into his gut. He got up and went to the window to look for her car. The street was empty except for a big orange Department of Water and Power van and two jump-suited servicemen working on a telephone pole right out front.

Much further down the

street, almost out of sight, was another vehicle that Eddie thought might belong to the telephone company. One of the DWP workers, a skinny blonde fellow with the look of a drowned rat, was suspended high up on the utility pole.

Grunting and sweating next to the drum-

shaped transformer he was working on, he held a tool in each hand and one in his mouth. His buddy––a fat, dark haired chap whose tools were a Styrofoam coffee cup and a lit cigarette––stood underneath. Between sips of coffee and taking deep drags off of his cancer stick, he shouted commands up to his skinny counterpart (or maybe he was just describing the date he’d had the previous evening, Eddie couldn’t be sure).

Every

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/196 so often the fat guy coughed and spat a thick glob of phlegm onto the pavement. Eddie went back downstairs, deep in thought. Amidst everything else, this was his last week to prepare for upcoming studio time––expensive studio time that he’d paid for in advance––and today was already halfshot. Concerns like that, however, which seemed gravely important a few short days ago, had all but fallen off his radar.

Instead, he was disturbed by the recent dreams and

hallucinations (if that’s what they really were) and filled with an intense longing for Suzanne.

He was worried about

her, and if he had to admit it, a little hurt that she hadn’t shown up.

On top of that he felt guilty for

inviting her here; even though he did it out of genuine fear for her safety and well being, he was using it as a pretense to lay all of his problems and worries on her as well.

He knew it was wrong, but he didn’t know what else

to do.

Without Suzanne, Eddie thought he might go crazy.

The phone in the study was dead. phone’s out in the car. Suzanne’s condo.

Damn, my cell

He decided to drive over to

I can try to reach her from the road.

When he sat down to put his shoes on, something was shimmering in the sunlight in the middle of the coffee

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/197 table.

He wondered how he’d missed it earlier.

The

reflective inlay looked like elaborate quicksilver etchings.

Twisted patterns reflected all over the ceiling.

The box.

What he had started to think of as ‘the

ivory box’, though who knew what it was really made of.

In

the bright light it seemed far too complicated and full of intricate detail to be mere ivory.

It glowed like some

sort of ancient circuit board or alien artifact. As Eddie watched, a sparkling nexus of glass needles emerged from the top of it as if emerging from the surface of a lake.

Eight crystalline hairs stretched out in long

graceful arcs, then a tiny cylindrical jewel surfaced in their midst.

It took a moment for him to realize what was

going on, but as it started to pulse––silver, gray, blue, silver, white, blue––he recognized the spider he’d seen on the basement stairs two nights ago, the one that made him flinch and slash himself.

He touched the bandage on his

right wrist. Now, perched upon its ivory pedestal, the spider’s legs glowed with the same eerie silver-blue iridescence that he’d seen in his dream, tiny body still flickering a bright sequence of colors. Silver, gray, yellow, silver, white, blue, white…

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/198 The effect was both calming and mesmerizing.

Eddie

continued to stare, feeling his mind relax, his preoccupations fading away.

For a minute the room around

him dissolved. He floated in a cloud, with nothing but the curious object flashing before him.

The undulations wound

down, lasting longer each time: white...blue...silver. With deliberate precision, the gossamer insect folded its delicate scintilla and lowered itself, seeming to reabsorb into the surface of the box.

The reflections on the

ceiling faded away. Eddie became aware of the room around him again in slow increments.

Filtered sunlight danced and reflected

off dark paneling and pictures of his parents.

Off in the

distance, he could hear echoes of the utility workers shouting to each other.

The confusion and sense of urgency

he felt had diminished.

His mind drifted in a meditative

state; he was fully awake, but in an almost dreamlike trance where thoughts and images made deeper intuitive connections, where chaos and order balanced each other out. He grabbed the enigmatic artifact and sat back on the couch, relaxed and focused.

As he turned it over in his

hands, Eddie noticed the little rectangular opening on one side.

The ivory box itself was still foreign to him, a

mystery, but he’d had enough experience with computers to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/199 recognize that opening for what it looked like.

He set it

back on the coffee table and went to get his laptop computer. Five minutes ago he would have been skeptical.

Surely

the strange object was far too old to have anything to do with computers or technology.

Now, in his state of relaxed

awareness, intuition overrode logic––something about it just felt right. For the first time since early that morning, a few clouds slid in front of the sun.

When Eddie returned with

his PowerBook, the study was cast in shadows; old pictures and paintings blended into the dusky woodwork. He fired up his computer. The small hole on the side of the ivory box was bare. There were no leads or connectors in it that Eddie could see, but he still wasn’t surprised when the Ethernet cable from his modem slid in and latched with a muted click.

A

perfect fit. He set the box back on the coffee table and turned to his computer screen. Nothing happened. His sense of confidence wavered for a moment.

A tiny

part of him felt foolish as he double-clicked his web browser.

After a second or two of attempting to spin up,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/200 the program informed him that it was unable to establish a network socket connection. What did you expect?

Free Internet access?

This is

crazy; you should get going to Suzanne’s. Eddie picked up the ivory box again.

Despite feeling

foolish, he still had a calm sense of focus.

He unplugged

the Ethernet cable and looked at the hole it had so neatly fit into. The opening, which a minute ago had been a rectangular divot in the side of the object, bare, smooth and featureless, now sported a neat row of tiny metallic leads, much like a phone jack––tiny leads that hadn’t been there a minute ago. Eddie’s heart quickened apace; the sense that he was on the right track returned stronger than ever.

He plugged

the cable back into the little box and set it down before him. At that same moment a breeze outside ushered the clouds away from the sun, and bright sunlight filled the room, setting the artifact aglow.

Prismatic reflections

shimmered about the room. His laptop blinked, and the screen wavered out of focus for a second.

When it snapped back, its entire

surface area was filled with foreign symbols, some of which

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/201 looked like numbers or letters he recognized, and other lines and shapes that were as indecipherable as hieroglyphics.

The symbols didn’t type or fade across the

screen as much as shift in large blocks, like interconnecting puzzle pieces.

As they shifted, they

seemed to recede, growing smaller and smaller until they were just pixels in a texture. Eddie caught his breath when the texture became an image of his father’s face––up close, looking wide-eyed and surprised. Dad! His heart sank, and for a moment, he had an intense longing for his father’s presence, for his quiet humor and soft touch.

How could Dad...?

Then the texture shifted and became something else, something that looked like limbs and shadow, blurred with motion.

With ever increasing speed, strange images began

to flash across the screen.

As Eddie tried to keep up, he

caught glimpses of his father, of Suzanne and Milton, and even of Dr. Otuno, mixed in with abstract shapes and other things he didn’t understand.

There were snatches of

creatures that looked like the scarabs that had attacked him.

The computer’s hard drive churned away, grinding like

it was reformatting itself, processing huge chunks of data.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/202 Soon dozens of images were flashing by on the screen every second.

It became painful to look at, the strobing effect

too intense, and Eddie’s stomach twisted into a knot. Just when he thought he was about to be sick, there was a high-pitched chirp and the computer’s screen went dark.

An acrid smell of ozone and burnt insulation hung in

the air.

In contrast to the frenetic visual activity, the

room now seemed unusually calm and peaceful.

Even the

muted shouts of the utility worker out front had ceased. Yellow sunlight suffused the room like a warm blanket, but Eddie hardly noticed. His hands were trembling as he reached out to the keyboard.

Did that really just happen?

get fried?

Did my laptop just

He felt intimidation as well as quiet elation

welling up inside himself, as if he had stumbled upon some unknown and possibly dangerous new terrain. The computer’s surface was uncomfortably hot to the touch.

He tapped a few keys, and got no response.

Its

screen remained black even though the laptop itself was still on––the caps lock key was lit up and he could hear a whisper fan running inside, attempting to cool the circuit boards down. He was about to hit the restart button when it emitted another high-pitched chirp, and white letters appeared

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/203 against the black background: ‘YOUR TIME CORRIDOR HAS BEEN COMPROMISED.

NANOBORGS HAVE TRANSLATED.

YOU ARE IN

IMMINENT DANGER.’ Eddie went numb; up until now, those phrases had been relegated to nightmares and hallucinations, things he could rationalize away or at least discredit.

Now here they were

before him again, in the light of day, and he was forced to deal with their potential significance, or accept that he was losing his mind.

Somehow they were connected with the

ivory box sitting on his coffee table.

He glanced over.

It looked out of place plugged into the laptop, like a walrus tusk connected to a speakerphone. He remembered Suzanne saying the paramedics had to pry the box out of his hands, but he had no memory of picking it up in the first place.

More like that box found me, he

thought, when I was passed out, when I first heard those weird words.

That couldn’t be just a coincidence.

On the screen, a cursor blinked below the last sentence.

Without realizing what he was doing, Eddie’s

hands crept to the keyboard again and typed, ‘Who’s in danger?’

White letters on black background appeared cool

and inviting.

He didn’t really expect an answer.

As soon as he hit return the words repeated, this time with a small twist: ‘EDWARD MAXWELL COULTON, YOU ARE IN

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/204 IMMINENT DANGER.’

When Eddie saw his full name in print, a

cold dread started to envelope him. ‘YOUR TIME CORRIDOR HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. HAVE TRANSLATED.

NANOBORGS

YOU HAVE BEEN DESIGNATED FOR RETRIEVAL

AND TERMINATION.’ Time corridor?

Nanoborgs?

Once again he felt the strange words tugging at his subconscious, like they were on the tip of an iceberg submerged in his memory, like they were the key to recollections best left forgotten. You have been designated for retrieval and termination. The focused, meditative state he’d achieved earlier was diminishing as his unease grew.

He typed ‘Nanoborg?’

and hit return. ‘MECHANIZED, NANONICS BASED INFANTRY SOLDIERS, HEAVILY ARMED, HIVE MENTALITY, PROPAGATE THROUGH NANONIC MUTAGENISIS.

ELOHIM ENGINEERED IN 3145AD, USING CURRENT

HISTORICAL REFERENCE POINTS.’ As much as he found the response ridiculous, there was an eerie familiarity to it as well.

His father had

pioneered nanonics research, all of it theoretical, but Eddie understood the applications well enough. an idea what nanonic mutagenesis might be.

He even had

And beyond

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/205 that, there was something else, something that continued to wrench at his awareness, trying to uproot dark things lodged the recesses of his mind. You have been designated for retrieval and termination. The dread intensified; he broke out in a cold sweat. He was perched on the edge of something, on the cusp of grasping what was going on, but at the same time he was more confused than ever. through his mind.

A million questions poured

What is that damn box?

father have to do with this? Mechanized infantry?

What does my

Time Corridor?

3145AD?

How was any of this possible?

What he typed was, “Why me?” The response was immediate: YOU HAVE BEEN HIDDEN IN TIME. YOU ARE YOURSELF, AND YET YOU ARE FAR MORE THAN YOURSELF.

MEMORY CAP DISGUISES YOUR MIND-PRINT, PROTECTS

YOUR LOCATION FROM DISCOVERY, BUT EVEN SO YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED. TIME RUNS SHORT. The cursor blinked as if the tiny white line was trying to extinguish itself in the dark background of the computer screen.

Dust motes drifted in shafts of sunlight;

the walnut paneled walls around him were now obscured in

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/206 shadow.

Hidden in time, Eddie thought, sounds like the

premise of a made-for-cable movie, or one of those novels Mom was always reading. those options.

Right now he wished it were one of

None of this made sense.

He didn’t need

someone else to tell him how crazy it all sounded, and wasn’t sure how much more he could take before his mind simply shut down.

Above all, Eddie wished that Suzanne

were here to see this, to help him figure it all out. Droplets of sweat ran down his back. moist.

His palms were

It had been perhaps five minutes since he first sat

down to put on his shoes, but it felt like five hours. Time runs short.

What the hell am I supposed to do?

As if in response, more type appeared on the screen, the cursor bouncing one step ahead of each new letter: ANSWER THE PHONE. Eddie glanced across the room, through dusty beams of light, into the gloom at the far end.

“Fat chance,” he

said to no one in particular, “the line’s dead.” He almost jumped off the couch when a jagged ring cut through the air.

Until the noise invaded the room, he’d

been too distracted to notice how still his surroundings had grown, but now the absence of sound between the phone rings seemed deafening.

Bird chatter, traffic noise and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/207 even the breeze outside had all paused as if to see who was calling. Eddie’s paranoia sharpened to a fine edge; the last thing he wanted to do was find out who or what was on the other end of that line.

He could already imagine the dark

mechanical voice that would beckon to him with phrases that sounded like snippets from a Nazi war criminal’s confession, strange phrases that he was already becoming more familiar with than he liked. He looked at the computer screen one more time, then strode across the room and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” “Hello, Eddie?

Is that you?”

He paused; it was a woman’s voice, and for a moment Eddie’s hopes got the best of him.

When she spoke a second

time, though, he realized that it wasn’t Suzanne. “Eddie, it’s Sheila Lopez.”

When he didn’t respond

right away, she went on, “You know, from the hospital where Suzanne works?

How’re you doing?”

He was dismayed that it wasn’t Suzanne, but tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. course.

I’m fine,” he lied.

“I’m OK, thanks.

“Hey, Sheila, of

“And yourself?”

Still a little shaken up from last

night, as you could imagine, but I think I’ll be alright.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/208 I wanted to check on Suzanne, though, see how she was recovering.

She told me she’d be staying there.

Is she

doing okay?” Eddie didn’t understand what Sheila was saying; her words implied something he should already know about, and he didn’t like their foreboding nature. Sheila?

“What happened,

I’m actually a little concerned myself because she

never showed up here after work.

I assumed her shift ran

long.” He heard a slight gasp before Sheila replied, “You mean you haven’t seen her?

You don’t know about Milton?”

The sweat froze on Eddie’s back.

He feared the worst.

“Sheila I... what are you talking about?

What in God’s

name happened?” There was a sinking feeling in his stomach, and even before she started to answer he had a good idea what she was going to say. As Sheila described the attack on Suzanne and her part in driving Milton off, Eddie felt a seething rage start to boil up inside of him, displacing his fear and confusion. That anger was focused only in part on Milton Creed––he also reserved a large portion for himself, for failing to protect Suzanne from the harm that he’d foreseen.

The

vision of Milton standing above her bleeding form surfaced

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/209 in his memory.

Now she really was injured, missing, or

possibly worse.

In retrospect, his offer to put her up

seemed a pretty weak attempt to help her, a self–serving exercise in futility.

Frustrated tears escaped from his

eyes while he listened to Sheila recount the previous night’s events. When she finished, Eddie was silent. Sheila sucked in a breath between her teeth. we have to find her.

“Eddie,

Suzanne could be in danger,

especially if she’s doing what I think she’s doing.” “What do you think she’s doing?” “She’s going after Milton.”

Sheila hesitated, then

went on, “That’s why she didn’t want me to tell anyone about the gun.” “The gun that Milton had? anybody about it?”

You mean you didn’t tell

Eddie was incredulous.

“Of course we told them he had a gun, hell, we had to– –a lot of people heard the blast.

And as far as anyone’s

concerned though, he still has it, if you know what I mean. When he dropped it, though, he never picked it back up.

I

fucked up––I thought it would give her some peace of mind, you know, for self-defense or something. “Dammit, Eddie, he beat her with that gun; the blood from her mouth was still on the grip.

For all I know he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/210 was going to kill her with it. had a right to take it.”

At the time I thought she

Her voice sounded near panic.

“I

figured she’d be going straight to your place, anyway.” “Christ.” breath.

Eddie said to himself, and took a deep

It only took him a second to catch on.

pulled in too many directions at once.

He felt

He wished there was

more time to think this through, but something in the back of his mind told him time was running out. Behind him, more words appeared on the computer screen. “Relax, Sheila, you did the right thing. know for sure exactly what’s going on. calling her?” he asked.

We don’t

Have you tried

“My phone’s been out all night.”

“I will as soon as we hang up.

If she’s not at her

place, I’m calling the police.” Eddie asked her to hold off on calling the authorities for the moment, explaining about Milton’s brother-in-law on the force.

“Milton lives in Santa Monica; if his name

comes up in a bulletin, his brother-in-law is sure to see it, and I’m not sure I want to find out where the thin blue line is drawn on that one. what’s going on.”

Not until we know more about

That’s probably one of the reasons for

Suzanne’s behavior as well, he told himself.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/211 It didn’t take much to convince Sheila; her family had been the victim of a burglary ring run by a police officer. As a result, she didn’t have much faith in the system either. She was roughly twenty minutes away from Suzanne’s house.

If Eddie left in the next couple of minutes, he’d

arrive there at about the same time.

He gave her his cell

phone number and promised to meet her. As he hung up and turned around, he was again struck by the eerie silence of his surroundings.

Through the bay

window was a clear view of Edna Dinkins’s back yard. Clouds seemed to stand still in the sky.

No breeze stirred

the branches of the trees; there were no birds at the feeder, but he could see a few odd dark lumps scattered across her lawn. Shoes, keys, wallet, and I’m out of here, he thought, and then, with some disappointment, I’m sure if Suzanne’s not at her place, she probably ended up going to her parent’s after all.

Maybe the trauma of the attack made

her seek comfort in more familiar arms. When he bent to grab his sneakers he caught something flashing out of the corner of his eye, and that’s when he noticed the new message on the computer screen. THEY ARE HERE.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/212 The words scrolled down the screen, repeating over and over again, white letters casting a harsh glare against the dark backdrop.

Then, as if aware of being observed, the

scrolling stopped, and four words appeared at the bottom of the column. THEY HAVE FOUND YOU. He glanced out the window again; more small dark objects were littered across his own back yard.

One of

them lay on the ground near the window, and there was no mistaking the outstretched wings, the head cocked to one side. Dread trickled down his spine. A loud crash echoed through the house, causing Eddie to jump.

It sounded like a door being kicked in, or a

piece of heavy furniture being shoved aside.

The computer

emitted another high-pitched chirp, the screen blinked and went dark. They are here. Eddie put his shoes on as fast as he could, unplugged the ivory box, and slipped it in his shirt pocket.

In the

silence of the room every sound seemed to be amplified; his breathing sounded like the sucking of an ancient respirator, the rustle of his shirt fabric was canvas

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/213 flapping in the wind.

Any movement he made caused him to

feel vulnerable and exposed. He crept through the kitchen and into the front hall, grabbing a large carving knife along the way.

There was a

credenza in the hallway with a mirror above it, and when he caught sight of his startled reflection holding the knife, he flashed back upon the incident in his basement. need that again.

I don’t

Instead of going back to the kitchen to

put the knife away, though, he slipped it into the top drawer of the credenza. The entryway was undisturbed as far as he could tell; broken glass still littered the foyer, and the front door was closed and locked. Now check the side door––and then get your ass out of here. He walked into the living room, which was in a narrower part of the house.

Windows to his left looked out

onto the small back yard; windows opposite offered a sweeping view of the front lawn.

Eddie slowed down as he

noticed the large DWP truck still sitting at the curb. Parked directly behind it was... a police cruiser?

It

struck him as odd that both officer and utility workers were nowhere to be seen.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/214 Halfway across the living room floor, he noticed sunlight coming from the direction of the laundry room. rogue breeze disturbed the thick air.

A

Last night when he’d

made his rounds, the side door had been locked up tight. Now, from where he stood, he could see it was wide open, inviting the whole world to come right on in. Before Eddie could stop himself, he called out, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

His heart thumped in his chest,

and he felt foolish, but there was always a chance that old man Potter from two doors down had gotten confused and wandered into the wrong house again. Behind him, deep in the house, something fell over with a resounding crash of splintered wood and broken glass.

The floor beneath his feet shivered with the force

of the blow.

Dishes rattled in the kitchen cabinets.

If

the first thing he’d heard had been a piece of furniture being shoved, then this was that same piece of furniture exploding.

Eddie didn’t need intuition to tell him it

wasn’t old man Potter.

After one last look at the open

side door, at the daylight streaming in, promising flight and freedom, he turned back toward the kitchen.

He knew he

couldn’t run from whatever awaited him in there, and that as frightening as it seemed, there was also a chance that he might find some answers.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/215 Eddie inched down the hall and peered around the doorway.

Due to the hedge outside, the kitchen remained in

perpetual twilight; he saw nothing in the shadowy gloom, but could hear movement and faint wheezing, snuffling noises coming from close by, the labored breathing of a tubercular chain smoker. “Potter, is that you?” he called into the darkened room, knowing full well it wasn’t. The noises stopped. as a crypt.

The house was as calm and silent

The usually incessant chatter of birds from

Edna Dinkins’s feeders was still missing, as if they had all taken a leave of absence––which wasn’t far from the truth. They have found you.

They are here.

He stepped into the kitchen and crouched behind the counter.

Something was in here, he was sure; he could feel

it––the overwhelming sense of a presence that didn’t belong, something that sucked the light and heat from the room.

Eddie felt as if he’d entered a walk-in

refrigerator; he half expected to see his breath when he exhaled.

The shadows seemed murkier than usual, like they

were injected with squid ink.

Once again he considered

sprinting to the side door and getting the hell out of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/216 Dodge as fast as possible.

It was only a frustrated desire

to know more that kept him going in the face of fear. Something shifted in the dark recesses, and there was the crunching sound of broken glass underfoot.

For a

moment he heard snatches of whispers and suppressed laughs, ghostly reverberations from the direction of the study at the far end of the kitchen. They have found you.

They are here.

On hands and knees, he crawled to the end of the counter, then slowly raised himself so he could see over it.

In the dimness he had trouble discerning individual

appliances or where the cabinets ended and the dining nook began.

A black cloud seemed to fill the room.

At the

opposite end he could make out the doorway, and beyond that, the study that had been filled with a warm glow just minutes ago––the study which now looked as pale and flat as a black-and-white photograph.

Standing in the doorway,

blocking what little light remained, was a tall, orange jump-suited figure. No, not standing––hovering––about a foot off the floor, head tilted back, arms outstretched as if crucified, or performing some sacrificial version of the iron cross. On the floor behind this apparition there were shards of teakwood, and Eddie realized what the large crash had been.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/217 Someone or something had smashed through the bay window and obliterated the coffee table in the process.

Off to one

side was a twisted ruin of metal and plastic––what remained of his PowerBook. Eddie remained frozen where he stood, unable to believe what he was seeing.

As the lanky utility worker

hung in the air, his head canted forward to reveal huge, bulging eyes and a mouth that was ripped open into a grin so wide it looked like his jaw had been dislocated.

Blood

poured down the skinny man’s sagging chin and soaked into the upper part of his jumpsuit.

His face was bruised and

blotchy, misshapen; a raw, mangled pile of flesh marked where one of his ears used to be. In the pale light from the study the worker appeared to be swaying back and forth. Eddie knew that despite the movement, he was looking at a corpse.

The man’s protruding eyeballs were as vacant

and visionless as those of a dead fish. Once again he heard furtive whisperings and strange echoes, voices swirling in his head; bits and pieces of phantom dialog distracted his attention.

The floating

figure in the doorway crumpled to the floor amidst broken wood and glass. There was only a fraction of a second to ponder where the other utility worker was before an orange blur in his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/218 periphery caused him to flinch, and out of nowhere a fat, jumpsuited body slammed into Eddie with the force of an iron pile driver.

If he hadn’t turned to the side at the

last moment, the corner of the marble countertop would have been driven deep into the base of his spine, paralyzing him or worse.

As it was, one hip was smashed into the side of

a cabinet hard enough to make his left leg go numb, and then he was knocked backward over the counter and sent sprawling into the middle of the kitchen. Eddie was dazed; the darkness seemed to expand and contract around him.

He pushed himself back against the

far row of cabinets, gasping for breath, trying to locate his adversary in the gloom. were on fire.

He felt as if his lower back

White-hot tendrils of pain crawled up his

neck, and his left leg was twitching.

Grabbing a drawer

handle and bracing on his good leg, scanning the shadows the whole time, he tried to pull himself upright. Somewhere on the counter behind him was the corkscrew and wine bottle he’d left out the night before... Before he managed to grab anything, though, before he could even focus, something smashed into the side of his head.

Sparks few in front of his eyes.

His footing

slipped sideways and all he succeeded in doing was sweeping a few items off the counter as he fell down.

His temple

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/219 felt like hot molten lead, blood poured out of a newly formed gash there. They have found you. The orange jumpsuit materialized in front of him and a thick leg shot out, the steel-toed work boot pulverizing a cabinet as Eddie rolled away from the blow at the last second.

Considering the damage delivered to the solid oak

door, Eddie had no doubt about what a kick like that would do to his chest. that?

How the hell can I defend myself against

He didn’t have the energy to put up a fight for much

longer. His arm knocked into something cold and metal; it was the waffle iron, dangling over the counter, still plugged in.

He grabbed it and pulled down hard, yanking the cord

out of the wall, hearing other objects scattering on the counter above him.

In the same motion, despite the pain in

his back, he swung the heavy appliance at the stout, jumpsuit-clad leg that was kicking out at him again.

There

was a dull, satisfying crack as the old cast-iron unit smashed into the utility worker’s knee, crushing cartilage and soft tissue.

The kick was knocked wide, but it still

glanced off Eddie’s shoulder, which was bad enough. fresh bloom of pain shot down his side.

A

He lost his grip

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/220 on the waffle iron.

Gasping for air, Eddie collapsed onto

his side. Knocked off balance, the fat utility worker fell over at the same time as well, hitting the ground with a dull, wet smack, and bouncing once, causing a tremor throughout the house. fall.

He didn’t even put his arms out to break his

A puddle of dark oily fluid seeped out onto the

floor around him.

The orange jumpsuit grew brighter, as if

a veil were being lifted off of it.

From just a few feet

away, Eddie got a good look at the big man’s misshapen face and lacerated cheeks, at his wide-staring, blood filled eyes.

A good chunk of the utility worker’s nose had been

crushed in, revealing mangled cartilage and open sinus cavity beneath.

There was a purplish, rectangular

depression in the middle of his forehead.

Tiny viscous

shapes roiled like dark fluid on the surface of his skin, a hive of tiny predators dining on the bloody mess. Much to his horror, Eddie realized this man was dead too.

What the hell?

He turned his head to the side; his

stomach convulsed with dry heaves.

By the looks of it, the

big utility worker had suffered some sort of head trauma, and yet still had managed to inflict enough injury upon Eddie to leave him incapacitated, rolling in pain, sucking for breath.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/221 A nagging sense of foreboding told him this ordeal wasn’t over yet. His left arm and leg were useless; jagged pain spiked up his back. melon.

The side of his head felt like a crushed

With his one good arm and leg, he attempted to

squirm away, to put some distance between himself and the purple-faced corpse, but the effort it took was tremendous. Every time he pushed off, he came down on his bad hip, causing bolts of pain to shoot up his back and down his leg.

His skull throbbed as if his brains were trying to

burst out of it. As he writhed on the floor, inching toward the light of the study, that snuffling, wheezing sound he’d heard earlier––the sound of emphysema and bubbling mucous–– resumed behind him.

It wasn’t coming from the fat man’s

corpse, but somewhere deeper in the room.

Like a wounded

sparrow twitching across the ground, Eddie struggled toward the doorway.

His head felt like a sack of bricks.

floor started to spin, throwing him off balance.

The The

feverish breathing was behind him, getting closer. When he was still many feet away from the threshold, the wheezing became something that sounded more like the laughter of a devout, three-pack-a-day smoker.

After a few

wet chuckles, a gravelly voice said, “Still running away

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/222 like a fucking pussy, huh? alive, Coulton.

You’re lucky they want you

I’ve been waiting a long goddamned time to

teach you a fucking lesson.” The voice was familiar to Eddie, despite being disguised by phlegm and wheeze.

Its derisive tone stirred

things lodged in his memory and fanned the flames of his panic.

More frantically than ever he pushed himself toward

the study, but pain threatened to overwhelm him. lunge he was only moving forward a few inches.

With each The more he

gasped for air, the more a hitch in his side made it difficult to breathe; it felt like he was being suffocated. Every time he rested his throbbing head on the floor it left a bloody imprint behind. “Did you enjoy my friends?”

The asthmatic gurgle was

closer now, but still in the shadows.

“I hope you’ll

pardon their manners, but you see, I’ve just met them myself, so I’m as shocked as you are at their bad behavior.” More wet laughs, and now a tall silhouette emerged from the shadows––actually it was more like the shadows were receding from the entire room, with a figure standing at their former nexus, wearing a stained and battered police uniform.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/223 The light in the kitchen returned to normal. poured in from the study.

Sunlight

Despite his throbbing head and

the way the room spun, the intruder came into focus. placed his voice as well.

Eddie

A silver nametag glistened in

the sunlight, confirming his fears. Sheriff Charles Ogborn. Chuck Ogborn. Ogborn. All he could do was stare in confusion and disbelief as the room contracted around him.

His childhood nemesis

was standing in front of him––disfigured, but Eddie recognized him all the same.

The snobbish, upturned nose

and thin, pointy chin were still discernable amidst the ruin of his face.

Except for its ragged edge and slightly

deeper tone, the bully’s voice sounded the same as it did all those years ago behind the 7-11.

The Ogborn-thing was

covered in blood, his face encrusted with bone and brain matter and god-knows-what-else, but his eyes glinted with dull red light.

Hard, chitinous plates had formed over his

scalp, meeting in a ridge that ran down the center of his head to the bridge of his nose. Eddie’s vision doubled, then tripled; the spinning of the room forced his head down on the floor. refused to move.

His limbs

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/224 The demented cop continued to chuckle as he approached.

He paused for a moment and croaked a stream of

guttural syllables. Eddie couldn’t take any more.

The strange but

familiar words seemed to consume the last of his will. Overpowered by pain, unable to retreat further, he felt the world around him shutting down.

A loud rumble filled his

ears; the room receded until it was just a pinhole of light in the distance. Ogborn stood over him, shaking his mutated head from side to side. “Remember me, fuckhead?” The pinhole of light blinked out.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/225

16

“Current manufacturing methods of molding, welding and refinement involve corralling atoms around in massive unruly droves, using brute force to bend and mold substances to our will. This in many ways is akin to bashing bricks into a pile with shovel and sledge and calling it a house.

‘Molecular Manufacturing’, on the other

hand, will enable us to use the natural laws of physics to manipulate particles on an atomic level, snugly fitting every brick exactly where we want it to go, using less energy and fewer raw materials than today’s crude methods.

It would

bring us a complete and efficient command of the construction of matter.

The possibility of

molecule-sized ‘machines,’ pre-programmed (analogies to genetic material abound) to manufacture on a particle level would effectively eliminate industrial pollution, and produce

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/226 structurally ‘perfect’ materials, i.e. stronger glass and steel, better insulators and conductors, more potent pharmaceuticals––all assembled on a particle level.

Imagine obsolete

factories being broken down into raw materials by molecular devices, landfills being converted into reservoirs of minerals.

Indeed, current industry

wouldn’t just be replaced by such technology; it would be recycled by it.

Even though molecular

manufacturing is undoubtedly unattainable with current methods, I’m convinced that differing ends of the research spectrum are all converging upon this one point.

Somewhere down the road

mechanical engineers will be synonymous with molecular scientists.

The trends are inevitable–

–as things continue to get smaller and more efficient, a place will be reached where the macro particle will inevitably give way to the micro particle.

And once we are able to control

physical matter on such a small scale, it will only be a small step to organic matter, and our ability to rebuild tissue, enhance organ function––indeed, to reshape ourselves in a manner never conceived of.

Imagine tiny

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/227 machines, invisible to the naked eye, entering your bloodstream and targeting a specific area of concern, rectifying injury or identifying disease on a molecular level, manipulating and reprogramming cells, repairing damage. Correcting eyesight, perhaps even enhancing it in some manner.

Sharpening hearing, creating

healthy tissue, growing new organs––the list goes on and on.

The potential benefits to public

health (see previous entries regarding the growth potential of the health-care industry), as well as a myriad of possible military applications will continue to push research in this direction.” ––From the scientific journals of Xavier Coulton, circa 1955.

The sun was a feverish red ball sinking toward the earth.

It appeared fat and bloated, like the engorged

abdomen of a particularly well-fed mosquito, and quivered in the sky as if threatening to burst open.

The engorged

orb radiated an unnatural glow, saturating the air to such an extent that a pink haze seemed to emanate from the trees

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/228 and rocks and ground itself.

Straight ahead of him, off in

the distance, successive ridges of the Santa Monica Mountains popped up, one behind another, continuing as far as the eye could see.

They too were covered in a swirling

crimson haze, giving Milton the impression that he was looking down upon a bank of clouds. Another hiker lay on the ground before him.

He stood

over the crumpled figure, rubbing the spot on his own forearm where that damned dog ripped it open not an hour before.

The hard, shell-like surface that used to be his

skin had healed rapidly; only a small mark remained where the horrid beast latched on to him.

Milton had snapped

that Pitt Bull’s neck in a matter of seconds.

At least now

he knew to keep an eye out for pets, and to lure them away from their owners first, like he had done with this poor dumb fuck’s stupid Labrador. He gazed down at his latest victim: the hiker had pinpoint laser holes in his skull, hips, and knees. smell of burnt flesh hung in the air.

The

Newfound sensors

analyzed vital signs, body mass, and bone structure, determining that the hiker was still alive and suitable for the task at hand. one more click. bent over.

Gears in Milton’s subconscious ratcheted Time for another disciple, he thought, and

That will make eight so far, and at least a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/229 dozen bodies preserved for the flesharvest, not counting the cat.

For some reason that thought made him laugh.

He

had forgotten about Cheops, about how queasy and confused he’d been when he’d vomited into the specimen bag, transmuting the feline’s corpse into a nano-enhanced machine, much like himself.

Now that seemed like years

ago, and with the changes he’d undergone it might as well have been another lifetime.

He wasn’t completely human

anymore, but he didn’t really care; in fact, he was kind of elated––he considered himself to be more than human.

He

had been bestowed with special powers and appointed to a special purpose, one that promised immortality, one that gave him carte blanche to bend others to his destructive purposes. He also had a more refined method for administering the transmuting agent now. Finger-like tendrils protruded from ridges along Milton’s shoulders, chest and arms, like the tassels on an aged hippie’s leather jacket; even longer tubes grew out of his stomach where hard plates of carapace came together. Milton selected one of the longer tubes and held it up.

In

the dull red sunlight, the thin, bristly hose appeared to be slick with blood.

Three menacing-looking prongs

extended from the end of it and started to spin, picking up

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/230 speed until their rotation was a blur.

He leaned closer to

the hiker and began to utter a litany of guttural phrases linked by alien vowels; strange words that he didn’t understand, but knew somehow programmed the black ichor that performed nano-genetic transmutation. flickered with intense red light.

Milton’s eyes

In one smooth motion, he

shoved the whirling blade into the soft flesh just below the hiker’s sternum, working it in and upward, underneath the breastbone. All around him birds fell out of the trees, dead before they hit the ground.

A raven in mid-flight

plummeted out of the air and landed just a couple feet away with a soft thump.

Sunlight filtering through the leaves

took on a deeper red hue. The hiker’s eyes flew open and a spray of blood-tinged saliva burst from his lips, but otherwise he didn’t move. More blood flowed from where the tube punctured his torso. Milton could feel fluid being pumped through the tube and into the prone man’s chest in a somewhat involuntary, rather sexual manner.

A dark mass began to spread out

underneath his new recruit’s skin, radiating outward from the fresh wound. It would be a little while before the preliminary transformations were complete, but before nightfall there

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/231 would be this one and a half-dozen other killing drones descending into the valley, all under his command, all collecting flesh for the harvest.

Technically, he knew

that was violating orders, but his mission was already complete––he’d received a communication from the asshole cop that Coulton, their main objective, was already captured and waiting back at the condo.

That seemed a

little too easy, and besides, Milton didn’t want the cop to take all the credit. to be over yet.

Most of all, he didn’t want the fun

It would be a while still before the

portal was opened and his new masters came to collect their due; in the time left he would accomplish more for them than they ever dreamed possible. He would make a name for himself.

Even if he had to bend the rules a little, in the

end, they would see that the steps he’d taken were necessary. From his vantage point on Cahuenga peak looking west, a mountain range ran out in a straight line in front of him, dividing the San Fernando Valley to the north from the LA basin to the south.

If he shifted his focus slightly,

activating newly acquired sensors, he could peer through layers of smog and pinpoint elements of the city’s infrastructure: roads, freeways, gas pipelines, water mains, sewer lines, fiber optic cables, telephone relays

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/232 and switching offices, and even the power grid that overlapped and connected everything.

There were areas of

congestion where the electrical supply bottlenecked, struggling to meet demand, and areas where surplus flowed freely.

The vulnerable spots stuck out like sore thumbs.

Once again he was struck by how easy it all seemed, and a feeling of elation swept through him. Fuck Suzanne; fuck Coulton; fuck everybody.

I’ve been

chosen by destiny. He recalled how he began his killing spree earlier this afternoon on the east side of Griffith Park, making his way up the hills toward the west, picking off lone hikers one by one. thought.

Like lambs to the slaughter, he

All of the victims had been cloaked in

preparation for the flesharvest. When he’d gotten the message that the cop had Coulton, a simple thought had occurred to him.

With more

help, he could collect more genetic material for his masters––and they needed more, much more than they asked for.

His limited glimpse into the future made that much

obvious.

Why didn’t they just take it?

wouldn’t need to ask.

Well, now they

With the assistance he’d enlisted––

the additional nanoborgs he’d created, that is––hundreds,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/233 perhaps thousands of units of genetic material would be rendered by the time the portal was opened. With satisfaction, he leaned back and picked another of the tubes extending from his torso.

This one was

thinner, more delicate looking than the first.

On the end

of it was an intricate apparatus that sprouted a two inch laser scalpel when Milton incanted the right words. Time for another reward: a mental high more intense, more gratifying than any drug he’d ever taken.

This

particular treat he’d discovered quite by accident on his third or fourth victim of the day––a tall, gorgeous brunette that reminded him of Suzanne.

Instead of killing

her outright, he’d taken his time, intending to rape and torment her.

It didn’t even matter that his sexual organs

had atrophied; now there were other strange implements available to him, twisted, misshapen appendages with barbs and hooked tips.

Milton was happy to improvise.

The

brunette’s screams of agony and humiliation weren’t enough to satisfy him, though.

Nothing brought the release he

craved. Exploding with rage, he began to mutilate her body. Gore splashed against rocks and trees, hung from the leaves above and squirmed in the dust nearby; the smell of blood and excrement filled the air.

Her skull cracked open, and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/234 one of the tubes of flesh extending from Milton’s chest punched into her brain, absorbing neural tissue and neurochemical structures.

When that tube had penetrated to

a certain depth, a paroxysm of shuddering bliss coursed throughout Milton’s body.

The sudden blast of sensation

was so concentrated, the feeling of orgiastic release so complete, that for a moment he was lost, vibrating in hot liquid ecstasy at the center of his own universe.

Compared

to any orgasm, this was an atomic explosion, a supernova that threatened to fry his mind while it consumed his body. He pulled back, jerking away from the bloody pile of remains, and looked down at himself, convinced he’d see a bulging erection and telltale stain forming on the front of his pants. bulge.

There were no pants, however, no stain, no

There was nothing but smooth, hard carapace.

He’d

shed the last of his clothes hours before, and what he’d just felt had nothing to do with sexual intercourse. rejuvenating, energizing feeling washed over him.

A

That’s

when he began to understand the numerous tendrils hanging off of his torso, and what they were for.

Inspecting them

one by one, he discovered optic sensors, infrared imagers, particle sniffers, lasers, hooks, probes, tools, propulsion jets, tubes that supplied oxygen, water, acids and other compounds as well.

In addition to injecting selected

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/235 victims with mutagen, transforming them into his slaves, the tendrils could also be used to extricate the opiate he’d just experienced. Immediately he wanted more.

There were various other

ways Milton could replenish his energy stores to feed his nanonics––sunlight, electrical current, and even regular food, to name a few––but this newfound method was certainly the most satisfying.

He eyed what was left of the

brunette’s skull, scanning it with various filters, using different optic modes until he pinpointed the source of the sensation: a cluster of small glands located at the base of the brain.

Then, by refining the end of the probe used and

experimenting with the angle of insertion, Milton taught himself how to extract the mental ambrosia without shortcircuiting the rest of his senses. Now he prepared to do the same with the current victim’s dog.

The mutagenic substance used to transform

new recruits required an extraordinary amount of energy to manufacture, and this was the fastest way to help replenish that supply.

It seemed rather convenient that it got him

off as well, but somehow Milton didn’t think that was an intended consequence of the exchange.

The orgasmic effect

was in all likelihood due to the newness of his own transformation; currently he was still more flesh than

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/236 cyborg.

With every new infusion of brain chemicals,

though, that ratio was changing.

He was, in a sense,

draining the animal’s pituitary gland of growth hormone and various other endocrines, using them to feed his own growing nanonic systems.

As a byproduct he also absorbed

the remnants of recently released endorphins and other peptides that had pleasurable side effects. When he was done with the dog, he turned back to the hiker, who was twitching on the ground.

There was a dark

mass under the man’s skin, expanding around the in hole his chest.

A few murky fingers had already worked their way up

around his neck. Milton focused electromagnetic sensors on the prone figure’s brain.

In the hypothalamus, there was an older,

more obscure structure that produced mild electrical current, and he tapped into that, mapping his victim’s neuro-electrical receptors, determining the frequency responses.

Every individual’s cerebral cortex responded to

uniquely different voltages and frequencies, which enabled Milton to establish discreet communications and remote control links with each one of his foot soldiers. was no exception.

This one

Before moving on, he tested the mental

link, and was satisfied when he was able to make the unconscious hiker’s arms and legs move with mere mental

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/237 suggestions.

He then cloaked his victim––a complicated

procedure involving phase cancellation and light polarity, rendering the subject practically invisible––to protect him from being discovered during the final stages of metamorphosis. A scream ripped through the calm afternoon air. “Mack, oh my God, Mack what is it?”

Another scream.

Milton looked up to see a short, buxom blonde about thirty feet away, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, with her arms extended in his direction, as if trying to ward him off.

A

heavyset man with dark hair and mirrored sunglasses was attempting to pull her back into the bushes––back toward the hiking trail––and having very little success.

In

hushed tones, he was saying, “C’mon Jackie, this way. fuck’s sake shut up and come on.”

For

The blonde was rooted to

the spot, horrorstruck, screaming at the top of her lungs. Perhaps they’d heard the sounds of struggle in the underbrush and came to investigate; perhaps they’d wandered off the trail in search of a secluded place for some intimacy in nature’s great outdoors, and had stumbled upon Milton and his victim quite by accident.

The woman’s look

of surprise and the man’s overt desire to flee suggested the latter.

It could have been the mangled dog remains, or

the way he’d made the hiker at his feet disappear that

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/238 caused her scream, but Milton didn’t think so.

He had a

feeling it was his own mutated form––covered in ridged, blood-spattered armor, with knotted cords of flesh hanging from his sides––that set this woman off. matter, though.

It didn’t really

In the eyes of his masters they were all

just vessels of genetic material anyway. As he stood up and faced the couple, Jackie’s face went pale and her scream choked off, becoming reduced to a few mewling whimpers in the back of her throat.

Her feet

seemed cemented to the dry, dusty ground; she was still incapable of moving.

After one last tug, Mack let go of

his girlfriend and started to fade back into the bushes, having decided that he’d done all he could do to help her, and saving his own hide was more important. Milton spread out his long arms, as if he were about to take flight.

From his sides another set of appendages

slowly uncoiled.

These were almost as thick and muscular

as regular arms––a malformed pair of vestigial limbs.

They

ended in shiny plugs that looked like diamonds when held up to light.

He uttered a few choice words to himself, and

the mutant limbs wavered about, diamond studs tracking their prey for a few moments before emitting bright bluegreen flashes.

The blonde and her cowardly boyfriend––who

hadn’t made it very far into the undergrowth––dropped to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/239 the ground at the same time, tendons in their knees having been detached from bone with surgical precision.

Crisp,

smoking holes had been burned into their windpipes as well; both emitted whistling, wheezing noises and gasped for breath, clutching at their throats. Rolling through the dense underbrush like a tank, Milton made his way over to Mack and hauled him back to where Jackie had fallen.

The heavyset man’s shirt rode up

as he was dragged over sharp rocks and gnarled roots, shredding the skin on his hairy back and sides.

One of his

arms got caught up on a log, and when Milton forced him loose, he heard the shoulder dislocate with a loud pop. The heavyset man attempted to howl, but it only amounted to a raspy whistle emerging from his shattered windpipe.

His

arm was twisted behind his head in a torturous manner.

A

faint acrid tinge of burnt flesh hung in the air. The bloated sun was behind them now, dipping closer to the horizon.

Light glinted off of Mack’s Ray Bans, and

Milton caught a reflection of himself––a glimpse that caught him off guard, made him pause for a better look. the mirrored lenses, his face appeared to be moving, his

In

features flowing.

His eyes were a shifting mass of

segmented red lights, a mad honeycomb of optical sensors, blinking and rearranging themselves in a liquid manner.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/240 Thick hairy bristle sprouted from chitinous plates of armor across his brow.

Spiny ridges ran up his scalp and flanged

out in a crown atop his head, serrated edges undulating like electric carving knives; fleshy tendrils similar to the ones along the sides of his body writhed across his cheekbones like earthworms.

Overall it appeared as if his

face were fluid, the surface always on the verge of melting away, while being constantly replenished from underneath. Part of Milton filled up with a sense of awe at what he saw, an empowering feeling of physical strength and invulnerability, but another part of him, a part that still clung to remnants of humanity, felt a momentary revulsion at his new visage.

The insectile quality of his shifting

features stirred up deep primal fears, and he slapped the sunglasses off of Mack’s face, sending them fifteen feet into the dusty underbrush, ripping a jagged gash across the man’s cheek and nose in the process.

Blood welled up, but

Mack’s features remained slack and he didn’t even flinch: he’d lost consciousness somewhere in the past minute. Milton grunted and turned toward the blonde. The expression of fear on her face was exquisite. stared at Milton with wide, shifty eyes.

She

Her lips

trembled, and formed the words, “Please don’t kill me,” but only a thin, raspy hiss escaped her punctured esophagus.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/241 Milton watched tears mixed with eyeliner run down her cheeks, leaving dark lines in their wake.

She shook her

head from side to side. “Don’t worry, sweetie, I won’t kill you,” he said, voice disturbingly human coming from his mutated, melting form.

“It’ll most likely be massive blood loss, or some

sort of catastrophic organ failure that does that.” He grinned, revealing rows of teeth that looked like metal chisels.

Something flipped over in his mind; another

lever was pulled or a switch was thrown, and the thought of who he once was receded yet further.

Despite recently

feeding off the Labrador’s brain matter, which helped fuel his nanonics, his stomach still felt ravenous––hungry enough to eat a horse, as the expression goes.

Right now

he only had two humans, but they were both exceptionally plump and healthy.

I guess they’ll have to do, he thought,

and his grin opened yet wider.

Crimson sunlight flashed

off razor sharp incisors and pointed canines.

Thinking

about it, he realized it had been over thirty-six hours since he’d eaten anything. She tried to push herself away, but Milton was on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

His first bite tore

into her chest, slicing through cotton into cartilage and bone.

A thin, reedy, whistling sound escaped from the hole

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/242 in her throat as she attempted to scream.

The air was

filled with wet lip smacks and grunts, crunching noises, and a hollow, raspy sound, like air being sucked through a snorkel.

He devoured entrails and muscle alike, until the

sounds of her labored breathing faded, and yet still he continued to feed.

Eventually turned his appetite upon the

heavyset man. When he was done he climbed to the highest point he could find and stared off into the west.

Appetite sated,

belly full, he actually felt somewhat drowsy, and realized for the first time that no matter how much he fed the mechanics of his new body, his human flesh and bones would still eventually need good old fashioned sleep.

Not now

though. He kicked a dead sparrow off the ledge by his feet and watched as it bounced off a few rocks, wings scissoring, before disappearing into the scrub far below.

The sun had

started to set and was now bigger than ever––a massive red orb spanning half of the horizon.

It seemed to light the

edge of the world on fire; intervening mountain ridges were covered in a thick maroon haze that could have been the resulting smoke. Once again Milton activated IR optics, gravitonic, and electromagnetic sensors, and looked northward, penetrating

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/243 the haze, analyzing the infrastructure that spread out for miles below him in the San Fernando Valley.

The

vulnerabilities of the power grid were what interested him the most––bottlenecks in the flow, exposed junctions, and relay stations that were working at or over capacity levels.

His goal was to find some good targets for the

nanoborg death squad that would soon be under his command. He surveyed the valley, marking key structural points and other possible weaknesses.

He calculated navigational

coordinates and plotted various possible routes of access and egress.

Then he decided to head back to the condo and

take a little rest––after having a little fun with that fucker Coulton first, that is. Just before switching off his sensors he noticed something else in the distance, some sort of non-standard facility.

At first it looked like any other communications

hub until he realized how much power the facility was drawing off of the grid.

Smack-dab in the middle of a

residential area, its power consumption should have lit the place up like a Christmas tree. the signature was muted.

For some reason, though,

Further analysis revealed an

extensive subterranean complex, and within that complex... A storage facility?

Very interesting.

Very

interesting indeed, he thought, making note of the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/244 coordinates.

He started to analyze the contents of the

stockpiles, and couldn’t believe the results he was getting.

Inside his nanonics-hardened chest his heart

continued to thump steadily, but his mind was racing.

Talk

about vulnerable––it's a veritable Achilles’ fucking heel! The sun was almost gone behind the horizon.

Only a

thin band of flame remained above the haze-covered mountains.

As he watched, that too disappeared.

surrounded in purple shadows.

He was

Below, bright lights

delineated where the undeveloped land stopped and the city streets began, stretching out before him in all directions. He opened his comlink and polled his squad of recruit larvae.

Six of seven had survived the initial

transformation and were progressing on schedule; one, though, had died––apparently an unforeseeable heart condition made him unable to withstand the rigors of mutagenic processing.

Milton terminated the cloaking

mechanism for the failed larva, easing the drain on his faculties a bit.

The aborted transformation rendered the

hiker’s dead body unsuitable even for flesharvest because its original genome sequence was now scrambled, the RNA compromised.

He didn’t care if anybody discovered it now.

His soldiers were almost ready; he uploaded their preliminary orders.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/245 Next he attempted to contact the asshole cop, but got no response for some reason.

After a few other

unsuccessful probes for the officer’s frequency patterns, Milton sent out a mind-print ping, also to no avail.

It

was as if that asshole cop had fallen off the face of the earth. It wasn’t really panic that he felt, as much as an aggravated anger––manufactured endocrines kept his emotional response from extremes. something go wrong?

What the fuck?

Did

He’d entrusted the officer with the

key aspect of his mission; everything had been set up perfectly.

If the cop had messed up, it could seriously

fuck up all of Milton’s plans.

Milton had already

reprimanded the dickhead once when he’d threatened to get out of control.

That had been a warning to himself as

well––in retrospect he should have taken the cop out then, but he had been too busy, distracted by his lust to kill and recruit. He needed to get back home now. Hailing the comlink once every minute, Milton jumped off the ledge and crashed down the steep hillside, leaping off boulders, splintering trees and shredding the underbrush on his way to the street.

The irony of having

to carjack someone to get across town was not lost on him;

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/246 under atmospheric conditions, all his new implants and mechanics didn’t enable him to get back to Santa Monica any faster than he normally could on foot.

Deep in the

recesses of his mind, a remnant of his old self hoped he could find a Mercedes. The sun was gone.

Behind him, a full moon rose over

the hillside, looking oversized and close enough to poke with a stick.

It perched above the horizon, displaying a

shocked expression at all that it gazed down upon.

There

was a small divot in one side, a perfect semi-circle, as if something had taken a bite out of it.

By the time Milton

reached the bottom of the hill, that bite in the moon’s midsection had nearly doubled in size.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/247

17

“In my papers I have called it ‘Molecular Manufacturing’ as well as ‘Positional Atomics,’ and one or two colleagues (those not too busy looking down their noses) have referred to the concept as ‘Nanonics’––from the Greek word ‘nanos,’ which means dwarf.

A nanometer is 10(-9)

meters, or one billionth of a meter, a nanosecond one billionth of a second, and so on. Essentially we’re talking about the study of things that are awfully goddamn small.

The

design and manufacture of mechanical devices on this scale would be called ‘Nanotechnology,’ or better yet ‘Molecular Nanotechnology.’” ––From the scientific journals of Xavier Coulton, circa 1956.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/248 At first there was nothing but a loud rumbling noise. Rhythmic pounding threatened to split his head open.

After

a while he could discern flashes of light against his closed eyelids, providing a counterpoint, eliciting an aria of delicate agony to accompany the symphony of anguish that consumed him.

For what seemed like eternity that’s all

there was––just a galaxy of pain and flashing lights, pain and flashing lights, giving the impression of motion––and then the rumbling noise clarified like a camera lens coming into focus.

Eddie realized he was in the back of a car,

the squad car, most likely. Everything else fell into place. He remembered being attacked by the utility worker, and his brief encounter with Ogborn in the kitchen. Ogborn.

Sheriff Ogborn.

He also recalled the strange messages he’d received on his laptop computer prior to all of that, only now, through his nauseating pain, they didn’t seem quite so strange. You are in imminent danger.

Nanoborgs have translated.

You have been designated for retrieval and termination. What could Ogborn have to do with nanoborgs? didn’t seem possible.

It

None of this makes any sense.

Except now it didn’t really matter what he wanted to believe––he didn’t have much choice in the matter.

He most

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/249 certainly was in imminent danger.

His wrists and ankles

were bound tight, dried blood had glued the side of his face to the vinyl car seat, and there was something obviously wrong, something disturbingly inhuman about his captor. Eddie tried to open his eyes, and in between blinding flashes of sunlight managed to catch glimpses of the Ogborn-thing’s head.

The back of it flickered in and out

of shadows as the cruiser sped along.

Dark ridges appeared

to move sinuously over the top of his scalp, rising and falling like snakes. The motion of the car, flickering sunlight, and bizarre countenance of his old arch-nemesis brought on a wave of dizziness.

When Eddie put his head down and closed

his eyes, a welcomed surge of blackness overtook him. the pain seemed to recede a little. was expanding.

Even

His mind felt like it

In the darkness fragments floated by, bits

and pieces of a life that seemed intimately familiar but were obviously someone else’s.

There were cold, sterile

hallways and gleaming white rooms; teams of scientists in bodysuits and facemasks bent over stainless steel tables with humanoid forms on them; humanoids floating in tanks of fluid; humanoids suspended in the air, hanging from cables;

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/250 rows of seated individuals connected by wires attached to thick crusty plugs on their heads. In one such vignette Eddie found himself in a spotless, dust free room the size of a warehouse, sitting in a row of about a half-dozen bald youths, all wearing gray hospital gowns and matching blank expressions on their faces.

There were wires attached to his head, pulling on

his scalp in an uncomfortable manner.

The individuals

around him seemed to be focusing on a large cylindrical object that floated before them in the air.

Eddie could

feel a finger extending from his own mind, combining with the others to help keep the thing––it looked like some kind of weapon, whatever it was––afloat, but only part of his concentration went in that direction. faculties took in the rest of the area.

The remainder of his To the left there

was a bank of whirring machines and blinking displays, encompassing a good hundred-foot stretch of the wall.

The

wall to the right seemed to be a solitary, unsegmented mirrored panel that spanned from floor to ceiling and ran the entire length of the room.

Down at the far end of the

cavernous space, maybe 300 feet in front of them, an armored vehicle that looked like a tank with wings maneuvered around, hovering, darting from one side of the room to the other as if trying to evade something.

Eddie’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/251 mind returned to the machines on the left wall.

As he felt

the combined focus of the individuals around him sharpen, readying to fire the weapon they held aloft, he also felt the knot forming in his mind, potent and well defined.

A

split-second before the floating cylinder discharged some sort of beam toward the far end of the room, he pushed the knot out, and the entire bank of electronic equipment to his left exploded in a shower of sparks and blue flames. The laser beam went wide, missing the tank and blowing a wide crater in the far wall. room.

Smoke started to fill the

Within seconds everything erupted in chaos.

Dimples

formed in the mirrored wall to the right, and it appeared to flow like quicksilver as dozens of armored figures pushed through.

To Eddie they looked like more evolved,

highly sophisticated versions of the Ogborn thing.

Some

ran across the room and started extinguishing the burning equipment, but most surrounded Eddie and the rest of the grey robes, grabbing the pale humans and pulling them apart from each other, ripping cables out of fleshy plugs amidst screams of protest.

He noticed one of the hulking soldiers

lying on the floor, convulsing, smoke pouring from his eyes and chest.

Eddie offered little resistance as he was

shackled, swung around, and marched toward the mirrored wall.

Spiny coils twisted around his wrists and neck,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/252 digging into the skin.

Something else wasn’t right, and as

he was pushed closer to the wall Eddie realized what it was.

That’s not me.

The reflection he was seeing in the

mirrored wall wasn’t his own.

His sandy hair and eyebrows

were gone, scars ran across his scalp, connecting a ring of bloody bumps where wires had recently been attached, and his wide staring eyes were brown, not blue.

He felt the

knot forming again, but before he could use it something sharp poked into the back of his head, worming its way deep into the tissue.

Suddenly all of his volition and thought

were gone, as if turned off by a switch.

All he could do

was watch his own unfamiliar reflection staring back at him as the dark, armored figures pushed him into and through the mirrored wall.

Even though he knew this couldn’t be

one of his own memories, something about it was familiar. The creeping feeling of recognition stood in sharp contrast to the alien setting he found himself in and the strange body he inhabited; it didn’t feel like a hallucination or a dream, but an actual remembered experience––or a memory from someone else’s life that somehow got cross-wired into his own. A car door slammed, and with a palpable thump one reality was replaced with another.

Pain came crashing back

in––bad, but not quite as bad as before.

For a moment he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/253 thought he was paralyzed, until remembering that his wrists and ankles were still tightly bound. were numb, adding to the feeling.

His hands and feet

With the image of

armored soldiers and grey robes was still fresh in his mind, Eddie wasn’t sure which reality he preferred. A moment later the door at Eddie’s feet was wrenched open and the Ogborn-thing towered over him, blue uniform tattered and hanging off in places.

Skin as shiny and dark

as hardened steel gleamed through rips in the fabric; weird segmented tentacles hung down, writhing, as if searching for something.

The sheriff’s eyes were a lidless honeycomb

of blinking lights and diodes in an upper face that seemed to be shifting and flowing, constantly reassembling itself. As alien as the Ogborn-thing was, a haunting feeling of familiarity still stuck with Eddie, held over from the scene in the warehouse.

He’d had two dreams, or visions,

in which he’d seen these creatures.

Involuntarily, a word

came to the front of his mind. Nanoborgs. A strong hand gripped one of his legs and yanked him out of the car.

Eddie’s face peeled off of the seat,

leaving most of the newly formed scab behind.

He could

feel warmth flowing down his cheek, soaking into the collar of his shirt.

Adrenaline pumped through his veins, which

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/254 helped to keep most of the pain at a distance; nevertheless he could feel enough to know that this was no hallucination. The nanoborgs have me. In retrospect, everything that had happened to him in the past few weeks––the sleepwalking, the insects, and the dreams––all seemed to be warning him about this.

It seemed

ridiculous, impossible, but he was out of plausible explanations, and there was no denying the graveness of his situation.

He still had no idea why he would be the center

of so much attention. The mutant sheriff tossed him onto the concrete. Eddie, unable to break the fall with his hands, ended up thumping his head on the hard surface, sending a shower of sparks flying across his vision; a fresh spike of agony threatened to split his skull open.

He felt his senses

retreating from the pain again, submerging into a pool of grey nothingness, but he fought against it.

Right now his

only hope was to remain conscious, to face this thing–– whatever it was––head on. He clenched his jaw and forced his eyes open, fighting the darkness that was growing at the edges of his vision. Instead of running from the pain, he grabbed onto it, using its edges to keep himself awake and in the here and now.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/255 After all, it was the one sensation that he could be sure he was actually experiencing, in real life, not in some dream or hallucination.

After what seemed like an eternity

the pain began to recede, and he regained some much-needed focus. He found himself inside a dimly lit garage.

A few

screwdrivers and a hammer hung from a pegboard along a nearby wall.

Across the room––on the other side of the

police cruiser––the wall was plastered with posters of scantily clad women in suggestive poses, holding various power tools, their facial expressions as flat as the paper they were printed on.

A door over there looked like it led

to an alley of some sort; through its window Eddie could see ivy growing across cinderblock.

Behind him, from a row

of small windows on the main garage door, slim shafts of fading sunlight sluiced through dust motes, illuminating wet looking stains on the concrete slab. One of the columns of light struck the hulking Ogborn creature, giving him a hazy pink aura as he stood motionless a few feet from where Eddie lay.

The sheriff’s

head was tilted back slightly, and his lips formed silent words, as if he were was having a conversation with somebody Eddie couldn’t see. and labored.

His breathing sounded raspy

Beneath his brow clusters of red lights

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/256 blinked and flashed.

A moment later Ogborn’s liquid face

turned back toward Eddie, boiling with frenetic activity. “You owe me, motherfucker, you owe me big time,” he said, holding up a hand that was missing a few of its fingers––one of the amputations looking raw and fresh. “Every fucking day of my life I’m reminded of the pain you caused me, of the hell I went through because of you, and now that I’ve got you, you’re gonna pay. is fucked, cockface. know what I am?

Your faggot-ass

Everything’s different now.

What I am capable of?”

Do you

A thick coil

unfurled from his side and shot a beam across the room, putting a sizeable hole through the midsection of a belt sander girl, and a smoking crater in the wall behind her. More lights flashed and Ogborn’s brow convulsed; flanged ridges waved madly. expression twisted his face.

What passed for a pained He clutched at the sides of

his head and yelled, “MOTHERFUCKING GODFUCK!”

Falling to

one knee, the sheriff-thing rubbed his mutinous scalp. “Alright, alright, okay,” he said to no one in particular. When his gaze turned toward Eddie, thick ooze was dripping from his eyes. alone!”

“You fucking piece of shit!

Leave me

Eddie stared back, speechless. He had the feeling

that the mutant sheriff’s comments weren’t directed at him.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/257 Ogborn’s features sharpened, becoming more alien and insectile, less human.

“This is all your fucking fault,

you know, but just cause I can’t kill you doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.”

Now he was talking to Eddie.

“There are a lot of things I can do that’ll make you wish you were dead, or at least leave shit stains in your pants. I think I deserve at least that much. Don’t you?”

He

grinned, revealing a mouth crammed full of sharp, black teeth.

“And after that, when the portal is opened, when

you go back to the Elohim, you’ll know what true pain really is.

You’ll realize that I was actually being kind

in comparison. punish traitors.

The masters reward their servants and Which do you think you are, fuckface?”

At the mention of Elohim something kicked in the back of Eddie’s mind, as if trying to get away. “I don’t know why you’re so fucking important, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let this opportunity slip by.” The sheriff-thing continued muttering something unintelligible.

Once more his features convulsed and the

pained expression returned, but this time the episode lasted only a few seconds.

Then his menacing grin

resurfaced; row upon row of twisted razor teeth glinted in the shaft of sickly pink sunlight.

Leaning toward Eddie,

he said, “Fortunately, a certain amount of injury is

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/258 permitted to allow for your capture. to draw the line.”

I think I know where

His breath smelled like a mixture of

roadkill and motor oil. The concrete floor was spotted with stains, but nearby there was a large black slick––thick and fresh––that Eddie realized wasn’t from a recent oil change. had been going on in here.

Something else

In the dim light it looked like

a puddle of congealed blood and engine grease was smeared across the floor.

At the edge of the puddle lay a thick

plastic bag, with what Eddie could’ve sworn were tiny paw prints trailing away. The Ogborn creature bent down and picked something up from the middle of the dark viscous puddle.

“We’re gonna

start off where you left me, and go from there––you know, sort of make it up as we go along.” Again he held up his injured hand––the one that was missing three fingers––then he held up his other hand, in which he was flexing a pair of rusty stem cutters, the kind you use to clip roses or prune bushes. with black goo.

They were coated

Eddie could hear the snick-snick of the

short steel blades as they scissored open and shut.

He had

a pretty good idea what the mutant sheriff intended to do with them.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/259 What happened next took him by surprise.

As he

watched, painful looking welts formed on Ogborn’s hand, and with a guttural moan, three new ropy appendages broke through the madman’s skin in the general vicinity of his amputated digits.

The resulting hand looked like the

outcome of an unfortunate blender accident, but its inherent strength and dexterity was evident as well. Eddie tried to struggle, to resist as he was shoved onto his side and that tentacled hand clamped onto his forearms, lifting him up from behind as if he weighed nothing.

Plastic cuffs dug into his wrists.

He thought

his shoulders were going to dislocate from the torque until he was slammed down face first onto the workbench, igniting sparks of pain inside his already throbbing head.

The edge

of the table jabbed into his gut, knocking the wind out of him, along with any fight he had left.

Tools hanging from

the pegboard overhead rattled in their metal racks. iron weight seemed to be sitting on his back.

An

The snick-

snick sound of the cutters paused, and Eddie felt cold steel being pressed against his wrists.

He grimaced,

bracing himself for what was about to happen. He heard a taut snap, and warmth flowed into his hands.

My hands are so numb I can’t feel the pain yet, he

thought with a queasy sensation in his stomach.

He found

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/260 himself being hurled toward the floor again. were free.

His hands

Even though he put them out to break his fall,

it took him a moment or two to realize that it was his wrist restraints that had been severed, and not one of his fingers. That thought had barely sunk in before Ogborn-thing was on top of him again, and he couldn’t move.

Mad

tingling sensations filled his hands as the blood ran back into them.

Thorny coils of flesh snaked around his neck

and tightened, threatening to puncture his windpipe, preventing him from offering any resistance.

A strong,

sinewy grip clamped down on his left wrist and pulled his hand up in front of his face.

The mutant cop leaned in

until Eddie could see swirling fluid in the pockmarks of his honeycombed eyes and smell the rancid, putrefying stench of his breath.

Teeth that would’ve looked more at

home inside a shark’s mouth glinted in the dull light. “Take one last look at your fingers, dickwad, while they’re still attached.

We’re gonna play a game called

this little piggy,” Ogborn said, and made a noise that sounded like a wet cough or a distorted chuckle. He felt cool steel blades digging into the base of his index finger, and tried to look away. were old and not very sharp.

The stem cutters

It took Ogborn a few attempts

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/261 to make it all the way through the bone.

Instead of pain,

at first all Eddie felt was pressure and numb tingling. When he looked back there was a cross section of raw exposed flesh where his finger used to be.

Torn edges of

skin were pinched together in places, and a shard of bone stuck out of the wound.

Tissue and bone were still white,

as if cauterized by the rusty blades.

After a moment tiny

crimson beads started to form and coalesce across the surface of the ragged stump, and then the blood began to flow in earnest.

That’s when the pain hit.

A white-hot

ember awoke amidst the tingling sensation, setting his hand on fire, sending bolts of searing pain shooting down his arm.

It felt as if his entire fist had been shoved in

molten lava. Up until this point Eddie had been too caught up in everything to react much––other than to brace himself for the next blow that was coming.

Now he couldn’t control

himself; the agony was overpowering.

When he saw Ogborn

pick up the severed finger and pop it into his mouth, slicing it to shreds with rows of razor sharp scimitars, crunching through tissue and bone like a pretzel stick, Eddie lost it completely.

Despite the tentacles pressing

into his neck, holding him down, he tilted his head back and started to yell.

His screams filled the dusty garage,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/262 reverberating off the walls, bouncing off exposed rafters and ricocheting off the stained concrete slab of a floor. He screamed, trying to build a layer of insulation between insanity and pain.

He screamed for himself and for all

he’d witnessed: for what had become of his former archnemesis, for the utility workers lying breathless on the floor back at his house, and for the dozens of dead birds he’d seen scattered across the lawn back there.

He

screamed until all the air was pressed out of his lungs and he thought he would pass out. Ogborn waited until he was finished before starting in on the next finger. “Are you done? on the task at hand.”

Because I need to focus

His grin stretched even wider, and

Eddie could see bloody remnants of his finger caught between those teeth. The bright pain dredged up energy reserves Eddie didn’t even know he had.

He found the strength to struggle

against the mutant cop’s iron grip. Shrill screams still seemed to hang in the air.

It

took Eddie a moment to realize that those screams weren’t his own, but were coming from somewhere on the other side of the room.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/263

18

The sun appeared to take up half the sky as it sank toward the horizon, fatter and redder than Suzanne had ever seen it before.

Something about it seemed wrong; it had a

malevolent presence that filled her stomach with dread, made her aching body shiver. She parked her Honda around the block and inched the rest of the way to Milton’s condo on foot, trying to keep to the shadows, preferring to slip into an alley behind the row of prefab units instead of heading toward his front door.

Her progress was slow; sharp jabs from the wound in

her side had subsided into more of a dull ache, but she still couldn’t inhale very deeply without causing a jagged stitch to seize her ribcage and leave her gasping for air. Her battered lower lip still throbbed and wept clear fluid. Purple discoloration and swelling made it look impossibly large; the sensitive skin was stretched out like an overstuffed sausage.

It stood out on her face, contrasting

with the rest of her otherwise perfect features, pulsating

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/264 bolts of raw pain with every heartbeat and every movement she made.

Every muscle in her body felt sore.

The pain gave her something to focus on, kept her moving forward. Making her way up the alley, sticking close to the garage doors, she felt a cold metallic lump resting against the small of her back, tucked into the waistband of her pants.

The gun had only been fired once, to the best of

her recollection, so she figured it had at least five or six rounds left in it.

That bastard’s not gonna hurt

anyone else, she thought, as she peered into one garage after another, trying to remember which one was Milton’s. Suzanne could recognize the front entrance to his place by the landscaping, but these cookie-cutter units all looked the same from behind––she was hoping to see the pretentious black SLK 230 Kompressor coupe, or something else familiar. Almost two-thirds of the way down the row, she caught sight of movement inside one of the garage units, and ducked away from the window, shrinking against the aluminum doorframe.

The only thing across the alley, opposite the

condos, were some old fenced-off warehouses, so she wasn’t afraid of anyone witnessing her suspicious movements from that direction.

Six small square windowpanes ran along the

unit’s garage door.

She eased back to the nearest one and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/265 peered through, trying not to cast a shadow across the dirt smeared glass.

It was difficult to see much without

pressing right up against it and revealing her presence to whomever might be inside, but from her vantage point she could see the back end of an American-made car.

She felt

disappointment and confusion at the same time; this seemed like where Milton’s garage should be.

Even thought it

wasn’t Milton’s Mercedes, something about the car rang familiar; something about its lines and shading set off silent alarms in the back of her mind.

Before she realized

what she was doing, her face was pressed right up against the oily windowpane, hands cupped to cut the glare. Most of the garage was still cloaked in shadows, and least half of it was occluded from her line of sight, but a few weak shafts of sunlight cut through the dusty air inside.

One of them hit the back of the car, illuminating

the word ‘SHERIFF’ that was emblazoned there in black letters across the trunk, confirming her suspicions.

Along

the right-hand wall, on the other side of the police car, she could make out the shadowy outlines of high-gloss women in cut-off shorts and bikini tops. Milton’s ‘tool girl’ posters had always bothered her, not necessarily because of their sexist nature, but because they just weren’t very good––consisting of unattractive

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/266 women in poor lighting, looking tired and appearing embarrassed at the not-too-subtle innuendo of posturing with power tools.

It wasn’t difficult to see their lonely

and frightened expressions hiding beneath the thick mascara and multiple layers of cheap makeup. It’s Milton’s garage, alright, but not Milton’s car, she thought, wondering what in the world a sheriff’s car was doing in there.

Maybe they’re staking this place out.

Or maybe they’ve already got him.

She knew it was wishful

thinking at its best, or flawed logic at its worst, though. If the first idea were true, there’d be no evidence of police presence here at all, and the latter thought seemed even less likely, somehow.

Hell, she hadn’t even made her

own report to the police yet.

All the same, she was still

hopeful until a third, more sinister consideration occurred to her. Maybe his brother-in-law Mitch is here. She shrunk back from the window, but not before noticing a large dark stain on the concrete floor, a stain that reminded her of the black tarry mess the Cheops-thing had left across her bedspread and sheets. went off in her mind.

More alarm bells

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/267 There was something else in there too, something moving in the shadows, something strange and ominous.

She

needed to get a better look. Crouching below the windows, Suzanne crept to the small sidewalk that ran down alongside the garage, between Milton’s condo and his neighbor’s.

At the end of the

sidewalk was another door, this one with a larger window and better view of the garage’s interior. She had just started down the walkway when there was blinding flash of light, and suddenly chunks of cinderblock were flying across the alley, bouncing off the neighbor’s wall.

A surge of grit pelted her upper body, stinging

exposed skin.

Dust and smoke filled the narrow alley.

From inside Milton’s garage she heard somebody yelling, “MOTHERFUCKING GODFUCK!” and as the air cleared she could see a fist-sized, smoking hole in the concrete wall, at about chest height, perhaps ten feet in front of her. the hell was that?

What’s going on in there?

What

From the

looks of it, if she’d been a few steps further along the path there’d probably be a fist-sized hole through her torso right now as well. Bracing for more explosions, fighting the urge to turn and run, she continued down the alley, step by step.

A

little voice inside her head was saying that this would be

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/268 a good time to call the police––that events were spinning beyond the scope of her understanding and control––but that voice was no match for the anger she still felt, fueled by the sharp pain in her lower lip and the dull ache in her side.

Or rather, the pain recalled all the humiliation

Milton had caused, and the humiliation fueled the anger. The anger kept her moving forward. Inside the garage there was a loud thud and a rattle, as if a stack of heavy boxes had fallen over.

She could

hear grunts and the sounds of a struggle going on.

Peering

through the smoldering crater in the wall was an exercise in futility––what little movement that could be detected was obscured by smoke and shadows.

She hurried down to the

door at the end of the path, the sounds of struggling filling her with a new sense of urgency. What the hell’s going on in there? Before reaching the door, a jarring, agonized scream tore through the air, almost knocking her off her feet. The voice was different from the one she’d heard just a minute ago.

This time it sounded familiar, and despite her

confusion, it only took a second for her to place it. Eddie! Any caution she felt was overridden by concern.

His

screams seemed to go on forever, echoing down the alleyway,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/269 piercing her heart and filling it with dread.

Despite

recognizing his voice, she still wasn’t prepared when she finally reached the end of the alley and got a full view of what was going on inside the garage.

At first it looked

like a large person in a dark leather jacket, the hippy kind with tassels hanging under the arms, was sitting on top of Eddie, struggling with his hands. Then she noticed the tassels were waving in the air, twisting around Eddie’s arms, ropy tendrils wrapping around his neck.

Veins stood out on Eddie’s forehead, and his

eyes were bulging. It took a moment to process what she was seeing, to sort through her confusion.

As her eyes adjusted to the

light, she saw things on top of the attacker’s head that seemed to be moving back and forth, undulating like saw blades.

His body shape was all wrong too––he was too tall

to be Mitch, and too thick to be Milton. What the hell... ? Then the aggressor turned sideways, and a bright fist of panic spiked her gut; fear filled her limbs with molten lead, rooting her to the spot. She was looking at a giant insect of some sort, a kind of cross between a cockroach and a praying mantis.

Maybe

it was the interplay of light and shadows in the garage.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/270 What she’d mistaken for leather tassels were actually limblike appendages––probing tentacles and twitching feelers that had Eddie in a stranglehold; rips in the tattered cop uniform revealed shiny hard skin underneath, as cold and unyielding as obsidian.

There were sharp ridges running

along his scalp, one on either side of the head, and thin cords of flesh worming across his cheekbones.

Worst of

all, though, were the honeycomb clusters of red lights blinking and flashing where his eyes should have been. Something about those insectile eyes reminded her of the encounter with Milton in the parking garage, adding to her dread.

Whatever the vile creature was, it was obvious that

Eddie didn’t stand a chance against it. A tape loop in her head––made by the same voice that had encouraged her to run away moments earlier––was now trying to convince her that none of this was possible; that what she was seeing couldn’t be happening, or else she was losing her mind.

She felt like she was edging close to

hysteria. No!

If she was going to help him, she needed her wits

about her. The attacker looked so strangely alien and yet humanoid at the same time that it didn’t really throw her when he leaned in close to Eddie’s face and spoke in plain

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/271 English.

Then the mutated sheriff-thing smiled, revealing

a mouth full of dark, sharp-looking fangs, and the focus of his attention became clear to Suzanne.

For the first time

she noticed Eddie’s arm, covered in blood from wrist to elbow, and the raw, amputated stump of his index finger. There was a jagged tip of bone sticking out of it, a pointed, white shard amidst the ruined flesh. No please no. Her mind slipped further.

When she saw the creature

raise some sort of tool to that decimated hand, intent on lopping off another digit, Suzanne lost it completely. slid off the precipice and tumbled into space.

She

As Eddie

redoubled his resistance, struggling against the tentacles that held him down, she added her own screams to the resonating echoes of his. Immediately the cop-thing turned toward her, head tilted slightly, as if confused.

Eddie craned his neck and

sought her out from behind the creature’s considerable bulk, his expression cycling from pain to recognition to fear.

Obviously, neither one of them realized that there

was a witness to their little encounter.

The next moment

Eddie was free, coughing and wheezing, rolling on the stained concrete slab, doubled over his injured hand. The mutant creature was coming toward her.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/272 Those lidless, blinking diodes that served as eyes held her transfixed.

His face seemed to be shifting,

melting and reforming, mesmerizing her.

Still not quite

able to believe what she was seeing, Suzanne froze like a deer caught in headlights.

She could remember, in the

past, being frustrated by books or movies where one of the characters was aware of being in grave peril, but unable to do anything to get out of the path of the oncoming locomotive, powerless to avoid the slasher’s knife.

Now

she was living that paralysis: a frustration of a different kind.

The voice in her head was screaming for her to haul

ass––to get the hell out of here now––but those lifeless, blinking clusters that looked like sea urchins attached to the sheriff-thing’s eye sockets refuted the command, kept her glued to the spot, filling her with despair. She could see a silver tag glittering on the breast of his stained and tattered uniform.

As he lumbered closer

she was able to read the name that was engraved on that rectangular plate. Sheriff Charles Ogborn. At the last moment, Eddie yelled, “Suzanne run! Get help!” and that’s when she remembered the gun in her waistband.

She could hear Eddie coughing again, half

hidden from her sight as he crawled toward the sheriff’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/273 cruiser.

His voice broke her paralysis, and she fumbled

for the pistol that was tucked into the small of her back. It was too late, though.

Arms behind her, reaching

for the gun, she was defenseless.

In a blur of motion,

Ogborn closed the distance between them, pushed open the door, and knocked her over, sending her sprawling across the pavement.

Suzanne had no time to react: one moment the

sheriff-thing was halfway across the garage, the next she was on her back with the mutant cop standing over her.

The

gun remained stuck in her waistband, jamming uncomfortably into her spine. down her legs.

There was a tingling sensation running She only had a fraction of a second to

ponder how something so big could move so fast before he grabbed her and dragged her back into the shadows of the garage.

When she tried to resist, the injury in her side

flared up, a hot burning pain that felt as if the wound had been ripped open again, and her screams became reduced to choking gasps.

With the wind knocked out of her, she had

no strength to fight back.

A cold grip of dismay

constricted around her chest, mingling with her fear. Then Ogborn was on top of her, pressing into her wounded side, paralyzing her.

Before she knew it a thick

scratchy mass was being forced into her mouth.

It

stretched her bruised lip and distended her cheeks, filling

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/274 her mouth until it pushed into the back of her throat, nearly causing her to gag.

Her lip split open again,

spilling a line of blood down her chin.

She tried to bite

down, to hurt the thing somehow, but it was tougher than a knot of rope.

Sharp bristles abraded up her gums and lips.

The taste was horrible. As he leaned in closer, she smelled the rot of his breath.

The air was thick with a putrid, industrial

stench, and she had to fight the urge to vomit.

If she

threw up now she’d probably asphyxiate on her own sick. Forced to breathe only through her nose, she felt like she was running out of air. Up close, Ogborn’s features were a train wreck of moving parts.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the mass of

seething flesh that coursed over his cheeks and brow.

Tiny

blinking lights that comprised his eyes were encrusted and weeping yellowish fluid.

Those lights blinked off in

unison, turning into dark pits in his face as he proceeded to sniff her entire body, hovering less than an inch above her prostrate form.

She heard him inhaling deeply––a wet,

bubbling wheeze on the way in, the foul reek of rotten meat on the way out.

He paused down near her crotch before

moving back up her torso, now making short sniffling noises like a dog searching for a scent.

He paused again over her

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/275 chest, and suddenly rough feelers were snaking around her breasts, sharp, claw-like fingers kneading the soft tissue through her shirt, hurting her.

A sort of gurgling moan

escaped the back of his throat.

When he sat up, those red

eye clusters were blinking again, as if transmitting some sort of coded message.

Amidst his alien features she could

see a human nose and chin.

Somehow, the remnants of those

human facial characteristics were even more terrifying than the mutilated, shifting parts all around them because of what they suggested––that this... thing... had once been an actual person.

Part of her mind refused to believe what

she was seeing. “Ah, Suzanne,” he said, exhaling a blast of gunmetal and roadkill, “What a sweet fucking piece of meat you are. And what an unexpected surprise.” His head swayed back and forth, and those red eyes were dark again for a moment.

More coils wrapped around

her midsection and legs; she felt a coarse loop going under her shirt at the waist, slipping down into her pants.

All

the while his hands clawed her breasts, and a thick stump squirmed in her mouth, gagging her.

The more she struggled

for air the less she seemed to get.

Dark spots swam before

her eyes.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/276 Ogborn turned his head and addressed the shadows, “This your girlfriend, asshole?” actually expecting an answer.

He waited a moment, as if

When there was no reply from

the shadows, he went on, “For your sake, I fucking hope not, because she’s about to get sort of, uh, seriously ruined, if you know what I mean.

Otherwise you might enjoy

the show.” That evoked a response.

From the darkness Eddie

called out, “Let her go, Ogborn, she’s innocent. go or you’ll be sorry.”

Let her

His voice sounded hoarse and

strained. Ogborn’s grin seemed to rip his face open from ear to ear.

“I disagree, fuckface.

I think you’re gonna be the

one who’s sorry, especially when you witness what I’m about to do.”

His chuckle sounded like the wet hack of a chain

smoker.

A short tentacle pulled the gun out from behind

Suzanne’s back and held it up in the air.

“Innocent my

ass.” He dropped the gun at his feet.

Turning back to

Suzanne, he said, “Where’ve you been all my life, sugartits?” She could hear movement over by the sheriff’s cruiser, but her view was blocked by the hulking figure sitting on

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/277 top of her.

The mutant cop’s words squeezed her panic into

full-blown hysteria. Seriously ruined.

The meaning was obvious.

He was way too strong.

One coarse tentacle was still

pushing deeper into her throat, another one into her pants, searching, probing.

She clamped her legs together tightly;

as if that would stave off the horror that was coming, prevent him from having his way.

White-hot agony flared up

in her wounded side, and her breathing was getting shallower.

The garage started to recede.

Spots wavered in

her vision and grew larger until they connected with each other, blotting out everything else. Just before she passed out, the blockage in her windpipe eased up, and she was able to get some air.

The

room reassembled itself around her. When she opened her eyes that horrible face was inches from hers, his mouth open, reeking of dead flesh.

A black

tongue darted over rows of dark, sharp-looking teeth in a nervous manner.

For the first time, she noticed that the

ridges in his cheeks were caused by a pair of pincers in his mouth, which flexed and scissored, adding to the appearance of movement on his face. He lifted her off the ground with ease, swinging around and dropping her onto the tool bench amidst various

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/278 dust-covered items.

In the process he managed to wedge

himself between her legs. his mouth again.

That black tongue snaked out of

Suzanne shuddered with revulsion as he

leaned in and licked the rivulet of blood that ran down her chin from her split lip, moaning like a lust filled lover. Almost at once the Ogborn-thing pulled back and loosened his grip as if he’d been stung by something.

His

eyes flared, a madly flickering cluster of short-circuiting diodes.

Facial features convulsed, the ridges in his

cheeks, brow, and scalp swelling and contracting. his breath, he murmured, “Ashaname Waarduth.” moment, his head swayed back and forth.

Under

For a

Then he seemed to

regain his composure. “You.

You’re...you’re one of us?”

His face split

open in a wide grin, but now she could see that it was just the pincers in his mouth spreading, pulling his lips apart, exposing his teeth in such a manner that it looked like a maniacal sneer. ever seen.

“You don’t look like any scion that I’ve

How, I wonder?”

She felt him scanning her body over again, only this time his eyes were glowing; in the shadows of the garage they cast a pale red light upon her torso as he moved his gaze up and down over it.

He lingered over her midsection,

and Suzanne could almost feel his stare burning into her

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/279 side where the puncture wounds were, reigniting an ache deep in her ribs.

For a moment she sensed something moving

around, squirming inside her belly. “Yes, it’s in there,” he said, “it’s dormant, still in an organic state, but it’s in there and you know it too.” He took a moment to consider the implications of this new development, craning his head from side to side, examining her.

“You’ve been selected for some other purpose,” he

muttered.

His tongue came out and licked her chin again.

The rotten stench wafting off of him was overpowering. “You just don’t know what it means yet.”

This thought

seemed to amuse him, and he hacked out a few more wet chuckles.

Somehow his grin widened even more.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun in the meantime, does it?” The bristly appendage in her pants resumed its progress toward her crotch.

Pressure lifted from her

breasts, and then his bony fingers were loosening her belt, clawing at her waistband.

The uncomfortable bulk in her

mouth began to expand again, forcing her windpipe closed. As her oxygen supply dwindled, so did her will to resist. Amidst the confusion one thing stuck out in her mind. You’re one of us?

She felt a strange vibration, a faint

tingling through her midsection where his gaze had bored

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/280 into her.

She thought about the Cheops-thing that had

attacked her.

You just don’t know what it means yet.

Even pinned to the workbench with her legs spread, with dark spots once again swimming before her eyes, about to be raped by God-knows-what, she did have an inkling as to what it all meant. She simply refused to believe it.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/281

19

Pain overwhelmed him.

The agony in Eddie’s hand had

spread down his whole arm until it seemed to be ablaze in liquid hot fire.

Involuntarily, his brain kept trying to

flex the finger that wasn’t there anymore.

He found

himself curled on the cool concrete, sticky with blood, trying to focus on his surroundings to keep from passing out.

Nearby the cruiser sat with its front door still

open, the floor around it covered with stains.

He could

tell the sun was near setting; thin shafts of reddish sunlight no longer angled downward but lanced across the room.

About ten feet away the hulking mutant was bending

over his new quarry, back turned to Eddie, limbs and probes entangled around Suzanne as she struggled.

One ray of

light struck him square between the shoulder blades––or rather, where shoulder blades normally tend to be–– revealing shiny, hard-looking plates and thick cords of muscle working underneath the tattered uniform.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/282 When he’d seen Suzanne standing at the side door Eddie could hardly believe his eyes. with a surge of hope.

For a moment he was filled

Suzanne is here.

Help is here.

In

the midst of all the pain his secret love for her welled up in his chest like a leviathan forcing its way to the surface. Then the Ogborn-thing tossed him aside, and just as quickly his hopes were dashed.

Squirming on the floor,

trying to work his way into the shadows without really knowing why, he called out, “Suzanne run!

Get help!”

But by then it was too late. The speed that the creature displayed was startling; one moment he was lumbering, almost swaggering toward Suzanne, the next he seemed to have transported all the way across the room and out the door, knocking her to the ground before Eddie even had a chance to blink.

Her

screams became muffled protestations, eventually transitioning into choking, gagging sounds and occasional muted yelps of pain as she was dragged back into the garage.

It sounded like she was being strangled.

From the shadows on the floor he could see the sheriff-thing’s large insectile figure, like a humanoid moth or roach, clawing at Suzanne’s clothes with numerous limbs.

She was attempting to put up some resistance, but

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/283 to little effect.

The struggle paused for a moment, and

Eddie heard snuffling, sniffing noises, thick with bubbling mucous: the determined breathing of a consumptive dog. He continued to sidle his way into the shadows, toward the car, trying to keep the weight off his left side.

Something on the dashboard glinted in the dull

light.

The faint outline of an idea was starting to

germinate in the back of his brain, although his conscious mind couldn’t identify what it was.

While he wormed his

way across the floor, the Ogborn-creature inhaled deeply one more time, and then addressed his captive. “Ah, Suzanne, what a sweet fucking piece of meat you are.

And what an unexpected surprise.” Any relief Eddie had felt upon seeing her was pushed

aside by growing anxiety and a feeling of responsibility. After all, Ogborn wouldn’t even know Suzanne’s name if he hadn’t blurted it out a minute ago. racked with tremors.

His arms and legs were

Crushing waves of agony from his hand

kept tempting him give in and to curl up on the floor.

Raw

shards of panic teased the edges of his psyche, threatening to pull him under, but somehow he kept his concentration. Now there was more at stake than his own personal safety. Try to think.

Where are the neighbors around here?

Eddie

could tell he was in some sort of pre-fab unit, probably a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/284 condo.

Isn’t all this commotion attracting any attention?

Isn’t there anybody else home?

He had to help her somehow.

His train of thought was derailed when Ogborn spoke. “This your girlfriend, asshole?” The question caught Eddie off guard.

It took him a

moment to realize that Ogborn was speaking to him this time.

He couldn’t think of a way to answer without further

endangering Suzanne, so he kept his mouth shut and continued to squirm toward the open door of the police cruiser.

In the back of his mind disconnected images and

associations whirled about, attempting to establish a link with one another. After a moment the sheriff-thing continued, “For your sake, I fucking hope not, because she’s about to get sort of, uh, seriously ruined, if you know what I mean. Otherwise you might enjoy the show.” A lump of emotion rose in Eddie’s throat.

His

feelings for Suzanne combined with the current pain and frustration, and demanded a release.

He couldn’t contain

himself anymore. He’d already hurt Suzanne once; his inability to protect her now caused his guts to twist. “Let her go, Ogborn, she’s innocent.

Let her go or

you’ll be sorry,” he shouted at the hulking figure.

His

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/285 rational mind knew there was no way of making good on the threat.

To his taxed senses, it sounded like his voice

belonged to somebody else. From along the wall there was a deep wheeze followed by a wet chuckle.

Eddie’s view was partially blocked by

the front end of the car now, but he could see that the creature’s head was turned toward him.

Red eyes blinked

amidst a sea of melting features. “I disagree, fuckface.

I think you’re gonna be the

one who’s sorry, especially when you witness what I’m about to do.”

The sheriff-thing’s mouth was stretched into a

grin so wide it looked like his face had been torn open, and for a moment Eddie thought he saw sharp pincers snapping and clicking in there, twitching underneath the skin like surgically implanted ice tongs.

More phlegm-

coated chortles emanated from that gaping maw. A wiry tentacle pulled something from behind Suzanne’s back, held it up in the air, and Eddie knew what it was even before he could make out its shape in the dull light. Ogborn chuckled some more and said, “Innocent my ass,” before dropping the gun on the floor. Red eyes turned back toward Suzanne. been all my life, sugar-tits?”

“Where’ve you

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/286 Feeling left alone for the moment, Eddie attempted to regroup his thoughts.

The gun.

Get the gun.

you don’t stand a chance, he told himself.

Without it

Another part of

his mind, though, a deeper chasm of intuition, knew that the gun was useless, and possibly even being used to bait him.

If it were a threat in any way, would Ogborn have

cast it aside so flippantly?

Eddie didn’t think so.

The sounds of Suzanne’s struggles were becoming more muted and less frequent. Instead of the hysteria he expected, a strange sense of detachment started to envelope him.

Perhaps it was an

ancient instinct of self-preservation that kicked in, or perhaps his mind was breaking down. else entirely.

Maybe it was something

Inside that detachment there was a growing

calm, like the eye of a hurricane––a polished lens that clarified his perspective.

He felt a familiar feeling,

like the meditative throughput state he sometimes achieved when he was composing music or verse.

Events from the past

few days swirled all around him in a maelstrom of dialog and images, visions and voices.

The more he tried to force

things into focus, however, the more they eluded him. Instead, when he relaxed and let the edges of his concentration blur, when he let the tidal force surround him and saturate his intuition, things hinted at

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/287 connections and possibilities that staggered his mind.

He

remembered the ‘conversation’ he had with his laptop just (what was it? one? two?) hours ago. You are yourself and yet you are far more than yourself. A memory cap disguises your mind-print. Blinking insects, memories of his father, images of bald youths in grey hospital gowns, and deranged, mechanized soldiers all spun a web of implications that brought him closer to some kind of understanding, if not acceptance.

All at once Ogborn’s presence here and now––

the enemy from his youth––and the strange experiences they’d shared all those years ago took on a whole new significance.

Certainly it seemed like more than sheer

coincidence. More than anything, they fear what you possess. Another piece fell into place.

Ideas swirled about in

his mind. He was pulled toward the front seat of the cruiser, and a rectangular box on the dash that drew his attention. As he wormed his way into the car he became aware that the sheriff-thing was talking again, but in his reverie he didn’t pay much attention.

From the tone of Ogborn’s

voice, Eddie could tell the remarks weren’t directed at

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/288 him, and that gave him some reassurance.

As long as the

mutant cop was talking, there was a good chance that Suzanne was still alive.

And the he liked to talk, it

seemed, although the Ogborn that Eddie remembered only smart-assed for so long before getting down to business. Eddie knew he didn’t have a whole lot of time. They fear what you possess. Lying on the front seat, his face was inches away from the keys dangling in the ignition.

Eddie grasped the radio

receiver with his good hand before he even knew whom he intended to call.

Alarm bells were going off on the

rational side of his mind. for Christ’s sake! you are!

Not the cops, he’s a sheriff

And besides, you don’t even know where

Even so, he thumbed the switch on the handset and

sat up on the seat so he had a view of his surroundings once again.

The room teetered around him a few times until

he found his center. They had moved.

Instead of being in front of the car

where Eddie had last seen them, the sheriff-thing now held Suzanne down on the workbench.

Once again she was mostly

blocked from view, but there was more sunlight over there, which gave him a better idea of what was going on.

He

could see one side of her body, from shoulder to waist, and dark coils snaking from the creature’s thorax, wrapping

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/289 around her bare sides, worming under her blouse and into her jeans. legs.

Ogborn had managed to wedge himself between her

And he had stopped chatting as well.

Sharp-fingered

hands clawed at the waistband of her pants, shredding the heavy material.

From Eddie’s angle it looked like the

hideous creature was burrowing into Suzanne’s abdomen. Just when he felt things slipping beyond his grasp again, as a numb finger of terror started to creep back up his spine, he saw the car battery on the workbench, and thought he understood.

Not everything, not what it all

meant, but enough to do something, at least––enough to fight back.

He had to do something.

With concentration,

he held hysteria at bay. Suzanne’s choking sounds had stopped.

The sheriff-

thing shifted to one side and bent over the table, pinning one of her legs down. kicking at nothing. and bulging. her mouth.

Her other leg pistoned in the air, Her head lolled into view, eyes blank

Eddie saw the fat cord that was shoved into Her throat appeared unnaturally thick, and even

allowing for the dim light, her skin tone seemed to be a few shades too dark. The right side of Ogborn’s body was pressed against the car battery, leaning on it for support.

There was a

belt sander and a circular saw hanging on the rack about

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/290 halfway down the workbench, but they weren’t plugged in, and Eddie could sense they wouldn’t be able to do much damage.

Besides, Suzanne was between them and the sheriff-

thing. The battery was a long shot.

He had no idea how fresh

it was, if it still held a charge or any fluid, but the time for such considerations had passed.

He had this one

chance, and was willing to bet everything that the battery was good, or at least good enough to suit his purposes. Suzanne deserved as much. To do anything less would be admitting defeat. He knew there was a possibility that she would be hurt in the process, but if he didn’t act, she was as good as dead––if she wasn’t already. himself.

Hell, he’d probably be killed

Neither of them was in the shape to fight back

any longer. Like sharp springs compressing into a tight bundle, the knot began to form in his mind. dimmer by increments.

The garage grew

As it did every day, the sun was

surrendering itself to the horizon, only today the impending grey evening felt as sickly and cloying as the dying twilight. in front of him.

Eddie glanced one last time at the radio It’s turned off, he thought from afar, as

he looked over the dials and knobs.

Before he could

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/291 question anything, his injured hand, still dripping blood, reached out and thumbed the ‘intercom’ button. front panel a row of lights blinked to life. finger rolled the volume knob all the way up.

On the His little He still

clutched the microphone in his good hand, call button depressed.

Short bursts of static and a sharp wedge of

feedback cut through the air from the patrol car’s exterior speakers. The Ogborn-thing––or nanoborg, Eddie thought with growing conviction––paused for a moment and turned toward the car.

Suzanne’s jeans were pulled partially down.

Viscous slime bathed her face and arms. The irrational side of Eddie’s mind attempted to interject snide remarks––such as what are you going to do, yell some more?

A lot of good that did the first time––but

a deeper, more powerful instinct kept such distractions at bay, pushed to the periphery of his consciousness.

There,

on the edges of his thoughts, he knew that if all else failed, he would yell for help––he’d create as large a disturbance as possible.

Hell, he’d even back the cruiser

through the garage door if it came to it, siren blaring and lights flashing.

If he were loud enough, the neighbors

wouldn’t be able to ignore the ruckus.

They’d probably be

too late to save him or Suzanne, but at least they wouldn’t

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/292 be able to turn a blind eye to what was happening here. He’d make sure of it. Right now, however, other possibilities shimmered in the calm focus he’d achieved, and he wasn’t ready to give up.

Not just yet.

The knot turned over and over in his

head like a lethal gyroscope, picking up speed and momentum.

For the first time he felt its weight pressing

against the back of his eyes, gaining heft as it spun faster.

The car battery stood out on the workbench,

appearing almost backlit in the fading light of the setting sun.

Suzanne’s free leg had stopped kicking; her body lay

motionless beneath the ministrations of the Ogborn-thing. The nanoborg. The hurricane of whirling thoughts and images surrounding Eddie’s tranquility locked into place, and the universe froze.

Time stood still.

the air, motionless.

Dust particles hung in

The entire room and everything in it

was suspended, as if fossilized amber. Then his brain exploded. One second the gyroscope was spinning with blinding speed, the next it seized up, flinging out a psychic bundle of shrapnel with the force of a mortar shell.

The

unexpected impact of the release threw Eddie off balance. The universe snapped into motion around him.

He struggled

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/293 to remain upright and conscious in the front seat of the cruiser. The results of his effort were not quite what he expected. A few sparks emanated from the car battery, accompanied by a wisp or two of smoke.

That was all.

No

explosion, no electrocution, no battery acid or molten plastic flying through the air, no pyrotechnics, no nothing.

The sheriff-thing, still clawing at Suzanne’s

prone figure, didn’t even seem to notice. Eddie didn’t have the time to be disappointed, however.

For a split-second the room blinked out of

existence, or at least that’s what it seemed like. He was plunged into blackness––his conscious thought wasn’t interrupted––but everything around him vaporized, as if sucked into a void.

When it all came rushing back a

picosecond later, all hell had broken loose. A piercing shriek hammered his ears.

Smoke was rising

from the dashboard, filling the small front seat compartment.

Near the workbench a few overhead light bulbs

burst, showering glass and sparks everywhere.

An

electrical outlet was belching flames and thick black smoke.

The belt sander and circular saw had jumped off the

tool rack and were now sputtering on the concrete floor,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/294 making lazy circles. blaring.

Somewhere nearby a car alarm was

The sheriff-thing had paused over Suzanne, no

longer burrowing, looking momentarily distracted. And Suzanne was disappearing. No, not disappearing, but being covered, coated in some sort of black substance that blended in with the shadows all around her. Smoke was starting to make Eddie’s eyes water; he let go of the microphone and squirmed out of the car, onto the concrete floor.

Out here the screaming was deafening.

When his vision cleared, Ogborn was still motionless, perched above Suzanne, ready to strike, but something was different about him.

He seemed like a hollow shell, a

brittle husk with nothing inside.

The eyes no longer

flashed in that menacing manner––they were dark, blank, and empty.

Snake-like tentacles hung unmoving at his sides.

The harsh shrieking noise, which Eddie had attributed to either Suzanne or Ogborn, turned out to be feedback coming from the police cruiser’s loudspeaker.

He figured

this out when there was a sudden burst of flame from the inside the car and the squealing abruptly cut off, leaving a sharp echo rattling in his ears.

Smoke was pouring from

the open car door, rising up to the vaulted ceiling through shadowy rafters.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/295 Before Eddie could inch over to the workbench, Suzanne’s lifeless form slid out from under the sheriffthing and fell to the floor like a sack of mud.

Black oily

matter ran out of Ogborn’s body, splattering the workbench, Suzanne, and the floor.

The substance oozed from the

creature’s carapace like sweat; it ran from his eyes, nose, and mouth in thick streams, foamed from between the junctions of chitinous plates. limp tendrils.

It dripped from the ends of

As Eddie’s ears recovered he could hear the

hiss and bubble of compressed air. with a foul reeking odor.

The garage was ripe

Ogborn’s once-imposing figure

appeared to diminish in size, shrinking back to normal human dimensions.

The mutated creature slipped off the

workbench and fell to the right, opposite Suzanne.

A

puddle of thick black ooze began forming around its deflated carcass. Ankles still bound, head spinning, fearing the worst, Eddie crawled over to where Suzanne lay.

Her face was

bruised and her lower lip looked horribly swollen.

There

were angry looking welts around her neck and bare hips, scratches all over her exposed skin.

One arm was pinned

behind her back, the shoulder bent at an awkward angle, like she was giving herself a chicken-wing.

She was

smeared in brackish oil from head to toe, making it

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/296 difficult for Eddie to assess the extent of her injuries. He also had no way to distinguish between the damage Milton had caused her and what she had just suffered at the hands of the nanoborg, if that’s what it really was.

Long, dark

hair fanned out everywhere, silky and flowing in places, stringy and matted in others. It broke his heart to see her lying there.

To think

that he might somehow be responsible made it even worse. As carefully as he could, Eddie dislodged Suzanne’s arm from behind her back.

With a sense of relief he detected a

faint pulse in her wrist.

Leaning close to her bruised

face, shallow breathing could be heard.

He straightened

her legs and pulled her jeans back up over her hips, appalled by the indignity she’d been subjected to, hoping she hadn’t been violated.

It was impossible to tell for

sure, but since her underwear appeared to be intact, it seemed likely he’d intervened in time. he’d intervened in time.

He hoped to God

He felt anger stirring inside,

threatening the detached focus that enveloped him. Off to his right, there was movement and a guttural moaning noise.

Eddie turned in time to see the sheriff-

thing’s carcass collapse on itself, simultaneously releasing a giant belch of gas.

The creature’s entire body

seemed to liquefy, skin and muscle sloughing off into an

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/297 ever-expanding puddle of dark sludge, leaving behind a skeleton that appeared to be mostly human––with a few extra appendages and odd bone spurs poking up here and there.

An

overpowering stench of carrion came wafting over Eddie, choking him, making his eyes water.

Amidst the chaos

surrounding him, the oppressive stench and melting remains, the sparking tools and smoking power outlets, it dawned on him that he’d succeeded better than he ever expected. What you posses... The knot? It was crazy, it was all completely fucking crazy, but somehow it had worked. though.

There was no time to think it over,

His calm center of focus was receding, the state

of throughput dissolving as the garage grew darker, and he felt waves of fatigue washing over him. himself, you’re not done yet.

Not yet, he told

Resting his head on the cool

floor, he looked around and located the stem cutters a few feet away, which he used to cut the thick plastic restraints on his ankles.

After a minute, when the

circulation had returned to his feet and he was able to stand, he gathered Suzanne’s unconscious form up and carried her around to the rear of the police car, as far away as possible from the spreading puddle and horrible smell.

Dark smoke was still seeping from the cruiser’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/298 melted dashboard when he reached in and snatched the keys out of the ignition switch with his good hand. There were blankets and a first aid kit in the trunk of the cruiser, amongst plastic cuffs and boxes of bullets, coils of rope, rolls of yellow tape, large bottles of water, and a few extra firearms, including a sniper rifle. Eddie didn’t think the sniper rifle or the stack of fetish magazines were standard police issue.

He also found a

battery powered flood lamp, which came in handy as the last of the day’s light faded away.

Tearing one of the blankets

into strips, he used the entire supply of bottled water to wash the foul grime from Suzanne’s face and neck.

It had a

strange consistency, both viscous and granular at the same time, like a mixture of oil and fine grit sand.

As he

worked on her, color seeped back into her skin and her breathing became deeper, easier.

When she was cleaned up

she didn’t look as bad as he’d feared; aside from her bruised mouth and cheek, which were obviously older injuries––Milton’s work, he assumed––it looked like she’d only suffered some minor scrapes from the recent altercation. She was going to be okay. It felt like a weight was lifted off Eddie’s chest. Suzanne had almost been choked to death, and she’d have one

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/299 heck of a sore throat when she woke up, but he thought she was going to be okay. eyes.

Tears of relief welled up in his

Even though he put her at risk, he hadn’t entirely

failed her.

Not yet, at least.

Conflicting emotions

surged inside him, his love for her riding a complicated wave of guilt, fear and longing. “I’m here, Suze,” he whispered, choking back tears, “I’m here.”

On impulse, he leaned down and kissed her on

the cheek, feeling immediately embarrassed afterwards, not so much because it was an inappropriate thing to do, but because he did it without thinking, before he realized what he was doing.

For a brief moment it felt like someone else

was occupying his mind, sharing his thoughts and emotions. He straightened up and looked around the garage, selfconscious, even though he knew he was alone.

Considering

the events of the past few hours, a little paranoia was understandable.

The flood lamp lit up half the room with

brilliant intensity, illuminating the mess all around. Long shadows diverged from wooden beams overhead, projecting an abstract pattern of the ceiling upon itself in a manner that would have made Picasso proud.

The other

half of the room stood in deep gloom; the sun had finally gone down.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/300 Eddie swung the flood lamp around the place once to put his mind at ease; high-gloss tool girls stared back at him with over-enthusiastic expressions and vacant stares, one of them with a fist-sized hole lased through her midriff.

Otherwise he was alone.

Satisfied, Eddie trained

the light back on the workbench and the car battery still sitting there, undisturbed, near the far end.

He walked

over to get a better look, mindful not to get too close to the nanoborg’s remains. Except for a bit of charring near one of the terminal posts, it appeared to be unscathed.

In the bright

spotlight it was obvious that the battery was old, much older than he originally thought.

The words ‘SEARS

DIEHARD––5 YEAR EXTENDED LIFE’ were visible but difficult to read through years of accumulated grease.

Eddie rubbed

grime off the label until he found what he was looking for: a little plastic square with numbers on it, perforated tabs punched out beside the number ‘90’ and the number ‘1’, confirming his suspicions.

1991.

The battery was over

fifteen years old and obviously dead as a doorknob.

With

his good thumb he popped one of the cell’s caps off, knowing before he did so that it would be dry as a bone inside.

You’d have better luck jump starting a car with a

turnip than with this old thing.

So then what explains...

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/301 He looked over at the nanoborg’s melted remains.

At

the fried power tools and smoking electrical outlet nearby, the exploded light bulbs above the workbench.

At the

smoldering car radio and melted dash. ...all of this? His past experience with the knot, at least what little he could remember from childhood, dictated that he was able to disrupt only one thing, usually what he was focusing on.

He was at a loss to explain the chaotic scene

before him and how he could have affected so many things, let alone the nanoborg’s demise. stronger.

Unless it’s getting

The knot’s getting stronger.

That seemed like a

definite possibility––certainly it had never felt more forceful than it had tonight––but he also felt like something else was involved, something his intuition poked at but couldn’t quite pin down.

He remembered grabbing the

police radio without knowing why, thumbing the intercom switch as if somebody else guided his hand.

The screeching

howl of the speakers was still ringing in his ears, taunting him with significance that danced just beyond his grasp. It was getting harder to concentrate. starting to surrender in to fatigue.

His mind was

Bright lances of pain

shot up his arm with every heartbeat; nerves in his knuckle

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/302 screamed the loss of tissue and blood. a spike had been driven through it.

His head felt as if

He had the urge to lie

down, close his eyes, and shut it all out. No, not yet.

Not here.

Dark stains on the floor

appeared to be older spills of the same glistening mess that now covered the workbench.

It looked like there’d

been similar activity here in the recent past.

Eddie

didn’t want to stick around to see if there’d be any more. Definitely not here. He hobbled around to the front of the car.

In the

shadows just past the reach of the spotlight, he located Suzanne’s gun where the nanoborg had dropped it––in what seemed like another lifetime, but was in reality only a few minutes earlier. A weak moan emanated from the other end of the police cruiser. thing.

She’s regaining consciousness.

That was a good

In his current condition, he’d need help to get

them out of here.

His heart beat a little faster,

throbbing injuries keeping apace. As he stepped back around the car to check on her, there it was in the middle of the floor, sparkling in the beam of the flood lamp like a jewel in sunlight.

He almost

tripped over the thing; how it remained unnoticed until now was a definite curiosity.

His hand crept up and patted his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/303 shirt pocket––empty now, of course––where he last remembered putting the ivory box.

It must have fallen out

sometime during his recent struggles.

The ancient-looking

thing pulsed and flickered on the dirty concrete, calling to him, drawing him.

When he picked it up it felt warm to

the touch. Suzanne was still out, but restless, moaning, talking to herself. eyelids.

Her eyes rolled and twitched behind closed

Very gently, he stroked her temple, then traced

his fingertips down her cheekbone to the corner of the jaw. “Suze, can you hear me?” She frowned and mumbled something that Eddie couldn’t quite decipher.

Her head rolled from side to side, mouth

forming the word no over and over.

She seemed to be

resisting something in her dreams.

It broke his heart to

see the anguish that was etched into her beautiful features. “Suze?”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/304

20

“Sometimes I feel as if I’m stuck in the bottom of a well, shouting up to a populace that speaks a different language.

The terrible, secret

potential of atomics has been unleashed upon the world, and there are many who are all too willing to decry it as patently evil, blindly sweep away anything that even hints of such dealings. not ours to play god, they say.

It is

The scientific

community is rife with this manner of coward.

I

say the serpent has escaped, and we cannot ignore it.

It is up to those of us with souls and

consciences to out-think and out-maneuver the beast, to always stay one step ahead of it––to use its potential benefits to increase the quality of existence for everybody on the planet, while at the same time coming to a deeper understanding of its profound dangers.

In this

way we may be prepared to deal with those

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/305 dangers.

To respect it, tame it, but never give

in, and never, never ignore it, for so doing would be the gravest mistake of all” ––Xavier Coulton addressing the Science Ethics Board, circa 1956

A body slammed into the front of the Mercedes and went flying.

The pedestrian had frozen in the crosswalk, which

Milton hadn’t anticipated.

Move, you asshole, move! he’d

thought, but it was too late. avoid a collision.

There had been no way to

Milton caught a glimpse of

incomprehension on the man’s face as the car bore down on him like a hungry panther.

The loud thud and sound of

crumpling metal elicited the closest thing to regret Milton’s nanonics-enhanced endocrine system would allow. What a fucking shame it is to trash a fine piece of machinery like this.

For a moment he considered stealing a

new car, but despite its bashed-in grill and buckled hood, the Mercedes still handled pretty well.

Besides, right now

he didn’t have the luxury of time on his side. He’d given up on trying to contact the asshole cop; every comlink probe for the scion’s frequency was unsuccessful, every mind-print ping futile.

Fuck!

What

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/306 happened to him?

Somehow his recruit had disappeared, or

fallen off the face of the planet. seem possible.

Or had died.

It didn’t

Whatever the case, it was obvious that

something had gone seriously wrong. Once more Milton accounted for the other recruits, the rest of his precious disciples. They would help make things right. Streetlights flashed by overhead; he blew through intersections so fast that other vehicles never saw him coming, let alone had time to react.

With heightened

senses and quicker reflexes at his disposal, he navigated obstacles effortlessly, threading cross-traffic like it was standing still.

At one point a crazed individual came

running toward the silver-gray vehicle, waving something that appeared to be a steel pipe or a tire iron––someone who’d decided to take it upon himself to dole out justice mano-á-mano.

Milton stuck his hand out the side window,

leveled the old familiar three-fingered point, and with a few utterances fired over a thousand titanium-tipped microflechettes from the ends of his fingers.

The tiny

scimitars struck the pipe-wielding vigilante in mid-stride, dropping him like a sack of dirty laundry. On a whim Milton reached down and turned on the car radio.

The device seemed so archaic, so primitive, the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/307 thought of it made him laugh.

As he swept through the

stations on the dial, he mirrored the same frequencies in his internal receptors.

Hearing the broadcast in his head

as well as coming from the car speakers was a strange sensation.

There was a slight delay between the two

signals, which created a hollow, phasing sound when combined.

Preferring the old fashioned method, Milton

switched off his internal reception and continued to sweep the radio dial manually, fascinated with the music he was hearing, weaving in and out of traffic the whole time. Everything sounded different to him now––even the heavy metal he used to prefer. so... alien.

It all seemed so new, so bizarre,

He came across a station playing Sinatra and

left it there.

Something about the melody and lyrics

filled him with a feeling of elation.

Ol’ Blue Eyes wanted

to fly to the moon and play among the stars, metaphorical aspirations that filled Milton’s nanonics-addled mind, mixing with delusions of grandeur.

He turned it up until

the speakers were on the verge of distorting, which was loud––in typical overkill fashion the Mercedes’ sound system was powerful enough to blow the doors off a concert hall.

Milton rolled down the car windows for everyone to

hear.

Sound washed over him like warm water, easing his

mind, focusing his thoughts.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/308 Feeling better, he decided to let loose a little. When the next intersection came up he yanked the wheel hard and hit the brakes, putting the German luxury mobile into a power slide.

At 45 mph the Mercedes skidded around the

corner, veered between a utility pole and a parked car, and jumped the curb.

Up on the sidewalk and still moving fast,

he caught two pedestrians by surprise, a couple walking hand in hand.

As Sinatra crooned about all he longed for,

worshipped, and adored, the young lovers were sucked under the car like dust into a vacuum.

Milton heard hollow

knocks as various body parts rattled off the sedan’s undercarriage.

How nice it was to run into you!

One of

them became pinned underneath, scraping against the pavement for a good distance, not coming free until Milton lurched back over the curb and into the street.

At the

next intersection he hauled the car to the left and accelerated westward again, toward his destination. Loud music and violence had a therapeutic effect on him, or maybe it was the nanonic and neurochemical reinforcements in his blood that helped to clear his head. At any rate, an idea was starting to form in his mind, a way to salvage the situation at hand.

Once more Milton

contacted the beta-borgs he’d spawned, his soldiers in the field, and confirmed their status.

Their chaos had begun.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/309 He was still formulating the beginnings of a plan when the radio broadcast was interrupted, a harried-sounding news reporter preempting the mellow intensity of ol’ Blue Eyes’ vocal stylings.

The abrupt shift caught Milton’s

attention. “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special BSS News Bulletin.

We are getting reports of at least

three violent disturbances across the valley area that Sheriff’s deputies say may be related.

In Burbank, an

armed individual has apparently gone on a murderous rampage in the Diamond Corporate Plaza Building, setting off explosives and shooting employees.

More explosions have

been confirmed at the Fashion Galleria in Studio City, where someone with heavy firepower has destroyed numerous vehicles in the parking lot, and is now allegedly wreaking havoc inside the mall itself.

On Ventura Boulevard police

are battling four heavily armed aggressors that have burned at least three block’s worth of buildings and store fronts. “In all cases there are unconfirmed reports of many injured and dead.

According to eyewitness accounts, the

suspects in all three attacks seem to share similar bizarre physical traits as well as other characteristics in common, such as heavy armor, advanced incendiary weapons and aggressive tactics.

Even though the attacks may be

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/310 connected somehow, authorities say it is too early to know whether they are terrorist-related or not. The Federal Government has been called in to investigate.

Some are

pointing to a connection between this evening’s attacks and hundreds of dead birds discovered across the San Fernando Valley earlier today, which biologists have been at a loss to explain.

Authorities aren’t commenting on the

possibility of a chemical of biological attack, but they are urging all residents of the East Valley to stay indoors this evening, if possible.

We will bring you more

information as this situation unfolds. “In an unrelated story, astronomers were caught off guard this evening by a lunar eclipse that no one seems to have predicted.

The event, described as impossible by a

Cal-Tech spokesperson, has scientists pouring over recent astronomical data in an attempt to explain...” Milton kept both hands on the steering wheel as a wiry tentacle extended from his midsection and snapped the radio off, the report having filled him with satisfaction. he thought, the pigs will have their hands full.

Good,

His

recruits were creating the distraction he desired, which would allow him to work behind the scenes.

In the midst of

all the chaos, no one would even notice when the time portal opened and he delivered that miserable motherfucker

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/311 Coulton to his masters, along with a whole host of genetic material for the flesharvest.

Then he would fly not to the

moon, but to the future, and play among the stars, and the Elohim would reward him with the equivalent of immortality. Ol’ Blue Eyes eat your heart out!

Hello Jupiter, Mars, or

wherever the fuck else he cared to go. recover Coulton somehow.

He just needed to

Milton didn’t want to consider

what the consequences would be if he failed. A faint blip of activity on the datalink caught him off guard and he almost clipped the bumper of a passing car.

The signal had come from the direction of his condo.

Even though its signature didn’t seem to fit that of the missing asshole cop, it was too fleeting, too quick for him to be sure.

What passed for a feeling of hope arose in his

nanonics-tempered chest. fucked up as he feared.

Perhaps the situation wasn’t as Again Milton checked on the

progress of his scions, confirming their obedience, modifying their commands.

He also verified their final

destination. Just as he commanded the beta-borgs he’d spawned, there was also a presence lurking behind the scenes, monitoring his own actions, attempting to control him–– something stern and disapproving of failure: his Elohim masters, omniscient and omnipotent, thousands of years and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/312 billions of miles away.

Once already they had reached out

from the dark abyss and seared his entire being with bolts of bright blue flame as punishment for straying from his mission.

The pain and humiliation of the experience filled

Milton with seething rage––rage that only a control freak could relate to.

He realized that he might have gone a bit

overboard in his recruitment of beta-borgs, (with the powers he had, who could blame him?) but in light of recent developments, the move seemed almost prescient.

The

original purpose for the beta-borgs was to harvest genetic material––human tissue for Elohim procreation and cloning experiments––in order to curry additional favor with his masters, nothing more.

Now he was glad to have them as

reinforcements; he would need the distraction they provided to accomplish his primary task of recapturing Coulton, if necessary.

His masters should have been appreciative of

the extra measures he’d taken, not disapproving: if he’d followed procedure in the first place, there would be no contingency plan to fall back on.

A fresh surge of anger

welled up in his chest, flattened by internal mechanisms. Who the fuck are they to tell me I’m wrong? That he might not have lost Coulton in the first place, had he stuck to the original plan, never occurred to him.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/313 Despite its brutal demonstrations of authority, Milton could tell that the presence controlling him was distant and sluggish, somewhat slow to react. chance to make things right.

He still had a

He needed to find that fucker

Coulton, though, to correct the mistake before he was made to pay for it. Pondering the missing police officer––his name was something like Osborn or Ogborn––gave Milton yet another idea.

Maybe, if he could map out the bio-electrical nodes,

nanonic implants, and neurochemical receptors of his new brain––if he could analyze his own infrastructure the way he’d traced the power grid of the Valley earlier this evening––he could take himself out of the loop as well.

It

would only require a little self-surgery to be free of his masters’ grip, or so he thought, and there were many precision tools at his disposal.

Milton glanced down at

the tentacles and half-formed appendages hanging from his torso.

Of course, it would be risky...

Sinatra refrains danced in the back of his mind.

As

long as he still accomplished his master’s primary objective, he wouldn’t be compromising his future among the stars or sacrificing his chance at immortality, would he? In the meantime he could let loose, have a little fun. opportunity to wreak havoc was too tempting, his new

The

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/314 abilities intoxicating, and he was just beginning to discover their full potential.

The mayhem he was creating

felt like sweet revenge––revenge upon his former girlfriends and business associates, revenge upon his dead parents and estranged siblings and anyone else who’d ever crossed him, especially that fucking whore Suzanne Oliviera and her cocksucking faggot friend Edward Coulton.

When

Milton finally delivered that dickhead to the Elohim, gave them what they so desperately wanted, well, wouldn’t that make up for most of his transgressions?

And if for some

reason he didn’t obtain his prey before the time portal opened, he’d be free from their control, safe from their punishment.

Out of the loop, off the radar, as it were.

It was an obvious no-brainer, a great way to play both ends against the middle, something Milton had always been a natural at.

He was starting to feel more comfortable than

ever in his new skin. Traffic was lighter now.

He straddled the double

yellow line and stomped on the gas as he reached the outskirts of Santa Monica.

Getting closer.

Screaming down

the middle of the road, the few cars he did encounter quickly pulled out of the way. Milton glanced at himself in the rear view mirror. Nanonic neural blocks and endocrine regulators flattened

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/315 the revulsion he should have felt when he saw the weeping, segmented eyes and twitching, snapping pincers protruding from his ruined mouth.

Instead of disgust he was left with

a hollow feeling of dismay.

And anger, lots of anger.

Nothing about the face was familiar anymore; Milton didn’t even recognize himself.

He activated neutrino optics and

electromagnetic trace imaging, and for a moment his mutated reflection lit up with neuro-electrical pathways and nodes that were hidden beneath his skull.

The receptor nodes

would be easy to locate and eradicate, or so it seemed, and then he’d be free... Something reached across space and time.

A blinding

flash split his head in two and for a moment he lost control of the vehicle.

The Mercedes swerved from one side

of the road to the other; fortunately there were no other drivers around him at the time.

As it was, he nearly

sideswiped a row of parked cars, missing them by a matter of inches, and then shot through an intersection unprepared.

Only dumb luck prevented him from slamming

into cross-traffic.

The pain, humiliation, and momentary

loss of control knocked him off balance, turning his anger into a blinding rage.

He didn’t appreciate these

demonstrations of authority, if that’s what you called them.

He didn’t appreciate them one fucking bit.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/316 Split-seconds later internal regulators kicked in and restored his chemical balance, leaving him only mildly angry.

While the pain lingered a channel clicked open in

his mind, and for the first time, he received an actual communication, a message that bubbled out of the void of distant space. It was part of a broken up and garbled data stream, almost backward; the ends of words seemed to reach him before the beginnings did.

It seemed like it came from

billions miles away, which he supposed wasn’t too far from the truth.

There was interference in his head that sounded

like the whine of a drill echoing down a long tunnel, accompanied by the crackle and fizz of cold water in boiling grease.

The sentences were broken up––Milton could

only make out snippets––but the overall tone was clearly disapproving. “Detection of unauthorized temporal activity poses severe...cannot be tolerated...quantum rift growing, approaching critical...destruction of beta-borgs is imperative...”

A ball of static erupted in his head.

“Completion of main objective must not be compromised...” Another bright lance scorched the core of his being. The pain was like nothing he’d ever felt before; brilliant beads of molten lead drilled pinholes through every nerve

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/317 in his body.

Someone or something was going through a lot

of trouble to try to keep him in line.

This time, however,

Milton had braced himself for the incapacitating jolt; when it hit, he was looking in the mirror.

Amidst the agony he

saw hyperfrequency receptors embedded along the base of his neck lighting up like a row of Christmas lights.

Somehow

he managed to keep the car moving in a straight line while he noted their location.

Those receptors were the key to

the link between himself and his masters. “Completion of main objective must not be compromised,” said the garbled voice, one last time.

Then

the pain dissipated, and the presence in his mind faded. In its place Milton found he had a growing sense of resolve: he would capture that fucker Coulton, but he’d do it on his own terms.

If that meant freeing himself from

his master’s grip, so be it.

He’d be damned if he were

going to subject himself to that kind of humiliation again. His nerves pulsated with a ghost memory of the agony; his ego screamed from violation and degradation. He would ensure the capture that fucker Coulton, but without distraction or intimidation from above. like he had much choice in the matter.

It wasn’t

Hell, aside from

his own personal reasons, he could feel internal mechanisms fueling his hatred for the asshole, focusing his desire

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/318 until it bordered on obsession, as if something had kicked his programming up a notch. head.

Bizarre phrases churned in his

Even though that programming stopped short of

letting him kill his prey, the desire to inflict harm ran deep in his machine-thickened blood. None of that mattered, though.

When Milton delivered

the traitor to the Elohim, they would see that all the measures he’d taken were necessary, and reward him appropriately.

After all, this was an extreme situation,

and extreme situations called for extreme measures, didn’t they? Dividing his attention between the road and images stored in his databanks, he marked the precise location of the hyperfrequency receptors in his neck. dangerously close to his spinal column.

They resided With the right

tools, though, Milton was sure he could get at them with little or no trouble. Approaching his neighborhood, Milton slowed the Mercedes down to avoid attracting undue attention.

He was

driving along in a trance, considering the angle of incision best to avoid complications like paralysis, when the surprise blip appeared on his datalink again.

This

time the signal hung on for a few seconds, giving Milton time for a full scan.

It was coming from his condo––just a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/319 few miles away––but it wasn’t the asshole cop after all. The signal didn’t seem to match up with any of his scions, save one, but that didn’t make any sense to him either. The profile was all wrong because it indicated premutation, preliminary-stage nanophage activity, and seemed to contain trace elements of animal as well as human DNA. There was something else too; something familiar that took Milton a moment to put his finger on.

His mind reeled with

twisted images of long, dark hair, full breasts and round hips.

When it hit him, his nanonic-fueled anger

intensified. Suzanne? He eased the Mercedes into the left lane and pressed the gas pedal down to the floor.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/320

21

“The more time that slips by, the more it all feel like a bad dream.

On good days I manage to

convince myself that’s all it was.

On bad days,

however, I wake up with visions of that frightening old man floating in my mind.

In the

stillborn hours of the morning, Sarah next to me but off in another world, I can still see the banks of equipment surrounding him, tubes and wires piercing ancient grey skin, pumping strange liquids and nutrients, recirculating blood. Heinerich Waarduth.

I see those bloodshot,

rheumy eyes, full knowledge and suffering, yet focused and determined, laying the choices out before me: one of assured annihilism, and one of likely annihilism. was no dream.

On those mornings I know it

In the hushed pre-dawn silence I

am transported back to that Egyptian cave ten years ago; I can smell the dusty earth and even

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/321 hear the distant footfall of my hired guides running away.

Who could blame them?

In

retrospect, perhaps I should have fled as well–– let someone else shoulder this burden, let my wife and son be free––yet somehow that was never an option.

I was trapped, sucked in like a moth

to flame, mesmerized by those eyes that appeared older than time itself.

The alternatives he

showed me were a paradox of hope and horror––a future of marvelous technological innovations and advances combined with an unspeakable, insidious threat to the core of human existence; a dark force, mutant and alien, looming on the horizon, unraveling the fabric of space and time.

The

intricately patterned ivory-coloured boxes remain unquestionably real.

On those mornings I can

almost feel their presence two floors below me, calling out from the dark recesses, and know they are proof of things beyond the realm of our existence.” ––From the diary of Xavier Coulton, circa 1974

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/322 “Suze?” he said again. rouse her.

He nudged her but couldn’t

Even though she appeared to be coming to, she

still needed more time.

With his back against the wide

garage door, Eddie slid down to a seated position, just outside the broad beam of the battery-powered spotlight. There, in partial shadow, the flickering of the ivory artifact appeared a little more intense, more compelling. He held it up in front of his face. As if on cue, the box erupted, splashing the rafters above his head with a complicated pattern of laser-like beams.

Eight thin strands of glowing fiber optics emerged

from the surface of the flickering cube, converging upon a silvery glass bead––a drop of quicksilver suspended between gossamer threads of energy.

Up close, the delicate spider-

like creature looked impossibly fragile and vulnerable.

It

pulsed rhythmically, flashing a random-seeming sequence of colors with silent urgency, commanding his attention. flashing picked up speed.

The

There were so many subtle color

variations––white, brighter white, silver, yellow, offwhite, blue-white, grey, purple, blue-green, silver-grey, silver-blue, violet––the combinations were endless. effect it had on him was dramatic.

The

Layers of agony and

fatigue lifted away, the room and everything around him receded until he was floating in nothingness, just himself

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/323 and the enigmatic cube with its denizen arachnid perched on top.

If he was concerned at all about what was happening,

it was offset by his deliverance from pain and the waves of tranquility he felt washing over him as the intensity of the light show increased to a frantic clip.

Amidst the

blinding flashes, a thin laser of golden light extended from the tiny creature’s midsection down toward the bandage on his wrist. When that beam pierced the bandage, plunging into the damaged tissue beneath, Eddie ceased to exist. his corporeal self ceased to exist.

Or rather,

He floated in

darkness, hovering above a glittering, flickering display of lights.

As he watched, the lights rotated and expanded,

spreading out wider until they became a field of stars twinkling in black ether. the constellations.

Eddie didn’t recognize any of

The tableau continued moving, pivoting

around him until a pair of twin yellow stars appeared, much larger and closer than anything else.

Eddie was reminded

of computer-generated images he’d seen on television–– models of solar systems and galaxies––only this had a feeling of realism he’d never experienced before.

He could

almost feel the cold shiver of vacuum tickling his spine. He could almost sense the massive heat emanating from the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/324 cores of those twin hydrogen reactors.

The sight was

astounding. A thick torus of debris orbited the two stars, twisting and overlapping, so dense it cut a wide band of darkness across them.

This belt was peppered with the

bright lights of civilized activity; satellites and other space-faring vessels moved in and around it everywhere, landing on the surface of gigantic planetoids, emerging from excavations, vectoring off into deep space. Three frozen white planets orbited in tandem with the debris belt.

As he looked down on the whole system from

above, Eddie could trace the mad figure-eight path they took around the twin suns.

All three planets shared a

remarkable feature in common: a bright golden ring that surrounded each one like a shackle, and from the outer edge of each ring a spoke stuck out––a long ruby shaft that extended into the asteroid belt, with internal patterns of shadow and light moving in both directions.

It looked like

entire cities were shuttling up and down inside those massive conduits.

Starships meandering close by were

dwarfed in comparison; when passing behind the shafts, they became completely blocked from sight. Then the tableau froze, and in the darkness someone spoke.

It wasn’t the booming, intimidating Voice-of-God

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/325 kind of thing; to Eddie it sounded like somebody patient and learned––familiar––like an old college professor. “The twin star system of Tau-Phaedra, also known as Mandira Prime, political, economic, industrial, and military center of the nanonics-based Elohim offshoot of humanity, as viewed in approximately two thousand years from your current temporal location. “To pilgrims, converts and Elohim adherents it is known simply as The Temple.

To millions of experimental

clones and genetically welded slaves it is a nameless place of imprisonment and torment, a brutal hell with no escape. To the remainder of humanity, it has become a menace––a wellspring of piracy, unethical scientific experimentation, and illegal alien technology.

Now it has become a threat

not just to the future, if you will, but to the balance of life across the entire time-space continuum. “Behold Tau-Phaedra, the source of your gift, and the curse that seeks to take your life. “Behold the nanoborgs.” A tiny square appeared in the asteroid belt and magnified a thousand-fold; rocks rushed toward him until they were as big as moons, filling his entire field of vision.

In a fraction of a second he was floating in

darkness amidst the asteroids, twin suns blocked from his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/326 sight.

From this perspective he could see armies of

thousands of spider-like, humanoid organisms milling across the rocks, excavating, hauling, blasting, traversing the vacuum in pairs with huge containers suspended from their tentacled midsections. communications.

Red eyes blinked coded

They looked like highly evolved versions

of the Ogborn-creature––or what Ogborn would have become if given more time.

Some carried raw materials to spaceships.

Some carried their load to depots that served as collecting points or way stations between spaceships.

No matter what,

the general procession was always towards the base of those massive columns that reached up to the planets orbiting above.

Eddie also spied hundreds of the creatures tumbling

in space, lifeless and mutilated, discarded like so much garbage, their life’s energy spent in the relentless task of mining the belt and hauling materials to the space elevators. Once again the picture froze, and the voice continued. Eddie imagined a well-seasoned, highly lettered professor teaching an introductory-level class, one whose patient tone and ease of manner bespoke a daunting command of the subject matter at hand. “It wasn’t far into the twenty-first century that national and corporate interests began to capitalize on the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/327 riches that were available to those who could reach beyond earth’s gravity-well, forming alliances to send mining missions at first to the moon, and then the planet Mars. Some of the initial efforts were disastrous, many lives and fortunes were lost along the way, but determination to overcome adversity and learn from mistakes made subsequent missions more tenacious, more ambitious, and less vulnerable.

By 2250, there were numerous established bases

on the moon and Mars, as well as a fledgling mining belt that had been started by injecting captured asteroids and other space junk into orbit around the moon.

The abundance

of raw materials in space, of rich ores and alloys for manufacture and production, and the huge profits to be made held a powerful allure.

Corporations played upon a

romanticized image of ‘life-amongst-the-stars’ to draw recruits to their cause, with remarkable success.

It

wasn’t just mining companies that got in on the action–– there were companies formed for exploration, companies that did space construction, companies for transportation, shipping, and security. Needs arose for banking firms, legal firms, food services, entertainment, recreation, and even laundry services, just to name a few. “Unfortunately, there were many drawbacks to the space-faring lifestyle; it was rarely a life of effortless

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/328 tasks performed in a sterile environment, with spectacular views of our solar system in the background––as promised in advertisements.

It was more like cramped, smelly quarters

with no windows, the queasiness of zero-gee, food in nondescript packets of goo or freeze-dried pellets, and if you worked out in the vacuum of space, hard labor in a cumbersome-as-hell spacesuit with a tube crammed up your rectum to keep you from shitting yourself. romantic?

How’s that for

The more mercenary individuals who took to the

lifestyle would actually have voluntary colostomies just to make life easier. “There were many health concerns as well––radiation exposure, cancer, muscular and circulatory disorders were quite prevalent in zero-gee life; the overall mortality rate was much higher than the planetside average, but despite these and many more disadvantages, spaceward expansion continued.

There were many individuals who were

willing to step into the unknown of life on a space freighter rather than face the certainty of poverty and oppression, or worse, on earth.

And virtually all were

welcome to start their life anew, regardless of their past. It was guaranteed employment. “Eventually, advances in medicine and technology helped to reinforce this trend.

One such innovation was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/329 task-specific bacteriophages engineered on a genetic level to bolster an individual’s immune, muscular and circulatory systems––in a sense, germs that made you healthier or stronger when they infected you.

These germs were also

integrated into spacesuit life-support systems, engineered to devour human waste and excrete oxygen, making rectumtubes and self-imposed colostomies a thing of the past. They were designed to hinder the aging process, speed healing and recovery from injury.

Existence, not only in

space but also on earth as well, became less prohibitive, more comfortable.

Life expectancy increased, and space

colonies flourished. “Breakthroughs in gravitonic imaging and quark-xenon light technology made probes deeper into our planetary system and beyond possible, gave spaceships better navigational and exploratory abilities.

In 2359, the Mars

Terraforming Initiative was launched with much excitement and fanfare.

Similar projects were started on a few stable

asteroids and one Jovian moon.

For five hundred years the

outward expansion of civilization continued, until humanity’s reach extended to the very edges of our solar system, limited only by lack of inter-stellar flight capability.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/330 “Space travel at this point was still relatively slow– –even with extended life expectancies it could take more than one lifetime to traverse the solar system, and to build a generation-ship able to sustain the lifetimes it would take to reach the nearest stars was beyond our practical capability.

Some claimed that the human race had

reached the limits of its potential, that there was a natural boundary at the edge of our planetary system we were never meant to exceed. “By the beginning of the third millennium, in just a little over a thousand years of space travel, humanity had overpopulated, overrun, used up, polluted, or otherwise defiled the majority of the solar system in the same way it depleted the planet earth.

The Mars Terraforming

Initiative had gone bankrupt, and most other terraforming ventures had failed or were incomplete. upheaval were on the rise.

War and social

The parallels one could draw

between that era and the beginning of the twenty-first century are numerous. “Relief was not far away, however.

As is typical in

human history, the biggest scientific advances usually happen during periods of immense societal stress, and this post-expansion era of decline was no exception.

Great

minds seem to come up with their best ideas when turned

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/331 over the flames of hardship and duress.

The scientific

breakthroughs that occurred between the years 3032 and 3177 are unparalleled in the advances they brought to the human race.

As amazing as the impending colonization of space

might seem to you, the discoveries that occur approximately a thousand years from now will not only affect the entire galaxy, but the very balance of humanity’s existence. “It all began, ironically enough, with a catastrophe. A young Europan researcher named Franz VonKoeppler, while working in a multinational space station orbiting the planet Jupiter, accidentally created an antimatter containment device, and then proceeded to open it up for dissection and inspection, either not believing or not understanding what he’d accomplished. disastrous.

The results were

All matter within fifty thousand klicks,

including almost eighty thousand human lives, vaporized within a billionth of a second as antimatter opened a microscopic black hole that expanded until it ran out of mass to consume, then collapsed upon itself and winked out of existence.

Because of security measures, however,

everything VonKoeppler did up until the antimatter release, along with terabytes of other operational data, had been recorded and tightbeamed halfway around Jupiter to another research station for safekeeping.

All things considered,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/332 the outcome was actually fortunate.

If the young

scientist’s prototype had been much larger, all of Jupiter and its various orbiting bodies would have been sucked out of existence, along with any evidence of what had actually happened.

Instead, the considerable sacrifices of that day

ended up paving the way for inter-stellar flight, though nobody realized it at first. “Within two years VonKoeppler’s older brother Jakob reassembled his sibling’s data and, using holographic models, showed the rest of the scientific community what Franz had actually accomplished.

The VonKoeppler

Antimatter Containment Device, as it was called, was small and unassuming––deceptively simple in design but dangerously powerful in execution.

An averaged sized cell

could propel a starship from one end of the solar system to the other––and back again––at velocities approaching the speed of light.

The industrial applications were numerous,

and because of its destructive capabilities, the military implications were obvious as well.

A pebble-sized chunk of

antimatter could devour an entire planet and all physical matter in its immediate vicinity.

The Device’s containment

shell was relatively impervious, not prone to failure, but there was always the risk of human error or sabotage.

The

antimatter inside was more potent than any nuclear weapon

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/333 ever devised.

Legislation was passed making it illegal to

possess within five hundred thousand kilometers of Earth, and strict regulations were enacted governing access to V-K Containment Devices. “Unmanned probes were sent to the nearest stars–– Cygnus X-1 and Alpha Centauri.

Even though it would take

them centuries, barring unforeseen circumstances, they would actually have the fuel supply to get to their destinations.

Another interesting feature of the V-K

Containment Device was that it could generate a quantum null-stasis, essentially a negative energy field that preserved living organic matter in a suspended state, much the same way a vacuum preserves inert matter.

Laboratory

mice ‘frozen’ within the quantum field for an extended period of time and then reanimated demonstrated no apparent aging, and no detrimental side effects.

For the first time

in history interstellar travel had become more than just a notion; it had entered into the realm of possibility. There was talk of sleeperships––huge freighters designed to carry tens of thousands of hibernating colonists between the stars, guided by artificial intelligence or a skeleton crew of some sort.

While these were still in the design

stage, however, VanKoeppler’s older brother made another leap forward that rendered such musings obsolete.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/334 “The V-K Singularity Drive harnessed the V-K Containment Device’s frightening energy potential as well as its ability to generate black holes––manipulating the fashion in which space folded upon itself, enabling instantaneous travel across thousands of light years, putting the rest of our galaxy within a minute’s reach. The drive didn’t open wormholes in the fabric of space as much as collapse four dimensions down to three in a defined region of space-time.

A ship with the correct angular

momentum could translate through the collapsed region, traveling hundreds or even thousands of light years in a microsecond, flying through it as if through a window.

At

the time it was theorized that the singularity technology, if further refined, could also be used to jump between points in time much like it enabled leaps between the stars. “Even though sound is not audible in the hard vacuum of space, the toppling of the barrier that held humanity back for centuries reverberated across the solar system like a nuclear explosion.

The race for the stars and the

fractioning of the human race began.

Within a few decades

time, settlements sprung up in a half a dozen other star systems.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/335 “While scientific innovation and experimentation slowed as our energies focused on galactic expansion, some researchers continued to push the envelope of ethics and acceptable practices.

One such scientist named Heinerich

Waarduth, working for a fringe religious sect that called itself The Elohim, was successful in creating the first molecule-sized machines that integrated with organic tissue on a cellular level.

These nanophages were capable of

regenerating organs, musculoskeletal systems, and adding mechanical reinforcements, as well as growing a variety of machine-based implants in the human body.

The first

nanoborgs––human cyborgs created with nanonic technology–– were spawned. “Based in the twin star system of Tau-Phaedra you see before you now, The Elohim believe that the human race was genetically engineered by a superior race of alien beings long before the dawn of history.

For centuries they’ve

conducted ethically questionable cloning and genetic experiments shunned by the rest of humanity, seeking proof of our species’ true origin and the immortality that they believe is our birthright.

The perfection of nanophage

technology gave them that immortality, and it gave them the ability to re-engineer themselves in any way they saw fit. Their religious fervor justified the subsequent horrors

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/336 they perpetrated upon themselves and their enemies. Fanatical Elohim adherents willingly bonded themselves with nanotechnology, altering their human form beyond recognition in the quest to extend their life span.

They

also welded millions of slaves with nanophage technology, implanting them with mechanical devices and genetic shackles, forcing them into hard labor.

Clones were used

as test subjects to develop new and more extreme mutations. A new class of elite killing machines––nanoborg soldiers named the Waarduth, after their inventor––was created, increasing the military threat the Elohim posed to civilized space. “As nanophage technology spread across the galaxy, the rest of the human race, comprised mostly of a loosely knit alliance of planetary systems called the United Worlds Federation, took to this scientific innovation in a more temperate manner.

The threatening presence of the Elohim

sect and their monstrous Waarduth soldiers played upon fears of losing touch with one’s humanity. popular aversion to extreme mutation.

There was a

Some used sensory

enhancements and various nanonic datajack implants for recreational or employment applications.

Job specific

improvements were common, but always discreet.

Societal

pressures kept all but a few artistic types and social

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/337 outcasts from modifying their physical forms beyond recognition.

Even so, almost everyone indulged in hidden

systemic improvements, like immunological nanophage bolstering that eradicated most forms of illness. “There was a faction of Neo-Puritan extremists, however, that eschewed any nanonic implants whatsoever, and lobbied successfully for legislation to keep many enhancements deemed dangerous––weapons and so forth–– restricted to planetary orbit and a few military installations planetside. “A smaller and more affluent portion of society opted for limited nanonic enhancements, yet still managed to achieve immortality of a sort, in a more socially acceptable manner.

Although the financial resources

required were considerable, an advanced process known as Mindscan technology could map one’s neural network down to the last synapse and neurochemical relay, and then imprint a self-aware replica on a holographic construct.

In other

words, those who could afford it could live on as computer code in virtual environments, with their memory intact and the ability to experience virtual sensations. Still sentient, by all definitions.

The problem was, even the

most sophisticated virtual realities left mindscan constructs longing for the physical substance of their

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/338 memories, for the heft and feel of familiar objects, for the camaraderie and closeness of old friends and lovers. Without such familiarities, some scanners eventually went the computer equivalent of crazy––or just became downright mean and nasty. “This problem was eventually solved by something called a memory cap: nanophage technology that made it possible to imprint a mindscan on living tissue without destroying its underlying consciousness.

Instead of

growing null-awareness humans or obliterating the mind of a healthy clone––frowned upon by polite society, to say the least––the mindscan of a dying individual could be encoded into a memory cap, which was then implanted into the neural network of a newborn descendant or cloned offspring of that individual.

As the youngster matured, the implant

gradually blossomed, merging one’s intelligence and previous experiences with the consciousness of the youngster.

In effect it created a new and unique

individual, but with the knowledge and memories of the original mindscan––an Integrated Person, with the recollection of many lifetimes. Integrals could keep themselves alive forever, dying in one body and reawakening in another, remembering everything up until the point that they were last scanned and capped.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/339 “Integrals, for the most part, have been keeping the United Worlds Federation functioning as a cohesive whole for many centuries. “As time progressed, the Elohim, secluded in the outreaches of the galaxy, evolved themselves out of normal sexual reproduction; they were so heavily machine-based that they became reliant on cloning what little genetic material was left in their nanonics-saturated bodies to expand their population base.

They began ‘genetic

farming’––raiding outlying colonies and remote mining facilities to capture humans for the harvest of new DNA and organic material. They set up massive breeding programs to provide clones for research and slave armies, culling the most desirable genetic material to create more Elohim ‘offspring’ and Waarduth soldiers. “They are also rumored to have forbidden association with alien entities.

Elohim territory grows, and they

continue their raids, expanding their dark influence toward the heart of the galaxy, toward Earth. “The only thing that has prevented them from launching a full-scale assault on humanity at large is the size of the United Worlds Federation and its combined might, but the balance of power is shifting.

Which brings us up to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/340 the current point in time, or expressed more accurately, the future source of the crisis you now face... ” The scene Eddie was looking at zoomed out, refocused, and once again he was looking at the twin star system TauPhaedra, with its toroid of orbiting debris and the three frozen planets seemingly tethered in place far above.

The

golden rings that encircled each planet were dazzling; they burned a trio of ghostly afterimages that trailed in his vision wherever he looked.

Eddie imagined the learned

professor taking a sip of water as he paused for a moment, and then continued. “A certain Elohim breeding program was intended to explore human psychic ability and its potential to wield weapons in a battlefield type situation.

With the

capability to force-grow mature clones in days, the Elohim could map genetic mutations across thousands of generations in a matter of years, refining and redefining ribonucleic sequences.

The culmination of this experiment produced one

particular clone with a defective psychokinetic mechanism. “Or at least it was thought to be defective at first. “An aging Heinerich Waarduth, the father of Nanonics himself, in the final years of his nanonics-enhanced life, was the first to understand this errant clone’s psychic ability for what it really was: a potential weapon that

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/341 could defeat even the most advanced nanoborg technology. Somehow the errant slave could attune to secure hyperfrequency receptors and then emit some sort of unidentified standing wave that penetrated shielded nanonic particles, scrambling their molecular bonds. words.

Killing them, in other

Where others saw failure, Waarduth saw opportunity.

“It might have been the lifetime he spent experimenting on innocents, or it might have been that despite all the nanonic enhancements he’d undergone, he was knocking at death’s door.

It might have been a sense of

overriding guilt over what his creations had unleashed upon the rest of the galaxy, or the simple desire to see Earth one last time with his own (what was left of them) eyes. Nobody knows for sure.

What is known is that instead of

destroying the clone, Waarduth recognized it as a chance for redemption.

In secret, using the force-grown slave as

a bargaining chip, he contacted the UWF and negotiated the terms of his defection, promising to turn over all his research and deliver an effective weapon against the growing Elohim threat in exchange for asylum. “He never made it, though.

Attempting to escape,

Heinerich Waarduth was discovered and murdered by the very creatures he had created. was destroyed as well.

By all accounts the slave clone

Before its death, however, Waarduth

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/342 managed to hide the clone, or at least the clone’s mindscan––its memory cap––in the one place he thought it would be safe, a place no one would think to look.” The image in front of him shifted, and before it refocused, Eddie knew what he was about to see.

Before the

voice continued, he knew what he was about to hear.

The

familiar, bespectacled face that came into view looked almost as surprised as Eddie felt.

The professorial voice

continued. “Waarduth entrusted the mindscan with your father.” Dad! “And had it implanted in his only son.” Somewhere in a garage, light-years away, Eddie’s heart lurched in his ribcage.

Xavier Coulton’s face filled his

entire perspective from left to right, top to bottom, and then pulled back, revealing blue sky and sand dunes in the background.

Mirrored in the thick bifocals he always wore,

Eddie could see what his dad was looking at––a small whitish cube, something that pulsed and flashed before his eyes.

Pinpoints of light reflected off his dad’s glasses. The voice continued. “Over the centuries Integral scientists have mapped

out not just the dimensions of space, but the dimensions of time as well, plotting out the temporal nodes of our past

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/343 in complicated, four-dimensional holo-glyphs.

Using

advanced V-K technology, journeying to a known place in history has become as easy as pointing to a location on a map. “The average citizen does not have access to such devices, however.

Stringent regulations prevent the

propagation of such technology.

Justification for these

safeguards is simple: while theoretical models suggest that the flow of time has an inertial quality, and that it takes a fair amount of meddling to interrupt or divert it, no one is certain how just much alteration it can tolerate before being thrown off its course entirely.

Small changes in the

past are akin to tossing a pebble in a stream––there is a disturbance, with ripples spreading out and then dissipating, swallowed up by the inexorable current.

For

instance, going back in time and killing one person, let’s say Henry Ford, might delay the invention of the automobile, but not prevent it; within a short period of time, history would stumble back on track, and humanity would eventually be puttering around on some form of horseless carriage.

It is theorized that a large enough

change in the past, however, would alter the entire quantum-temporal flow of space-time, diverting the course of events, ripping the past away from the future with

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/344 potentially devastating and unknown consequences.

For this

reason, time portal technology is even more strictly guarded than the modified antimatter units that are used to create it, and is employed only for observational purposes. “Faced with the alternative of hiding his slave clone in the past, knowing he might not be around to retrieve it, Heinerich Waarduth chose to teleport a fully-encoded memory cap rather than the slave itself.

The memory cap––to be

implanted and hidden for future retrieval––served the dual purpose of minimizing the impact of his actions on the past as well as to hide any trace of the slave’s existence from hostile mindprobes and time-corridor scans. “Due to his groundbreaking research in the field of nanonics and ability to think years ahead of his time, your father was one of the few viable options available to Waarduth.

Because of his open-mindedness he was one of the

few who might understand the implications of what he was asked to do.

His obscure location in early, pre-expansion

history made the chances of discovery––at least in the short term––unlikely.

To protect you and your family, the

memory cap was not to be opened during your lifetime. Federation operatives had the option of retrieving it at any point without your awareness, but the Federation was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/345 betrayed, and Waarduth nanoborgs have translated to your world.” It all seemed ridiculous, all of it: nanoborgs, memory caps and antimatter containment vessels, but he knew every single word was the truth.

It resonated with formations

deep inside his heart, dredging up sudden feelings of dismay and longing for his parents. done?

Mom, you knew!

Dad!

You knew too!

What have you

He recalled the

occasional haunted look on his mother’s face, an expression that surfaced when she thought she was alone, and had a moment to wonder if her senility might have been caused by something other than Alzheimer’s. In front of him, the visual image of his dad was replaced with a silver-grey Mercedes speeding down twilit streets, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, running other drivers off the road.

A body went flying as the car

plowed straight through a red light without even slowing down, missing cross-traffic by inches.

Eddie heard a

sickening thud as the pedestrian struck the hood of the car, then the windshield, before being tossed head over heels.

The Mercedes kept rolling. Witnesses nearby

screamed.

In the pulsing glow of streetlights passing

overhead a hulking creature with flickering red eyes could be seen behind the wheel.

Something about the Mercedes

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/346 sparked a hint of recognition in Eddie’s memory.

He felt

like he was just about to make an intuitive leap when the voice distracted him. “Nanoborg infiltration and mutation is complete. Trace scans have detected the presence of one alpha-borg and at least seven beta-borgs northwest of your current location.

Massive disturbances are being generated from

your temporal corridor, creating instability, indicating an extreme amount of anomalous activity.

A huge quantum rift

in the fabric of time-space is growing, the consequences of which are unknown.” A cascade of images assaulted him then, numerous scenes of chaos and destruction. There was one view of a pile of smoking vehicles blocking the exit to a parking lot, other cars jammed all around, drivers frantically trying to escape a dark tentacled beast that was blazing a trail of melted steel and smoking bodies.

The lot had been crowded; congestion

at the exit now brought egress to a halt.

People were

getting out of their cars, running in all directions. SUVs were attempting to shove their way through the blockage with brute force, crushing fleeing pedestrians and cars into a tighter, more impassable wedge.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/347 With little warning the scene changed.

Now he was

inside an office building of some sort––gray corridors splashed with bright red, people in business attire crowding into a stairwell.

Someone was pushed over the

railing and fell down the narrow shaft to their death. Others were being trampled underfoot.

Nearby, a pair of

twisted elevator doors framed a tall, vicious-looking creature that shot pulses of light from outstretched limbs. One of the deadly beams cut across a picture on the wall portraying a cartoon character with round, black ears and a rodent’s face.

The nanoborg lumbered toward the stairwell,

eviscerating everything in its path. The view shifted again and now there was a wide boulevard, the kind with two lanes going in each direction. Four nanoborgs were walking abreast, one in each lane, their red eyes flickering in unison.

Behind them buildings

burned and storefronts were shattered, felled traffic lights lay across intersections and lampposts lay atop crushed cars.

Broken power lines swayed back and forth

overhead, raining showers of sparks onto the pavement. Dark smoke filled the night air.

A cordon of police was

retreating in front of the advancing quartet, their weapons useless against the heavily armored creatures.

Whenever

they tried to hold their ground and stop the nanoborg’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/348 progress they were cut down by lasers.

Bright bursts of

energy transformed squad cars into piles of slag.

In the

harsh orange glow of an undamaged streetlamp Eddie saw a baby stroller, overturned, the arm of a young child sticking out from underneath. The last scene was a shot of the moon, looking orange and full at first.

As Eddie watched it began to wane,

diminishing until it looked more like three-quarters, then half-full, still shrinking.

At the same time, a huge

crimson orb started to materialize on the horizon, slowly consuming the skyline: a massive, otherworldly sun from some distant universe.

The giant sphere stretched from one

side of his vision to another.

Dark, horrifying shapes

could be seen just below its shimmering surface, clamoring for release.

Although the sight filled Eddie with unease,

he didn’t see its connection to the previous vignettes he’d been shown.

He felt himself slipping out of the trance,

drifting back toward consciousness.

The professorial voice

continued, but now it seemed smaller, more distant, like listening to a telephone held at arms length. “Situation approaches critical. destabilized.

Space-time has become

The Federation cannot risk translation until

quantum disturbances have abated.

Edward Coulton, your

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/349 memory cap integration has been triggered.

Further

information is not available.” The moon started to fade.

“Wait,” Eddie tried to

shout, “What am I supposed to do?” but no words came out. He was suspended in nothingness again, deprived of all sensory input until the voice spoke one last time, so distant now Eddie had to focus all his concentration to hear it. “Molecular nanophage induction complete. software constructs initiated.

Organic

Coralstar zeta-ware version

N-17, informational subroutine complete.”

He felt a

channel closing in his mind. Eddie wanted to scream but couldn’t. now to tell me all of this?

Why wait until

A part of him that had kept

quiet all along spoke up then, and the truth of its response was undeniable. Because you weren’t ready to listen. wouldn’t have believed.

Because you

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/350

22

“My heart breaks each time I think of the burden I have placed upon my family.

At times I feel

the secret driving me insane, pushing me to reveal the depths of my transgressions to others, but I know that that, too, is insanity. has already been pushed to the edge.

Sarah

And Eddie––

sweet, precious, innocent Eddie, with the secrets of the universe hidden in the depths of his mind– –cannot possibly deserve the responsibility I have thrust upon him.

I am tormented by a future

I fear I won’t live to see.

I am blind; so much

of that future has been revealed, and yet I can’t even see the path right in front of my own two feet.

Somehow I believe there are even greater

revelations waiting ahead. safety of my family.

I pray to god for the

I pray for forgiveness.

I

pray for the strength to see this through to the end.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/351 ––From the diary of Xavier Coulton, circa 1978.

The acrid smell was growing stronger by the minute. Dr. Isaiah Otuno rolled up his car window and set the fan to ‘recirculate’ instead of bringing in fresh air from outside.

The crafty, upbeat piano phrasings of McCoy Tyner

filled the passenger compartment.

Otuno could see dark

clouds of smoke rising up to the east and hanging low in the sky, their roiling undersides flashing and glowing from flames that raged beneath. Twenty minutes earlier, when he’d crested the hills overlooking the Valley, Otuno was surprised to be looking down at open fires––he’d counted at least three––burning off to his right, only a few miles away.

The landscape was

aglitter with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, and he could hear the plaintive wail of distant sirens, like the amplified screams of those caught in the chaos. He thought that the fires looked close to his destination, but didn’t let that deter him.

He needed to know what

Eddie’s father had been hiding. The specimen in his shirt pocket was vibrating inside its tiny container.

After discovering the ‘hieroglyph’ on

it in his office, and a few unsuccessful attempts to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/352 contact Eddie by phone, he had the growing conviction that his former student was in trouble somehow.

If so, Otuno

was determined to help in any way he could––he owed as much to his former colleague. The Coulton residence was dark as he pulled up in front, parking behind a large orange DWP truck with its rear doors ajar.

Otuno didn’t see any workers nearby.

Looking up the house, he realized that Eddie probably wasn’t home.

The large, two-story Victorian had an

ominous, threatening look to it, and for a moment he wanted to put his car back in gear and keep driving, away from the house and the fires and the strange specimens.

Away from

the feeling that something very unusual was going on. Maybe he’d take that leave of absence he’d always been threatening to take, go back to Jamaica, and spend a good long while catching up with his family.

Maybe he’d drive

up the California coast, see how much it had changed over the years, and try to lose himself in the redwoods. end, he did none of those things.

In the

In the end, it was

concern for his old friend’s son that made him put the car in park and get out.

He also wanted to find out, once and

for all, what Xavier Coulton had really been up to. Behind him, the sky was lit with an orange glow, but the nearest fire was still a few miles away.

Plus, there’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/353 no wind to fan the flames, so it should be safe here. thought didn’t bring him much comfort, however.

That

The

stagnant air was thick with the smell of burning wood and the noxious taste of petroleum. As Otuno approached the house, he was struck by how much bigger it was than anything else on the block. Oversized windows on the second floor reflected the glowing night sky, and in the pallid orange light the structure seemed to tower over its neighboring counterparts.

That

was always a source of friction, as Otuno recalled, from jealous neighbors who complained that the Coulton’s house was an eyesore, that it was out of place, even though it had been built decades before rest of the houses on the block.

Constructed before the turn of the century, it was

one of the few dwellings in this part of Los Angeles to actually feature a basement level.

More of a root cellar,

as I recall, Otuno thought, an anomaly full of enigmas.

He

touched the specimen container in his shirt pocket with his left hand.

For over a century and against all odds––and to

the dismay of the neighbors––that house had managed to survive the kind of seismic activity that plagued all of fault-ridden Southern California.

Nearby apartment

buildings and houses had been leveled to the ground by some of those tectonic events, but for some reason, the Coulton

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/354 house always seemed to emerge unscathed and undaunted.

In

spite of its size, the builders must have done something right. His foot landed on something round and soft, something that compressed with a light crunching sound.

The

unexpected texture caused him to stumble, and he let out a grunt of surprise.

It was a bird––a dead sparrow from the

looks of it––lying in the middle of the path that led up to the front door, head cocked to one side.

A dreamlike

sensation of déja-vu swept over him, the disquieting feeling of recognition without memory or association. a fleeting moment he wasn’t sure where he was.

For

Then he

noticed that there were more dark shapes scattered about the lawn, and walked over to another one of them.

The

crow’s beak was driven straight into the sod, its neck compressed into the base of its outstretched wings, like it had done a face-plant in mid-flight. his shoe; the body was stiff.

Otuno prodded it with

In the uneven orange glare

from the distant fires he counted nearly a half-dozen such casualties around him, shapes that he’d mistaken for shadows or rocks at first.

This is strangeness upon

strangeness, he thought, and an eerie feeling crept up his spine.

A small voice in the back of his mind maintained

that it was all a mistake, that he shouldn’t be here at

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/355 all, but another, stronger part of him only became more determined to find some answers.

He flashed back to that

fateful day over three decades ago, and remembered stumbling across a number of dead gulls outside the Kley math building, just before encountering a confused and disheveled Xavier Coulton inside.

The birds had been only

a minor weirdness at the time, but now they took on greater significance.

He couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that

events were repeating themselves.

All of the clues seemed

to point back to his old friend, Eddie’s father, the nanotech pioneer. A banshee wail of sirens rose and fell in the distance.

Broken glass crunched underfoot as he mounted

the front steps and knocked on the big oak door.

Hollow,

percussive sounds reverberated through the dark house, answered by nothing but silence. surprise party?

What did you expect, a

Or maybe the people from Totally Hidden

Video to step out and own up to some elaborately staged prank?

Peering through one of the small, wedge-shaped

panes set into the door, he could only see the first few feet of the entry hall, bathed in pink light and murky shadows.

A curved staircase ascended into obscurity, and

next to it an antique credenza held a vase full of dried flowers.

He found the doorbell and rang it a few times,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/356 then knocked once more.

Certain now that no one was home,

he made his way around to the side door. Off to the west, three vertical rows of blinking red lights were visible above the treetops.

Sitting on an open

lot, just one block away, the radio towers were the tallest structures around for miles.

They drew Otuno’s attention

away from the smoke and fires, away from the Coulton house and lawn full of dead birds.

Alternating sections of red

and white girders stretched up to the sky, impossibly thin, defying gravity, giving the simultaneous impressions of both extreme fragility and immense strength.

The towers

had been there for many years, but against the backdrop of tonight’s confusion, they seemed to embody a new sense of permanence, as if they’d been there forever.

Sedate and

impervious, their precision engineering and ordered structure stood in mute contrast to the chaos and destruction looming on the eastern horizon. When Otuno reached the side entrance, his heart skipped a beat. air.

The door was flung wide-open to the night

It looked as if someone had either forced their way

into the house, or had left in a hurry and forgotten to close the door behind themselves.

More likely the former,

he thought, because upon closer inspection he noticed that the doorknob had been sheared clean off, its hardware

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/357 ripped out.

The door itself was slightly askew, almost

torn off its hinges.

The gloom inside the house was

impenetrable, and seemed to pour out onto the driveway and pool around his feet.

Otuno stood in the entrance and

listened for any hint of movement.

Mingling with the

background wail of sirens, he detected the faint echoes of raspy breathing and muffled growls coming from somewhere deep in the house.

He tried to convince himself the noises

were just his imagination, but the conviction that he was alone was slowly evaporating, along with most of the saliva in his mouth. “Hello?

Eddie, that you?

Are you there?”

There was a light switch just inside the open door. He reached in and flicked it a few times, as if once wasn’t enough to prove that the lights weren’t working.

Other

houses along the street exuded the warm glow of life and activity, which made the dark Victorian seem even more unsettling by comparison.

Otuno stepped inside and as his

eyes adjusted to the darkness, noticed a row of cabinets overhanging what was obviously an old washer/dryer combo. He began searching through the nearest cabinet, looking over his shoulder every ten seconds, convinced something was going to step out of the darkness, clamp cold hands around his neck, and pull him deeper into the shadows.

The

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/358 occasional snuffling, smacking sounds were a little bit louder now. “Eddie, you there?” The noises stopped.

Otuno realized that if his was

friend making those sounds, something was seriously wrong. In the dim light it was hard to see what he was looking for, but he knew exactly what the object felt like. It took him a few minutes, but in the third cabinet he found it: cool, cylindrical, and aluminum––with an unmistakable heft.

He clicked on the flashlight and swung

it around the small laundry room, its bright beam coming to rest on the wrecked doorway he’d just come through and the glint of brass hardware scattered across the floor, confirming his suspicions.

The door had been bashed in; he

could see deep gouges and cracks in the wood.

Somebody

broke in here, he thought, wondering what could possibly have the strength to do the kind of damage he was looking at.

A battering ram, maybe.

The thought didn’t do much to

calm his nerves. He crept further into the house, swinging the flashlight around in a broad arc in front and then behind himself, inspecting each room before entering.

The strange

noises had started up again, closer now––wet, smacking,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/359 chewing sounds that echoed off the vaulted ceilings and polished hardwood floors. In the main hallway Otuno pointed his flashlight toward the front entrance.

Broken glass reflected his beam

back in millions of tiny little prisms.

Looking up, he

could tell that most of it had come from the old chandelier hanging in the foyer.

Except for the table with its vase

of dried flowers, the hallway was empty, almost austere looking.

Shards of glass were spread across the floor all

the way back to where he was standing.

The layer of glass

had been disturbed––two parallel lines cut through the evenly spread, glittery mess, running the length of the hall.

It wasn’t hard to imagine somebody’s heels having

made those tracks in the debris, the result of a body being dragged across the floor.

The lines trailed off down the

hall toward the back of the house, the same direction the strange noises were coming from. Walking in the tracks to avoid making any sound, muting the beam of the flashlight with his hands, Otuno inched down the hallway toward the kitchen. slurping grew louder with every tenuous step.

The wet

making those noises was in there.

Whatever was

He sidled down the last

few feet of the hallway with his back against the near wall, attempting to stay concealed from view for as long as

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/360 possible.

When he reached the end he paused for a moment

to gather his courage, then before he could think twice, leapt around the corner with a great yell, unveiling the flashlight and sweeping it across the room. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. The dog––medium sized, mixed breed––was almost as surprised as Otuno.

Lifting its head up from a corpse in

the middle of the floor, bloody entrails hanging from its maw, the animal let out a yelp of its own.

Something about

the beast’s stance appeared to be slightly off-kilter.

It

glanced back at its meal once, then in Otuno’s direction again and either decided it had eaten its fill, or that this aggressive newcomer wasn’t worth the trouble.

Claws

skittering for purchase on blood-spattered tile, the dog scrambled across the kitchen and ran headlong into the far wall before rebounding out a side entrance.

A chunk of

intestine remained caught in the animal’s teeth the whole time, causing a dozen or so feet of ropy tissue to slide out of the dead man’s midsection with a wet hiss.

When it

ran out of slack, the cable of guts pulled taut and snapped like a rubber band, rebounding back toward the mangled corpse, spraying blood and gore everywhere.

Otuno was

overcome by the stench of blood and bowel and something even worse.

The whole scene made his throat clench.

For a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/361 moment he was sure his dinner was about to end up on his shoes.

Dizziness swept over him and he leaned on the

nearest counter for support. It took a few minutes to pull himself back together. The dog was still running around in another part of the house, barking, smashing into things and knocking them over, as if something was driving the poor beast mad.

With

each successive impact the animal’s yelps became more highpitched and panicked, infused with more pain, but that didn’t seem to slow it down any.

After a particularly loud

thud! that shook the floor beneath Otuno’s feet, the scrambling ceased.

He heard only a few plaintive whimpers

and then nothing more. Isaiah Otuno played his light about the kitchen.

If

he needed conclusive proof that the situation here had progressed way out of control, he didn’t have to look any farther.

The corpse’s orange jumpsuit was tattered and

stained, but identifiable––obviously a utility worker that belonged to the truck outside.

What Otuno mistook for

blood at first turned out to be more of a black, tarry substance that pooled about the body in much the same way as blood, but it seemed to be thicker, almost granular, and much, much too dark.

The hungry dog had mauled the man’s

midsection, leaving him flayed open, but Otuno didn’t think

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/362 that had been the cause of death.

The utility worker’s

face showed signs of massive injuries, and half his forehead was caved in.

There were indications of struggle

everywhere: busted cabinets, scattered appliances, even a waffle iron in the middle of the floor.

In the adjacent

study it looked like a truck had been driven through the wall––the bay window in there was smashed in; there were pieces of glass and what looked like the remains of a coffee table strewn all over the place.

Otuno could see

the shattered husk of a laptop computer amidst the debris. In the doorway to that room there was another corpse, also wearing an orange jumpsuit, lying in an awkward pile. Sweet Jesus. There was no sign of Eddie. His first inclination was to contact the authorities and report a double homicide, but by the time he picked up the phone and found that the line was dead, he’d ruled out that option.

He couldn’t afford to become embroiled in a

police investigation, at least not until he was sure that Eddie was okay.

Who do you think would be the prime

suspect anyway, black man?

At best, the police would only

obfuscate the situation and distract him from finding the answers he needed. he hadn’t committed.

At worst they’d arrest him for crimes A small part of his mind argued that

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/363 he could get in even more trouble for being here and not reporting what he’d found, but the overwhelming desire for answers eclipsed such misgivings.

Something was going on

here, something that exceeded the normal scope of understanding and reason.

Otuno knew that to get to the

bottom of it all, he’d have to transcend preconceived notions and habitual thought patterns.

He put the phone

back in its cradle. Looking at the two bodies sprawled on the floor caused his concern for Eddie to spiral to new heights.

He thought

about those tracks in the broken glass––the heel marks going down the hallway toward the front door.

At first

he’d thought that somebody had been dragged into the house; now he realized it was more likely that somebody had been dragged out.

A sinking feeling that he was too late

twisted his stomach. Tiny vibrations emanated from his shirt pocket.

As

Otuno approached the nearest corpse for a closer inspection, careful not to step in any of the viscous slime that surrounded it or the mess that the dog had made, the vibrations grew more intense, as if the specimen in there were reacting to its surroundings somehow.

Interesting

behavior, he thought, for something that’s supposed to be dead.

Curious, Otuno removed the plastic film canister

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/364 from his shirt.

Holding it straight out in front of

himself, he turned in a full circle, making a 360-degree sweep of the room.

When pointed toward the back wall of

the kitchen, the canister’s vibrations seemed to taper off, but when he swung it around to the opposite wall, just to one side of the main hallway, the small container erupted into a frenzy of renewed activity.

Inside, the Guardian

Beetle thrummed and whirred like an angry bumblebee.

For a

moment Otuno was sure the creature was going to bore right through the plastic; he had a mental flash of it bursting out and sinking its sharp proboscis into his wrist, injecting deadly venom into his bloodstream.

The image

caused him to drop the container on the floor with a start. The small cylinder rolled into the shadows, Otuno managing to catch it in the beam of his flashlight just before it disappeared over the edge of the basement steps.

He heard

it bounce a few times as it descended into darkness, and then it was gone. Otuno’s heart was beating fast.

Even after the

cylinder came to rest somewhere below, the hollow echoes of it rebounding down the steps continued in his head, intrusively loud compared to the stillness of the rest of the house. The basement.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/365 Fires, dead birds, and even bodies on the kitchen floor faded from his thoughts.

Suddenly they’d become less

significant than the doorway that yawned before him––a doorway that led down into impossible discoveries and mysterious incidents of the past.

The basement, root

cellar, or whatever you wanted to call it seemed to sing with the promise of revelation.

It beckoned to him as if

some unknown force were exerting its pull on his mind.

As

he approached, Otuno’s pulse raced with anticipation, and not just a little trepidation as well.

In his gut he knew

that whatever he came here for was waiting down there.

The

more he thought about it, the more it made sense: to find the answer, you need to go to the source of the question. Just how prepared he was for that answer was another matter altogether. He stood on the top step, shining the flashlight down the stairs.

He could smell damp earth and mildew wafting

up from below.

The rough-hewn walls were stained and

crumbling in places, and Otuno could see areas where dirt was pushing its way through cracks between the stones. Stacks of boxes and odd shapes shrouded in sheets, looking like offerings at a demon’s yard sale, receded into the darkness.

There were cobwebs everywhere.

From the top of

the stairs he couldn’t see any trace of the specimen

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/366 container.

Good luck finding it down there, he thought,

talk about your needle in a haystack. As it turned out, the specimen wasn’t nearly as hard to find as he anticipated.

Halfway down the narrow

staircase he could hear it: a muted buzzing sound emanating from somewhere in the gloom.

There was so much clutter

packed into the cramped quarters––some of it stacked clear up to the ceiling in haphazard piles––that the beam of his flashlight cast a scatter bomb of twisted and gnarled shadows on the walls around him.

Dark shapes flitted and

danced in the corners of his vision, freezing into tortured silhouettes or dissolving into nothingness when he turned his flashlight on them.

He was astonished by how much

stuff was packed in down here––surely there were more belongings than could be comfortably displayed in one house, let alone three or four.

Maybe I should be more

amazed by what Eddie didn’t find down here, than by what he did.

While logic told him it would be impossible to find

anything in this mess, he knew exactly where he needed to go. The noise seemed to be coming from the far corner of the room, diagonally across from the bottom of the steps. Otuno wondered how the little canister could have bounced so far, or navigated so many piles of junk, since he was

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/367 having his own problems negotiating the clutter.

The noise

kept drawing him on though, a fat buzzing that sounded alternately like a swarm of insects and a high-pitched motor.

It grew louder and more hypnotic with every step.

Otuno had little recollection of scrambling over a jumbled pile of rusty lawn furniture, scraping himself in a number of places, dragging an old baby carriage aside, then crawling under a sheet-covered table on his hands and knees to get to the source of that buzzing. He stood up in a small cleared space and looked around.

It was almost as if a wall of junk had been

erected to seal off this cramped corner from the rest of the basement.

Stained mattresses, old bicycles, tables

turned on end, what looked like an entire furniture set, and various other items combined to form a jumbled barricade that blocked his view back toward the steps. was a madman’s cubicle.

It

The only access point in the

barrier of debris was the thin path he’d managed to force his way through. Breathing heavily, but not just from exertion, Otuno rubbed the side of his abdomen where he’d jabbed it on a piece of exposed metal.

Shining the flashlight down a row

of boxes into the corner, something familiar caught his eye.

A flash of color.

His heart jackhammered inside his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/368 chest, knocking on his breastbone.

A few feet in front of

him, the film canister skittered about on the hard packed dirt like an oversized Mexican Jumping Bean, or a dying hornet.

The noise was so jagged and harsh it sounded as if

the scarab were shredding its own wings, beating itself to death inside that little container.

Tugged by an invisible

string, the small dark object jittered and bounced, making circles on the damp ground. In three strides he was standing over the thing. Leary of touching it with his hands, he put one foot on the tiny cylinder to keep it from bouncing away.

Vibrations

jarred his flesh, sending numb, tingling sensations up his leg.

It wasn’t that painful, but the feeling wasn’t

altogether too pleasant, either. Otuno was more distracted by the wall of boxes next to him––and one box in particular, conveniently set at about eye level.

It was an older design, covered in layers of

dust, stained with mold, but he still recognized the blue and gold pattern.

With a trembling hand he brushed dirt

and cobwebs aside where the bold lettering would reside:

UCLA Department of Biology Do not remove from premises UNDER PENALTY OF LAW

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/369

He paused for a moment to steady himself.

Despite the

dank coolness of the cellar, tiny beads of sweat dotted his brow.

Blood pounded in his ears.

The box itself was not

so remarkable; it was the handwritten label underneath those large block letters that caused Otuno’s heart to skip a beat:

Property of Dr. Isaiah Otuno PERSONAL and CONFIDENTIAL

After twenty years, Otuno still recognized Xavier Coulton’s handwriting when he saw it.

It had an ordered

precision that belied the true character beneath his old friend’s façade of flightiness and eccentricity.

Otuno

knew there were well-thought-out justifications for a lot of his colleague’s random-seeming behavior.

He had little

difficulty imagining Xavier labeling this box and hiding it in the corner of the basement, believing it would be found when the time was right.

It was ridiculous notion––crazy

even––and yet here Otuno was, standing in front of the old crate as if he’d known it was there all along.

It was one

more item that connected to Xavier––that connected him with

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/370 Xavier.

In fact, this was one of the closest things to a

personal message from his old friend he’d ever seen. Standing on his toes, he removed the boxes that were stacked on top of the one he wanted.

They were standard-

size file storage type boxes, and a cascade of sediment slid off each one as he pried them loose from the stack. The first two he set in the corner of the basement.

He put

the third box down on top of the buzzing film canister, smothering its alarm clock drone like a pillow.

The

muffling of that annoying sound was a relief, and he felt a little more clarity return to his thoughts.

Coarse dust

stung his eyes, and he succumbed to a fit of coughing, but it took less than a minute for him to free up the carton with his name on it. The box wasn’t just heavy, it was heavy.

Damn thing

feels like it’s full of car batteries, or bricks, he thought.

There was no way he was going to be able to lift

it without causing some serious damage, both to himself and his surroundings.

Otuno looked around.

There was a sheet-

covered desk wedged into the barrier of debris to his right.

He stumbled once or twice, banging into a few

things, but managed not to knock anything over as he hefted the small table over into the corner.

There was just

enough room to maneuver in the cramped space.

He cut

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/371 through the old, brittle packing tape with one of his car keys, eager as a kid on Christmas day, and pulled back the flaps. As it turned out, the box was full of bricks.

Well,

almost, that is. On top there was an old Playboy magazine––the one with Marilyn Monroe on the cover, that’s how old––in almost perfect condition. Life magazine.

Just below that was a vintage issue of

The oversized periodical’s pages filled the

length and width of the box, hiding the remaining contents. This one’s cover read “A Nation Mourns,” and featured a large, sedate photo of J.F.K. Some kind of misdirection?

Was it some kind of a joke?

A growing sense of

disappointment and alarm began gnawing at his gut.

When he

lifted the magazines out of the box the disappointment turned into bewilderment. Below them were bricks. The box was full of them.

Otuno wasn’t sure whether

to laugh or cry. One by one, he pulled the rough maroon blocks out and turned them over in his hand, examining each one up close in the beam of his flashlight before setting it in a stack on the table next to him.

They looked like ordinary

bricks, but seemed denser, much heavier than normal.

Each

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/372 time he reached in the box and picked the next one up, he was surprised at its unusual heft––many times that of an ordinary brick. And they were cold too, so cold his fingers grew stiff from handling them. With each successive layer of bricks Otuno hoped for something different underneath; each time his hopes were dashed.

Behind him, the whirring buzz of the Guardian

Beetle continued, a grinding mechanical sound, muted but still audible.

He felt lost.

By the time he got to the bottom layer he was ready to admit defeat, and the possibility that his old colleague was a quack after all.

In retrospect, Otuno felt more than

a little embarrassed; he’d made a huge leap of faith based on flimsy circumstantial evidence, and this is where it had gotten him––searching through piles of junk in the forgotten corner of someone’s basement. When there were only about eight bricks left in the box, half of its cardboard bottom exposed, something changed.

It took Otuno a moment to realize that the room

had grown quiet.

The buzzing noise behind him had stopped.

The brick he was holding felt different: lighter––and warmer than all the others.

He turned it over, and his

breath caught in his throat.

There it was, a familiar

pattern embossed in gold on its the rough red surface.

In

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/373 the dim light of the basement it appeared to be backlit, glowing like some kind of futuristic corporate logo.

The

main shape consisted of an oval and two semi-circles bisected by a continuous line, which itself branched off at intervals and sprouted little tears.

It was the

hieroglyph, the strange symbol that Xavier had once drawn on the chalkboard in his office, over thirty years ago. The same symbol that had formed on the back of the Guardian Beetle.

The first time could’ve been written off as

erroneous; the second––a weird coincidence; but now this... this was the drawstring that closed the bag.

This was the

missing piece of the puzzle, the final link in an unlikely chain of events.

Otuno’s dismay and embarrassment were

swept away in a flood of adrenaline, all his scrapes and bruises forgotten.

The sense that he was on the brink of

revelation was as palpable as the smell of damp earth and decay all around. Now he saw that the brick wasn’t a brick at all, but some kind of coarse container, or box, complete with a tiny latch on one side.

With trembling hands he set it down on

the stack of bricks he’d constructed, and thumbed the release. Inside, nestled in copious amounts of soft padding, was another box about the size of a deck of cards, this one

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/374 the creamy-white color of ivory. closer look.

Otuno leaned in for a

It was etched with complicated patterns,

thousands of minute silver hairs running parallel and perpendicular, branching off from each other, interweaving and overlapping at precise angles like a roadmap of some intensely ordered city, or like... Like a circuit board.

Even as the thought occurred to

him he knew it couldn’t be so.

It’s obviously an antique

of some sort, an artifact from one of Xavier’s expeditions. Could be a thousand years old. beauty captivated him.

The object’s intricate

It sparkled in the light of his

flashlight, throwing off patterns of light that danced on the low ceiling and animated the shrouded junk around him. He thought of Xavier’s ill-fated trip to ‘Brahtsprawna’––a place that didn’t exist––and his friend’s claims of discovering evidence of ancient electrical technology. Claims that Xavier had later retracted. Otuno reached for the ivory box. As soon as he picked it up, it erupted in a warm glow of gold light.

Soothing heat radiated up his arm.

There

was a bright flash, and a second later the outline of a glowing humanoid figure was standing in front of him, traced in bright amber light.

Otuno let out a yell and

stumbled back into the stack of boxes behind him.

A large

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/375 metallic platter fell past his head, clattering to the floor with an abrasive crash.

He brandished the flashlight

as if it were a weapon, shielding his eyes from the glare at the same time. The apparition solidified, gaining definition, and its golden corona faded.

Vague shapes clarified into familiar

features: a button down shirt and bowtie under a rumpled lab coat, a balding head sporting thick round spectacles. A moment before Otuno recognized who it was, the gleaming hologram spoke. “Hell of a way to greet an old friend.”

Xavier

Coulton’s face twisted with a wry smile of amusement.

His

British accent was unmistakable, a soothing reminder of days long past.

“Not exactly what you expected to find,

eh?” Otuno was speechless.

The ghostly image shimmered

before him, a three dimensional projection of his old colleague, beautifully rendered, solid-looking yet transparent at the same time.

At first he thought it was a

ghost, some sort of otherworldly manifestation of his friend’s restless spirit.

He had no other associations to

help him process what he was seeing.

With a holographic

neon finger, Xavier pushed his holographic neon glasses higher on the bridge of his nose.

He gestured toward the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/376 barricade of furniture, and Otuno noticed that there was a chair stuck in the mess, covered in cobwebs. “Have a seat, Isaiah.

We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/377

23

There was no blinding flash of light or rush of noise. There was no intense heat or display of colors. no impressive pyrotechnics of any sort.

There were

One moment there

was nothing; the next Eddie was looking over at Suzanne’s bruised face, the edges of her thick hair lit up like a halo in the bright beam of the battery-powered spotlight, her big, dark eyes looking up at him. He was still sitting with his back against the garage door and she was lying on the floor to his left. felt dense and still, warmer than it should be.

The air The

powerful spotlight lit up the whole tool bench side of the room in sharp detail.

To his right, by contrast, the

poster-girl side of the room was cast in deep gloom, high gloss beauties barely visible in the shadows along the wall.

A heavy fetid smell pervaded his nostrils.

And he

noticed something odd: there was no ambient background noise whatsoever, no wind, or crickets, not even traffic.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/378 Considering all that had just occurred here, the complete silence felt a little unnerving. “Eddie?” Suzanne said, her voice sounding confused, bewildered. What was it? “Eddie?

Their eyes met, and Eddie saw something there. Fear?

Hope?

Oh my God.”

believe it.”

She was struggling to sit up.

She coughed a few times.

Her voice was dry and scratchy.

“I can’t Her eyes

searched his face as if she was seeing him for the first time.

“Are you really...?”

She glanced down at the ivory

box still in his hand. At first Eddie was speechless; he wanted to tell her so much, but he couldn’t figure out where to begin.

He

felt responsible for her split lower lip and bruised cheek, for her being caught up in all of this, for her almost getting raped by a...well, by a nanoborg.

How could he

possibly explain his situation and expect her––or anyone, for that matter––to believe or support him?

How could he

put all of that on her now, after he’d put her through so damn much already? Distracted as he was, it took him a few moments to realize that his major aches and pains were completely gone.

Even his stump of a finger, encrusted with dried

blood, felt only mildly uncomfortable; a mild tingling sensation worked its way up his hand.

His head no longer

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/379 throbbed.

He felt as if he’d had a full night’s sleep.

While Eddie took inventory Suzanne stood up and looked around.

She froze when she saw the heap of obsidian bones

on the far side of the spotlight’s beam, then put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes, as if trying to collect her thoughts.

She looked Eddie up and down, taking in his

bloodied visage with a look of awe and concern. you okay?” she asked. suddenly more fearful.

“Eddie are

Then her expression changed, became Before he could reply, she said,

“We have to get out of here now.

Milton’s coming back.

We

don’t have much time.” Milton? For some reason that brought to mind the silver-grey Mercedes bombing through traffic and slamming into pedestrians––heading somewhere with a purpose, a dark, hulking figure behind the wheel.

He heard the professorial

voice saying, “...an alpha-borg and seven beta-borgs...” and that’s when it hit him.

If it had been any other car

besides Mercedes, he might have missed it altogether. Milton’s a nanoborg.

The thought was infused with a

patent truth he couldn’t deny.

It snapped Eddie out of his

stupor like a shot of adrenaline. trying to focus his thoughts.

He shook his head,

He knew Suzanne was right––

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/380 they didn’t have a lot of time––but how the hell could she know that? “I’m sorry Suze, I was in some sort of...” “Trance?

I know.

I saw it.”

She smiled with her

eyes, but he could hear the edges of impatience in her voice.

“That little box was flickering like mad.

would’ve put me under too, if I’d let it. all about it in the car.

Probably

You can tell me

Come on, do you think you can

make it?” There was a pained expression on her face as she attempted to get to her feet.

She staggered, grabbing onto

the front bumper of the police car for support.

Instead of

helping her up, Eddie pulled her back down until they were both sitting on the floor again, face to face. her shoulders.

He grasped

“Yeah, I can make it,” he said, “but not if

I have to carry you out as well.

How badly are you hurt?

Did that thing, did he... did it...” “Did it rape me?” she finished for him again.

“No,

but it nearly choked me half to death, and I guess I’m still a little weak from that.”

As if to illustrate

Suzanne doubled over in a paroxysm of coughing.

When it

passed she straightened up and spat a wad of blood-tinged mucous onto the concrete floor. voice still sounding scratchy.

“I’m okay,” she said, her Looking into his eyes, she

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/381 said, “I’m okay because of you.

I know what you did.

I

know about your gift.” Eddie couldn’t believe what he was hearing; it was all too much.

How could she know about the knot?

you know how I did that?”

“You mean

He gestured to the half-

humanoid, half-alien remains glistening in the artificial light.

“Maybe you could fill me in then, because I don’t

even really know how.” “I didn’t say I knew how you did it,” Suzanne replied, “I said I know what you did, what you are capable of. know about the nanoborgs.

I

I know you have something inside

you, Eddie, something that somebody else wants very badly.” Once again Eddie was speechless. nanoborgs.

I know about the

“How?” was all he managed to stammer.

“There’s no time now, trust me. car.

Milton will be here any minute.”

I’ll tell you in the This time she was

successful in getting to her feet. Eddie stood as well, amazed at how good he felt. steadied her with one arm.

He

“Okay,” he said, “but just

answer one thing for me––where are we?

How in the hell did

you find me here?” “That’s two things,” she said, pulling on his arm. “Come on, we really have to get out of here.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/382 Eddie could tell she was being evasive, that she was using her paranoia to cover for something else. she avoid the question?

Why would

He stood his ground and asked her

again. Suzanne held his gaze for a second, sighed, and then looked away before telling him about how Milton attacked her at the hospital. here, I mean.

“It was all a coincidence, me coming

I didn’t do it to find you, Eddie; I came

here to find Milton––to confront him.

I guess I was a

little out of my mind after what he did to me. to settle the score.”

I was going

Her voice shook with emotion.

“But

I think I’m over that now.” Eddie didn’t quite hear what she was saying at first. It was obvious she was embarrassed by her motives, and realized the idiocy of confronting her attacker, but the underlying meaning of her words took a moment to sink in. “Christ,” he said at last, “This is Milton’s condo.” When she gazed back at him, the fear in her expression told him all the confirmation he needed. any minute, ” she said.

“He’ll be here

Exasperation was evident in her

voice. The Ogborn creature had made a number of references to being under orders, under somebody’s control.

“One alpha-

borg and seven beta-borgs,” the professorial voice had

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/383 said.

The implications reinforced everything Eddie already

suspected.

There was no way that it could be a

coincidence.

The Ogborn-thing brought me back to here, to

Milton’s place. To the alpha-borg’s lair. All of a sudden the poster girls staring out of the shadows to his right had a menacing, rabid glare.

The

thick, putrid stench that hung in the air made him want to vomit. Eddie slid the ivory box back into his shirt pocket. He bent over and picked up the handgun from where it lay in the shadows, after a moment’s deliberation handed it back to Suzanne, and started walking her towards the side door of the garage. faltered. alley.

She stepped unsteadily and her breath

Eddie listened for any noises coming from the

As they moved he asked, “Doesn’t it seem strange

that Milton’s neighbors haven’t responded in any way?

I

mean––in all of this commotion, someone must have heard something.” Suzanne pointed toward the workbench. weak.

Her voice was

“Mrs. Hastings, or ‘Mrs. Wastings,’ as Milton calls

her, lives on that side. stone deaf.

She’s about ninety years old and

Bigfoot himself has been sighted more than she

has in the past few years.

The only indication she’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/384 actually still alive is that her mail never piles up, and the flowers in her window don’t die.”

She nodded toward

the opposite wall, pausing to catch her breath, “Over there are the Housangs, jetsetters who are only around for a month or two in the summer to help satisfy the requirements of their international lifestyle.”

By the time they

reached the door to the alley, Suzanne was panting.

“For

all practical purposes, there are no neighbors, at least no immediate ones.”

Eddie wasn’t sure whether that was good

or bad. The nighttime air felt clean and refreshing.

It also

felt about ten degrees cooler than the stifling, rancid slurry they’d been breathing inside the garage.

Suzanne

was racked by another fit of coughing, and they paused for a few moments in the doorway while she recovered. Before they made it halfway down the path alongside Milton’s garage, the screeching protest of rubber on asphalt announced a car rounding the corner at the end of the alley behind the long row of condos.

Its transmission

whined like a swarm of angry hornets, accelerating in their direction with frightening speed, growing louder and more menacing by the second.

Suzanne glanced at Eddie and

mouthed two words: “It’s him.”

He saw terror blossoming

behind her eyes, the look of a trapped animal.

She slumped

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/385 against him, and he could feel her reluctance as he ushered her back into the overwhelming stench and heat of the garage.

Having been out in the cleansing night air, the

tropical climate and reek of death in the enclosed space was even harder to bear, but there was nowhere else for them to go. Eddie was fairly sure he could handle Milton if he had to; he had an inkling of what to do, but right now he was more concerned about protecting Suzanne.

The knot

didn’t happen instantaneously; if he went on the attack now, she would become vulnerable, and he couldn’t risk letting anything else happen to her.

In his arms, her

bruised and beaten form felt incredibly fragile.

A lump of

raw emotion expanded in his throat; she’d already been hurt enough as a result of his actions––or inaction.

If she

were injured further he’d probably lose his mind. The car was halfway down the back alley and still accelerating.

At the rate it was going Eddie was convinced

it would tear right past their location.

A split-second

later, however, wheels locked up, and with a scream that sounded like the pavement itself was being eviscerated, the vehicle ground to a halt right behind Milton’s condo. Headlights pierced the six small, square windows that ran

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/386 along the garage door.

Eddie crept alongside and peered

through a corner of one of the panes. It wasn’t Milton, after all, or at least not the Mercedes Eddie had envisioned, but that still didn’t afford him much relief.

It was another police car.

A stocky,

balding officer with glasses stepped out of it and hitched up his pants.

He had a sizeable gut, flushed jowls, and

thick arms and legs that suggested more fat than muscle. He looked up and down the alley with an expression of stoic calmness, like he owned all that he gazed upon. “It’s a cop,” Eddie whispered to Suzanne, and thought, did I alert them somehow with the police radio? Leaning back, shoulders shifting from side to side, the officer moved with a swagger as he approached, taking his time.

Eddie thought that was ironic considering the

speed at which the man had driven down the alley toward them.

Probably can’t move too fast on foot, so he

compensates for it with his car.

The cop’s hands were at

his hips, one resting on the butt of his nightstick, the other on the grip of his handgun, as if he planned to use both at once.

Put him in chaps, a leather vest, and a

cowboy hat, and you could plunk him down at the O.K. Corral––he’d fit right in.

No one would bat an eyelash.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/387 “Milton, y’down here?” the cop said with an unmistakable Texas drawl, “Y’goan want some help with this one, stupid son-of-a-bitch.

They found your car.”

have seen the light on in the garage.

He must

Eddie glanced down

at the battery-powered lamp sitting on the floor. “Milton?” the cop called again. The stocky man stopped and looked around, as if he sensed something was wrong.

He stood in the driveway, lit

up by the cruiser’s headlights, sniffing the air, listening to the silence.

Then he drew his pistol and continued

towards the side alley, calling out Milton’s name. The officer’s voice seemed to wake Suzanne up; there was a glint of recognition in her eyes.

She pushed Eddie

aside and peeked out the tiny windowpane, catching a glimpse of the new arrival before he went around the side of the garage. brother-in-law.”

“It’s Mitch,” she whispered, “Milton’s Sidling away from the window, she drew

herself up to full height and took a deep, faltering breath.

“I know how to handle him,” she said.

There was a

hard look in her eyes. Suzanne reached over, grabbed a medium-sized pipe wrench off the workbench and handed it to Eddie. effort made her hiss in obvious discomfort. the door.

The

“Hide behind

I’ll distract him, but you’ll have to take him

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/388 out.”

When Eddie began to protest she put a slender finger

against his lips. short of breath.

“Trust me,” she said, still sounding “We won’t get a second chance.

thing we need right now is to be arrested. he’ll never know what hit him.”

The last

If you’re quiet

To Eddie’s amazement, she

leaned forward and with bruised lips kissed him lightly on the cheek. The kiss caught him off guard; he’d forgotten how resilient she could be.

Even after all the abuse she’d

been through, she was strong, and she could still work her charms.

And despite his severe aversion to bashing

individuals (let alone officers of the law) in the noggin, he knew she was right: they couldn’t afford to be arrested– –arrested being one of the more favorable outcomes if they let Milton’s brother-in-law get the upper hand.

On top of

that, Milton would be here soon, and if they were still here when that happened, all bets were off.

Hefting the

pipe wrench in his good hand, he crept into the shadows and waited. It was easier than Eddie anticipated.

Just like

Suzanne said, when the cop––Officer Mitchell Latham––came to the side door and saw her standing in the light, bruised and helpless, he ignored everything else and stepped inside the garage to confront her.

Eddie had a clear shot at the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/389 back of the man’s head.

For a moment he was worried about

hitting the cop too hard, possibly killing him, but decided it was best to make sure the stout man didn’t get a chance to react, like Suzanne said. the blow.

He put everything he had into

There was a muffled smack, and Mitch crumpled to

the floor like an empty overcoat, a small pool of blood collecting behind his balding head. Eddie knelt, ascertained that the cop was unconscious, not dead, and then bound the man’s wrists and ankles in the hopes of buying them some extra time.

Suzanne waited by

the door until he was done. They fled down the alley, arm in arm, with her relying on him for support.

Outside in the cool, fresh evening

air, Eddie felt like he’d emerged from the stench and humidity of Milton’s garage onto the surface of a different planet.

There was no wind, and the light of the moon cast

a grey pallor on their surroundings.

The calm air was

saturated with a sense of impending doom.

Grim

recollections of recent events hung with him.

At least

three people were dead; two of them in his own home, the other one a police officer. magnitude of events.

Eddie’s mind reeled with the

Threatening images of smoldering

storefronts and overturned cars haunted his thoughts.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/390 Somewhere between the garage and Suzanne’s car, he realized he was still carrying the pipe wrench. Feeling a little lost, he looked up at the sky.

Above

their heads, the moon that had started out the evening ominous and bloated was now less than half-full, and still shrinking.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/391

24

“ ‘Ones near the steps always run away, but the ones down below hold their ground.’

I actually remember saying

that to him, as if I were some sort of expert on insects.” The hologram of Xavier Coulton winked a bespectacled eye at Dr. Isaiah Otuno, who was sitting in a chair just a few feet in front of him. gesture.

There was a hint of humor behind the

“I’m not even exactly sure why I said it, other

than to distract myself from what I intended to do.

It was

too hard to resist, the secret was just too big, and it was affecting my relationship with Sarah.

I was worried that

the toll it was taking on us––on her––would be too great. Eddie was only about eight or nine at the time, but already quite advanced for his years, a deep thinker for such a young lad.

It only seemed fair to tell him the truth.

Hell, I thought, maybe he needed to be told, you know, maybe that was part of the plan.

And telling him, I

thought, would have eased the burden that Sarah and I carried as well.

Regardless of the reasoning, once I got

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/392 it into my head to show Eddie the V-K Box and explain his part in all this, I was determined to do it before any doubts crept in––only something else stopped me before I got the chance.” Otuno thought he understood.

“The spiders?”

Xavier’s radiant visage nodded, and with a gleaming index finger pushed his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose again.

“I remember clearing away the debris, and what

I thought were cobwebs tickling my face.

Before I realized

it the bloody things were all over me, biting me. was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

The pain

The last thing I

recall is my son screaming, and then the lights... well, exploding.” Otuno found himself looking around the dark cellar with suspicion. “Don’t worry, mate, they’re long gone by now,” Xavier added. “You know there’s actually some truth to that little proverb of yours,” Otuno said.

“Most insects will flee

from disturbances, but female Widows are notorious for protecting their webs, and will rush out and bite when threatened.” him.

Intense, intelligent eyes looked straight at

Whenever he leaned back or shifted in his seat those

eyes followed him, and Otuno found himself wondering how it

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/393 was that a non-physical entity such as a hologram could possess the faculties of sight. Xavier went on, “Those spiders were there to stop me, Isaiah.

They weren’t a coincidence, and neither was the

series of events that led you here. was foreseen.

My moment of weakness

All of this,” the glowing figure spread his

shining arms wide, gesturing at the piles of junk all around, but Otuno knew he was referring to the recent series of events “has been foreseen.”

Xavier smiled.

Otuno felt like his head was about to burst.

Here was

his old friend––no, some sort of impossible software construct of his old friend, hovering before him like Marley’s ghost––only this Xavier seemed to be more relaxed, more at ease than he remembered, in addition to having intimate knowledge of current and future events.

Pretty

neat trick for someone who’s been dead over fifteen years. For the better part of two hours Otuno had been listening to descriptions of space colonization and interstellar expansion, of anti-matter devices and extreme nanonicsbased technologies, and how Xavier’s only son was caught up in a struggle between rivaling factions of humanity from the future.

He had to admit the whole thing was a little

hard to swallow.

Any lingering doubts he might have had,

however, were banished by the mere existence of the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/394 glowing, sentient form in front of him.

“Foreseen by

whom?” he asked. Xavier shook his head.

“All’s not revealed, by divine

or design, but the truth in our hearts is reflected in time.” It wasn’t an answer to his question, but Otuno decided to let it slide.

His mind was reeling––there was just too

much information to process. to keep things straight.

He rubbed his temples, trying

It sounded like Xavier was

quoting lyrics of some sort.

Stiffness and fatigue cramped

his muscles; the damp chill of the basement was starting to sink in.

“So as long as these...Waardred...”

“Waarduth. Just call them nanoborgs,” offered Xavier. “...these... nanoborgs are still at large, not only is Eddie in grave danger, but our whole existence is threatened as well?

What did you call it again, a quantum

shift?” “Quantum rift.

Even as we speak the distortion they

create in space-time grows.”

Xavier seemed to sniff at the

air for a moment before looking back at Otuno with a strange expression.

“Come on, we have to get moving.

There are some things we need to do before it’s too late.” Xavier’s spectacles had slid down on his nose again.

He

went to push them back up; then seemed to think better of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/395 it.

Instead he took them off and tossed them toward his

seated colleague.

Otuno flinched.

Before the shimmering

lenses made it a foot from the glowing man’s grasp, however, they vanished into thin air. “What’s the bloody point of glasses?” Xavier inquired, and chuckled. With the ivory artifact tucked into his pocket as instructed, Otuno discovered his friend’s holographic projection had a range of about thirty feet.

If Xavier

lagged behind him beyond that distance, the ghostly image would wink out of existence, only to blink back into view an equal distance in front of him.

Most of the time,

though, his colleague drifted nearby as Otuno made successive trips up and down the stairs, lugging as many of the over-heavy bricks as he could at a time up to his car. Each time they passed through the kitchen Otuno shuddered and looked away from the mutilated corpses. “No one is really sure about the ramifications of a quantum rift,” Xavier was explaining, “it being a theoretical occurrence, up until now.

One hypothesis is

that our plane of existence, stretched across time as it is, coexists simultaneously with multiple other parallel universes.

Although its fabric is durable and can recover

from small rifts, large enough ripples could have a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/396 ‘crossover effect’: a permanent combining or re-shuffling of worlds, as it were, with unknown consequences.

Another

theory is that with enough stress the space-time continuum would just break down, physical laws becoming violated and perverted as cumulative ripples destroy the fine balance of reality.

Our whole existence, past, present and future

would disintegrate into nothing.

The Big Meltdown.

Whatever the case may be, right now quantum disturbances are building up to a breaking point.” the west.

He pointed off to

“That was full earlier tonight.”

Just a crimson shard of the moon could be seen in that direction, as thin and sharp as a dagger, poised above the blinking lights of the radio towers.

Black clouds filled

most of the sky to the east, their undersides tinged with orange and red.

The smell of smoke was growing stronger,

the sirens louder.

As Otuno put another armload of bricks

into the hatchback, distributing them as evenly as possible, he caught a momentary look in his friends eyes, a distracted expression, hearkening back to all those years ago.

What was that?

Does he want the meltdown to happen?

Otuno was breathless from exertion.

He stood and

wiped away the sweat that now dripped down his brow. “There’s one thing I don’t get,” he said, trying to draw his friend out.

“If the memory cap––this integrated

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/397 personality that Eddie possesses––is of such importance, why has it been allowed to lie hidden for over three decades?

Why wasn’t it retrieved immediately by Waarduth’s

intended recipients?”

Even as he asked the question he

realized what the answer must be. “Because once you are able to traverse it,” Xavier replied, “time ceases to be purely linear.” Otuno nodded, thinking to himself.

Then he said, “So

if I had the proper apparatus and enough technical data, I could travel back to the day we met, and then a minute later go back twenty years before that to witness your birth.

The actual order of events in the past becomes

irrelevant.” Xavier touched his index finger to the tip of his nose.

“Bob’s your uncle,” he said with a look of approval.

“To Federation operatives in the future who are tracking my son, perhaps less than a day has transpired since Heinerich Waarduth was murdered and his secret hidden.

They are

attempting retrieval immediately, at least from their perspective.

The thirty-plus years on our end has been but

a blink of an eye to them, so to speak.

Waarduth intended

the delay as sort of a redirect, to camouflage events from potential enemies and draw attention away from the initial

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/398 transfer.

As far as I can tell, though, things haven’t

exactly gone according to plan.” “I thought you said all of this has been foreseen,” Otuno said, closing the hatchback.

The bricks visibly

weighed down the back end of his old car. “And indeed it has, old chap.” “Indeed it has.

Xavier smiled.

That the strategy itself would fail was

predicted all along.

One man’s chaos is another man’s

plan, if you will, but that does not mean all hope is lost, not as long as everyone does their part.”

Once again that

distant expression alit on his brow; then it was gone. “Including yourself.” Otuno was growing tired of riddles.

Xavier’s easy-

going manner seemed to contradict the dire message that events were spinning out of control. said with exasperation.

He turned toward the orange glow

and dark smoke off to the east. way I can stop that? at them?

“Does their part?” he

“You think there’s some

What am I going to do, throw bricks

You said that these creatures...that only Eddie

could stop them.” “True, he’s our only hope, but not without the benefit of something you now have.” friend’s shirt.

Xavier gestured at his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/399 Otuno lifted a hand to his breast pocket, where he held the strange specimen that started all of this. Guardian Beetle?

The

Motionless ever since he retrieved it

from the basement, the insect began vibrating again inside its little container, pulsating half-a-dozen-or-so times like some kind of bizarre pager, then returned to a state of calm.

Otuno got his friend’s point, but it only served

to underscore how much he still didn’t understand.

When he

met Xavier’s gaze that distant, concerned expression was back, only this time the look seemed to deepen, putting Otuno on edge, and Otuno hated that.

Right now he was

flying over uncharted territory, working without a net.

He

wanted––no, he needed to be able to trust his friend. There was one last load to bring up from the basement. As he walked back up the path toward the house, Otuno asked, “Xavier, what is it? all these bricks?

Why in God’s name do we need

Whatever else it is you’re not telling

me... please, I need to...” “Get back,” Xavier said under is breath. “What?” Otuno said, but now he could feel something in the air, a dense, compressed thickness that hurt his eyes and made his ears ring.

The look on his friend’s

shimmering face had gone from vague distraction to something resembling... what was it?

Panic?

Otuno stopped

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/400 in his tracks; a few steps further and things might have turned out much differently. “Get back to the car, something’s coming,” Xavier said, louder this time.

The amber hologram appeared to be

looking above them at the looming house, searching amongst the streetlights and telephone wires.

“Get away! Get away

from the house!” Otuno had never heard such insistence in his friend’s voice.

Before he could muster a reply there was a low thud

and ground pitched sideways beneath his feet.

Suddenly his

face was in the grass; the rich green smell of sod and damp soil filled his nostrils; he could feel moisture on his cheeks.

A second later the earth jerked away from him, as

if trying to shake him loose.

He was suspended in midair

for a horrible moment and then slammed back down on the ground, and this time most of the wind was knocked out of him.

A huge rumble filled his ears.

Somewhere in the

background he thought he heard Xavier’s urgent voice, beckoning to him, and he attempted to crawl in that direction.

Sparks and explosions erupted nearby.

Each

time Otuno struggled to his knees gravity betrayed him, sending him sprawling across the lawn.

There were dark,

feathered shapes in the blurry corners of his vision.

Up

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/401 became down, down became up, and then things started crashing to the ground all around him.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/402

25

Eddie drove Suzanne’s car as she rested in the front passenger seat.

The bruises on her face had taken on a

deep purple hue, and her breathing still sounded raspy. Stains covered her shirt and jeans.

Head turned to one

side, leaning back; she smoothed her hair over her right ear, trying to calm herself.

It was evident how tired she

was despite her best efforts not to show it.

Eddie could

hear it in her voice, see it in her sunken features. As they put distance between themselves and Milton’s condo, she described the surprise and horror she’d felt upon discovering the creature attacking Eddie; how she’d frozen in the doorway, screaming; and how, after being choked unconscious, she’d had an unusual dream of a struggle between powerful foes, a war between forces of reason and destruction.

She had envisioned Eddie caught

between those rivaling factions––one of them fearful of him, both of them striving to get their hands on the gift he possessed.

As she talked, she seemed to recover some of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/403 her strength.

Suzanne explained to Eddie about how, upon

regaining consciousness and seeing the pile of alien bones in the corner of the garage, she realized it hadn’t been just a dream.

She knew that Eddie was somehow responsible

for killing the creature––the nanoborg––and probably saving her life as well. Eddie still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. could she know all this? ‘tutorial’ I just had?

How

Did she somehow absorb the little (Eddie could still hear the

professorial voice saying, ‘Coralstar zeta-ware version N17, informational subroutine complete,’ and the channel clicking off in his mind.) something to her?

Or did that Ogborn-thing do

He told himself it was the former.

On

one hand he felt relief––it was good to have somebody who seemed to understand him, someone who could relate to what he was going through.

In the back of his mind, however,

tiny alarm bells were going off. that something was wrong.

Little voices insisted

He ascribed the feeling to

simple paranoia and tried his best to ignore it.

After

all, wasn’t this what he wanted all along, for her to believe in him?

And it most definitely was a relief.

Up

until now he hadn’t realized how much of a burden all this was to carry alone.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/404 Listening to her account of events calmed his racing thoughts, though, and helped him to get a grip on things. Maybe it was the soothing quality of her voice, or maybe it was some residual effect from the trance of the ivory box, he couldn’t be sure.

What he did know was that the sense

of bewilderment he’d felt for days––perhaps weeks––had been replaced with a kind of detached focus, a sensation of looking down on everything from above.

As Suzanne talked a

few key pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

On more than

just an intuitive level, he began to understand how the knot worked and even how he’d used it to kill the nanoborg. He felt his mind expanding, as if a wall had toppled–– a mental barrier that squeezed his consciousness into a cluttered corner and imposed various cognitive restrictions, keeping him from true understanding.

The

doors had been flung wide open, so to speak, the shackles ripped loose, the caged animal set loose after long years of captivity.

Bold new vistas opened in his imagination,

and the background noise of fear and distraction dissipated, revealing outlines of shapes only guessed at up until now––a whole sub-cellar of shrouded objects.

Among

those shapes were the significant people and events that had led him to this point.

Eddie could see an intense

latticework of connections running everywhere, connections

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/405 between his parents and Dr. Otuno, between Milton and Mitch and Suzanne and himself and even good ol’ Chuck Ogborn, to name just a few.

There was something else amongst those

shapes as well: recollections of a past life filled with pain and suffering and oppression; scenarios from a tragic existence that were now part of his own now, even though he hadn’t physically lived them.

The memories were minutely

detailed, first person perspective scenes of strange experiments, sterile research labs, and hulking nanoborg security guards.

The feeling was so whole, so complete,

that Eddie couldn’t imagine ever having been without it. Even more amazing was that Eddie still felt like his old self, like a thirty-something musician from Southern California, despite the new tableau of experiences that had suddenly been stitched into his. But it wasn’t quite like that, he realized.

Those

experiences had been there all along, drawn upon at times by his subconscious mind, waiting to be uncovered. He thought about the knot, and the meditative state he called throughput, and wondered what other abilities or traits he may have acquired from this unknown source. There was no duality, no sense of other or feeling of a foreign presence in his head.

Actually, he felt better

than he could remember, as if he’d finally been let out

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/406 into sunlight after a long period of being shut up in the dark.

A depth of clarity he’d never felt before

crystallized his thoughts.

With this clarity came a

newfound sense of confidence, as well as an understanding of his obligations, abilities, and the precariousness of the situation he was in. Certain things stuck out in his mind.

The police

radio was significant; he was sure about that.

Without it

the knot would have done little more than short a light bulb, or throw a circuit breaker.

And the specific focus

and shape of the knot required to target the nanoborg itself had not been left to chance, either: for that he’d drawn upon a well of knowledge hidden in the depths of his mind.

Hidden until now, that is. Suzanne was still talking, shaking her head.

She

touched his shoulder, then the dried blood that encrusted the side of his head.

“For what it’s worth Eddie, I’m

sorry for doubting you. I’m so...” “Stop it. there.

It’s not your fault, so just stop it right

You don’t deserve any of this.”

He took his eyes

off the road for a moment and looked over at her bruised and beaten visage.

“If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be

involved in this mess to begin with. nearly got you killed back there.

Christ, Suze, I

The last thing you owe

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/407 me is an apology.”

When he gazed back at the road there

were tears in his eyes. emotion.

He swallowed past a lump of

“I’ve already let you down enough.”

“No, you haven’t let me down––you saved me. see that?”

Her hand returned to his shoulder.

Don’t you “And

besides, everything I’ve done, I’ve chosen to do––I decided to get you from the hospital and put you up at my place, I decided to confide in you, and I decided to go to Milton’s condo tonight, too.

Maybe my choices weren’t always the

best ones, but they were mine to make.

Unlike you, I

haven’t had anything thrust upon me without my knowledge or consent.

I haven’t been forced to carry a burden alone, at

the expense of... ”

Her voice wavered; now there were

tears in her eyes, and a sadness in her tone that he didn’t expect.

“You can’t blame yourself, Eddie.

responsible for this.

You’re not

You were never given a choice.”

Her words were sustenance for the starving; the last few months of confusion and loneliness welled up inside his chest.

His vision blurred.

Eddie pulled over to the side

of the road, just behind a row of parked cars.

Overcome

with emotion and relief, he hugged her for a moment, careful not to aggravate her injuries. embrace without hesitation. was beating fast.

She accepted his

When they separated his heart

“You realize,” he said, wiping his eyes,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/408 “that you saved my life, too, right?

I mean, if you hadn’t

shown up when you did...” She looked at him, a slight furrow in her brow; it only took her a second to catch on.

Shaking her head, she

said, “That was just lucky timing, I guess.”

Then, seeming

to reconsider this, she took his left wrist in her hands. “Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.”

A makeshift

paper towel bandage was wrapped around his knuckles.

Only

a few tiny drops of blood had soaked all the way through. The missing digit gave his hand an oddly disturbing appearance; the remaining three fingers looked somehow askew, making it seem more deformed than it was. bleeding?”

The furrow in her brow deepened.

“It’s not

“Come to

think of it, how are you able to use that hand at all, let alone sit up straight?

By all accounts the shock from a

wound like that should be incapacitating.” “I agree,” Eddie said, “but it doesn’t even hurt. Well, not much, anyway.

Somehow this thing,” he pulled the

ivory box from his shirt pocket, “healed me.” Suzanne took the object from him, careful not to touch his bandaged knuckles.

In the dull orange glow of the

sodium lamps they were parked under, it looked grey and lifeless, like a dirty pack of cards, but she couldn’t help emitting what sounded like an impressed sigh.

She found it

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/409 difficult to believe it was the same thing that had been flickering so madly in Milton’s garage little more than a half-hour earlier.

After turning it over a few times,

Suzanne set it aside and without a word, and removed both of Eddie’s bandages with care and expertise: the one on his knuckles of his left hand, and the one on his other wrist from two nights before.

As she suspected, there was little

evidence of the burn on his wrist.

Even more remarkable

was his severed stump of an index finger.

It was raw

looking and encrusted with dried blood, but already a pink membrane of skin had grown over the remnant of bone that stuck out from the knuckle.

It didn’t look like it would

take much to break that skin, but that it was there at all seemed to defy reason. old!

That wound is less than an hour

Eddie wiggled his fingers and she saw the bone shard

working up and down under the patch of skin, attempting to flex the digit that was no longer attached. her stomach a little uneasy.

The sight made

A few stray tears rolled down

her cheeks. “How is that even possible?” Suzanne asked. expression of awe as well as curiosity.

It was an

She looked out the

passenger-side window to collect her thoughts.

For the

first time, she noticed that the streets and sidewalks were deserted.

According to her watch it was only half-past

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/410 seven.

If Suzanne had to guess, though, she would have

said it was more like half-past midnight.

The only other

sign of life was a stray dog, about a block and a half away, shoving his head in and out of a garbage bag; there were no cars, no pedestrians.

Even the buildings on either

side of the street seemed dark and abandoned.

The queasy,

tickly feeling in her gut remained. When she turned back toward Eddie he noticed that look in her eye again, an expression that was somewhere between hope and fear.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said, nodding

at the small white box on the dashboard, “but I’m beginning to get an idea.”

He described hooking the artifact up to

his Powerbook, and how it had tried to warn him before he was abducted by the Ogborn-nanoborg and brought back to Milton’s.

He explained in greater detail about the trance

he’d experienced in Milton’s garage.

As he talked Suzanne

retrieved a first-aid kit from the glove box and started to wrap his hand in fresh gauze.

“I think that little box is

the V-K device that’s responsible for delivering as well as returning the memory cap,” he said, feeling the pull of his new set of memories, “...my memory cap... to federation hands.

It’s not much of a stretch to think that technology

so advanced could be capable of other things as well.”

He

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/411 held up his maimed hand.

“Nanophage technology.

Things

that seem like magic to you or me.” She conceded that it was plausible. was right in front of her eyes.

Hell, the proof

“Sounds like the kind of

stuff they used to ridicule your father for, back in the day.” “You may be more right about that than you realize,” Eddie said. They sat there in silence for a minute, pondering their situation.

Suzanne felt fatigue and soreness

creeping back into her muscles.

It was getting harder to

lift her head off the headrest.

“So what do we do?

until they come for you?

Hide

The good guys, I mean.”

Eddie shook his head.

“It’s not that easy,” he said,

and reached down to turn on the car radio.

Suzanne opened

her mouth to say something, but the intent look on Eddie’s face made her hesitate.

In less than ten seconds of

scanning the dial he found a news bulletin.

The

newscaster’s typically mechanical, self-important, here’swhat-to-think tone of voice had a frost of panic creeping in around the edges.

Eddie watched Suzanne’s brow furrow,

her eyes darken as she listened to the reports of chaos and destruction happening in the Valley, just over the hill from where they were now.

According to the report, a half-

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/412 mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard was in flames, and a nearby mall and office building were under siege by heavily armed individuals with bizarre armor and advanced weaponry. Local authorities had declared a state of emergency.

The

National Guard and military personnel from a nearby Army base were on the way. Turning the volume down, Eddie explained about the building quantum rift, and how Federation operatives, because of the disturbance in the space-time continuum all this was causing, couldn’t risk intervening until the current nanoborg threat was resolved.

“We need to find

somewhere to get cleaned up and rest, while we plan our next move.

But I don’t think either of our houses are safe

right now.” He was starting to sense something.

Something in the

air, a subtle thickness that resisted his motions, made breathing more difficult.

There was a slight buzzing drone

building in his ears, as if tiny drills were boring into the base of his skull.

Was that the sound of decay and

entropy, the gradual collapsing of the physical universe? Eddie had an idea it just might be. Suzanne didn’t seem to notice anything.

“What about

Sheila?” she said, snapping her fingers, throwing Eddie’s concentration.

Before he knew it she had her cell phone on

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/413 and was calling up her co-worker. first ring.

Sheila answered on the

Suzanne apologized to her friend for not

getting in touch sooner, and they talked for a few minutes. When she snapped her flip-phone shut, Suzanne had a somber look on her face.

“Let’s go,” she said, and then added,

“When she sees the condition we’re in, though, we’re going to have some explaining to do.” Eddie started the car and sat there idling, gazing into the distance. louder.

The buzz in his head was growing

His thoughts were elsewhere.

“Suze, the other

night at your place, you mentioned that there was a VIP patient––top-secret and all that––being treated at the hospital.

You said it was like the secret service had the

floor staked out, but you didn’t know who the patient was.” Suzanne looked at him, confused. “That wasn’t completely true, was it?” “No... not completely,” she said, unsure of where he was going with this. Before Eddie could respond the jagged whining sound ramped up to a feverish pitch.

He had a momentary

sensation of being underwater; there was a great pressure in his lungs and ears. Then the earthquake hit.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/414 He actually saw it coming from several blocks away, rolling on a wave of sparking power lines and exploding electrical transformers.

As it slammed into them a

dissonant barrage of car alarms assaulted their ears, accompanied by a deafening, grinding rumble.

The earth

shuddered and wrenched violently, throwing them about the car interior.

Nearby, a large plate glass window shattered

and the sidewalk heaved and buckled, a flood of pressurized water forcing its way up through the cracks.

Eddie huddled

with Suzanne in the front seat, praying that nothing was going to fall on their car.

He remembered the Northridge

Earthquake in 1994, waking up in bed with the whole room shaking and crashing around him, and how his refrigerator had traveled eight feet across the kitchen floor, disgorging most of its contents along the way.

This

temblor felt every bit as bad as that one, if not worse; it sure seemed to last longer.

Eddie had forgotten how

disconcerting it was to feel supposedly rock-solid earth moving with such relentless, fluid turbulence.

In his arms

Suzanne moaned with dismay, the way a person might moan on a rollercoaster ride they wished they had never gotten on. Just when he was sure it was never going to end, the violent tremors tapered off into slow, broad undulations. For a long moment he felt as if he were falling forward,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/415 sliding downhill, then everything leveled off.

The

piercing drone in his ears diminished into the background once again. He lifted his head and looked around.

Except for the

occasional sparking of power lines, the street was dark. He could hear the sound of running water.

Some of the

nearby buildings appeared to be leaning toward the street. Car alarms sounded all around them.

Within seconds the

plaintive wail of emergency vehicles arose in the distance. Off to the west, where an oversized sun had set hours before, he detected a faint pink glow lining the horizon. The moon that had been full earlier in the evening was nowhere to be seen.

Even though the buzzing in noise was

gone, and the air had lost its dense quality, he still had the sense that things were off balance, that existence was still teetering on the brink of some sort of violent transformation.

It was all happening faster than he

anticipated. Suzanne’s face was pale, her eyes wide. “Christ Almighty!” she said. “Sorry ‘bout dat one, boss,” Eddie responded in a nasally tone of voice, doing his best Chicago Cop impersonation (‘sorry’ sounded like sarry, ‘boss’ like bass), “Dat bratwurst I ate for lunch really did a number

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/416 on me.”

He fanned his hand in front of his nose with a

rueful expression on his face. And just like that the bubble of tension popped. Suzanne threw her head back and laughed.

Surprised at his

own ridiculousness, Eddie couldn’t help but join her.

They

laughed until they were coughing and gasping for air, and then laughed some more.

When they finally stopped it was

as if something unsaid had passed between them, some new level of understanding achieved.

In his mind he could feel

the cascade of someone else’s memories solidifying into one seamless panorama, integrating and becoming indistinguishable from his own recollections.

Even though

he was concerned for her safety and doubtful of his chances of success, he was not fearful anymore. “I think I know what to do,” he said to Suzanne, “I’m just not sure how to pull it off.” “You were asking about the hospital, about our VIP patient,” Suzanne said.

“What does that have to do with

anything?” He tried to tell her, explaining his plans in detail, weaving in his theory about the police radio.

“Somehow it

focused and projected my ability, I understand that on an intuitive level, but I can’t really explain it. know that it works.

It has to work.”

I just

A wealth of new

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/417 experiences guided his thought process.

“There’s no way

I’m going to be able to chase down each one of those nanoborgs individually.

It’s too dangerous, and there’s

not enough time, but if somehow I were able to broadcast a strong enough signal... ” He reminded her about the radio towers near his house, and told her what he wanted to try.

“One way or another, I

need to get access to those towers.” They sat there in silence for a moment looking at each other. “And you think our patient has that access,” Suzanne said. “It’s a government facility of some sort.

From what

you described, I figure your patient’s either a big celebrity––which does us no good––or someone in the government.

That’s the connection I’m looking for.

You do

know who it is, don’t you Suze?” Suzanne looked at him for a moment longer.

One by one

the car alarms shut off, until there was only one on the next block that continued to honk and wail with obnoxious urgency.

“Just explain one thing first,” she said, “one

thing I don’t get.

If these––people?

Beings?––from the

future bothered to explain to you––and maybe me too, by

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/418 accident––what’s going on, why don’t they just tell us how to fix things too?

Why leave so much up to chance?”

“I think it has something to do with free will, and their unwillingness to disturb the past.”

Eddie said.

paused for a second to collect his thoughts. about the quantum rift, as they called it.

He

“You know To warn me

about the situation that I’m in still leaves the course of action up to me, in a way limiting their interference, and their impact on that rift.

We’re already seeing the

effects that heavy-handed meddling can have.” Right on cue, an aftershock struck.

The lone car

alarm down the street had finally stopped, but now it started up again.

Suzanne’s Honda rocked back and forth on

its shocks.

“Like I said, things are already spinning out

of control.

Suze, I need your help.”

Old habits died hard; Suzanne had always taken the nurse-patient confidentiality seriously, but once she became convinced, she was more than willing to help Eddie. Realizing more than just her job was at stake here, she told him all about Senator Landry. widened with disbelief.

As she spoke his eyes

She thought he looked like a

drowning man who saw a lifeline coming his way.

Something

else about him was different too––somehow Eddie seemed more there, more complete than before.

Behind his soft,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/419 sensitive blue eyes was a hardness she’d never noticed before––a calculating, deeper, more serious demeanor. Suzanne felt her heart breaking.

One of the things she had

appreciated most about Eddie was his honesty and boyish innocence, but now all that was changing right in front of her eyes.

Or seemed to be.

He nodded a few times, more to

himself than in reaction to what she was saying.

When she

was done he was lost in thought. “Eddie?” she said.

“Cole?

You still with me?”

“Senator Landry’s sick,” Eddie said, his voice full of disbelief. “Not just sick, Cole. Dying.” All of a sudden his eyes regained their focus.

He put

the car in gear and pulled out into the street, easing the Honda through the torrent of water erupting from the broken water main.

“I need you and Sheila to take me to him,” he

said, with a note of confidence in his voice that she’d never heard before. “Easier said than done.” Suzanne replied.

“Besides,

even if we could get through to him, why in the world would he ever believe us?

I mean, stories of time travel and

nanoborgs and quantum rifts?

That sounds like a pretty

hard sell, especially to a seventy-five year old senator who’s got other things on his mind.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/420 Bands of shadow and light from passing streetlights played across Eddie’s face.

“I think I have something

that’ll convince him,” he said.

As he drove his bandaged

hand reached up and touched his shirt pocket, feeling the rectangular shape there. In front of them, the western horizon was growing brighter; a red line ran along the seam between land and sky like raw flesh under a freshly picked scab.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/421

26

Milton had just finished with Mitch when the earthquake struck.

He was in the upstairs bathroom wiping

blood from his hardened carapace, using a plush white cotton towel to clean his gore-spattered tendrils when the lights flickered and his toiletries began dancing about on the corian countertop.

He grabbed the vanity to stabilize

himself, still lost in the deep euphoric bliss that came from ingesting live flesh and blood, and that incredible cocktail of neurochemicals he’d discovered.

Jagged cracks

erupted across the mirrors that surrounded him on three sides, but the glass didn’t fall. He hadn’t really intended to mutilate his own brotherin-law, but when Milton came home and discovered him there, next to the remains of one of his betaborgs (the asshole cop’s remains, of course, the one in charge of capturing that motherfucker Coulton), a strangely muted combination of anger and––for the first time––fear had caused him to vent on the nearest available target.

He could still see

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/422 the look of crazed bewilderment on Mitch’s face as the sharp probes pierced the base of his skull and thick tentacles squeezed his life away.

The intense orgasmic

effect the brain chemicals had on him wasn’t as earthshattering as it had been at first, for even now more of his flesh and tissue was being replaced with the cyborg equivalent, but the feeling it left him with was just as heady.

Once again, despite the setbacks he’d suffered, he

felt back in control, imbued with self-confidence, handpicked by destiny. The strange signal he’d picked up on earlier––twice–– was Suzanne, he was sure of it. how it was possible, too.

He thought he understood

It had something to do with that

cat of hers, the one he’d killed and then transmuted. Somehow it had, well, gotten to her, for lack of a better explanation.

And the signal was growing stronger.

Maybe

the next time he’d be able to lock on to it, follow it right to his target. In the meantime he had some work to do. Before the motion of the earthquake ceased a thick tentacle whipped out and swept the vanity clean, knocking bottles of aftershave and cologne onto the floor.

A few of

them missed the throw rug and broke open on the tile floor, filling the small room with an astringent, cloying aroma of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/423 rubbing alcohol and cheap fragrance, which vainly sought to combat the stench of motor oil and dead flesh emanating from Milton’s mutated form. The reflection in the mirror staring back at him was hulking and alien, an odd combination of insectile and Rastafarian-gone-wrong features.

His eyes flickered like

an epileptic computer display. Coils of extra flesh dangled from his head, face and neck.

Milton reached down and

grabbed one of these appendages.

As he uttered a series of

short, guttural phrases, the tip of the appendage blazed a brilliant blue-white and then focused into a four-inch laser.

Instead of just being straight, though, the small

beam of light flexed and bent at his will, its shape conforming to his desires. mirror.

He turned back toward the

The white-hot laser light was almost blinding as

it reflected in the numerous cracked panes around him. In his databanks Milton found an image of the base of his skull and the implants he intended to remove: a bundle of hyperfrequency receptors near his spinal column––his Achilles heel, so to speak––the weakness by which his masters controlled him.

It’s so fucking simple, after all.

Makes you wonder who’s running the show, doesn’t it?

He

overlaid the stored image with his current visuals, making depth calculations, vectoring potential angles of incision.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/424 A fresh surge of confidence spiked in his veins, and any remaining self-doubt he dissolved in its wake.

I’ll be

beyond their control, and beyond their reproach.

When I

bag their quarry for them, they’ll have no choice but to reckon with me on my terms. fucking charge.

Then we’ll see who’s in

Then we’ll see who’s really calling the

fucking shots. There was one last preparation to be made.

A long,

fat tendril snaked up before him, and once more Milton recited strange, foreign-sounding words under his breath. The chant had a percussive, staccato sound; dense words were chopped and amputated by rows of sharp teeth.

The new

tendril grew thicker, its end forming into something resembling a head of cauliflower.

Then the cauliflower

began to flicker with red lights, at the same time one side of Milton’s face went dark. His vision split in two.

He saw confusing,

overlapping images of himself and the rest of the bathroom– –one from the eye remaining on his head, the other from the newly-formed eye wavering on the end of the fat tentacle. The beginnings of nausea and dizziness were quickly nullified by self-regulating systems as he got used to seeing from two different perspectives at once. took a few seconds.

It only

Lightening-fast molecular processors

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/425 assimilated the dual streams of visual data.

Now he

wouldn’t have to use a mirror, with its limited imaging capabilities, to perform the delicate task that was at hand. With a diamond-cutter’s precision, Milton lased into the base of his own skull.

He took his time at first.

For

some reason though, the deeper he cut in, the weaker his blade seemed to become, despite his efforts.

The laser

grew weaker, and then flat-out died before making it through the hard, chitinous plates covering his newly formed head.

He never even came close to the fragile nerve

centers that were his target.

As he attempted to reignite

the beam, the shallow incision he’d made healed over, the skin covering it becoming thicker and harder than it was before. Cursing, Milton selected another tool from his torso, incanted it to do the job, programming it to be more powerful than he’d made the first one, and prepared to go in from another angle. A half-hour later he was seething with pain and frustration.

There were numerous deep gouges on his neck,

and punctures along one side of his chin that dripped black slime––all of them in various stages of healing.

There was

a smoldering, jagged hole in one cheek where he’d attempted

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/426 to drill through it into the back of his head; he’d gotten the farthest there before his tool had failed, becoming wedged in reinforced bone just beneath the unblinking, unseeing cluster of his former eye.

In a surge of anger

he’d ripped the instrument loose, taking a good chunk of his face out with it. heal over.

That was going to take a while to

As bone and carapace replaced themselves, his

face became more twisted and misshapen, until he was looking at a sick farce of his already mutated appearance, an inappropriate Halloween mask of gore and gristle.

No

matter what angle he tried, no matter what instrument he used, Milton was unable to get near the bundle of receptors buried in his neck.

Only a few inches under hardened skin,

they might as well have been on the other side of the planet.

His breath was coming in deep, wheezing gasps.

What the hell’s going on?

It’s so fucking close, my ticket

out of this goddamn mess.

What the

motherfuckinggoddamnhell is stopping me?

Even as he asked

the question the answer drifted into his mind like a feather floating on the breeze, the words surfacing in his consciousness, confirming suspicions that had been lurking there all along. Source code.

Core programming.

center of your new being.

Hidden rules at the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/427 For a moment his anger took over. and let loose a thunderous scream. ground shook with an aftershock. glass fell from the mirrors.

Milton leaned back

At the same moment the Tiny shards of broken

One long, dark-shod leg shot

out toward the toilet, pulverizing the ceramic bowl and releasing a flood of water onto the floor.

Then his

nanonic regulators kicked in, involuntary systemic controls that kept his emotional responses in check.

Neural

inhibitors blocked pain and soothed his frustrations. Networks of molecular processors adjusted his heart rate and breathing, balancing natural and synthetic chemicals, fine-tuning hormone levels until he had a grip on himself. Through no volition of his own, Milton regained his composure. For once, however, he was thankful for the tranquilizing effect of his new mechanics.

It enabled him

to achieve a higher level of focus, gave him newfound powers of deductive reasoning; he was surprised to find how much clearer his thoughts were when swept free of blinding emotions.

It also gave Milton an idea of how to get around

the problem he was facing.

The solution might be crude,

the odds of failure considerable, but it could still work. He was becoming obsessed with obtaining freedom at any cost.

Now that he’d taken things this far, the longer he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/428 waited around, the more likely it was his Elohim masters would discover his intentions and really punish him.

There

would be no debriefing, no deliberation––just swift retribution and prolonged agony. that eventuality at all costs.

Milton preferred to avoid

Even if the alternative

were paralysis or death, at least it’d be at his own hands. His search took him back down to the garage.

The

soldering iron was old; a primitive tool by any standards, but with a few modifications, it would be as good as any and probably better than most for the job.

Milton plugged

the old thing into a burnt-out-looking outlet over the table and was pleased to see it begin to heat up almost immediately.

He clamped it into a vise on the workbench so

the pointed end stuck up at an angle. His jaw and mouth worked beneath a ruined, one-eyed face––but instead of reciting alien phrases, this time Milton regurgitated a silver-looking substance and spat it onto the hot end of the soldering iron.

It bubbled and

hissed, then hardened into a gleaming smooth polish that coated the heating element, but didn’t burn away.

The

whole time a cool purple light emanating from Milton’s chest bathed the tool.

Once or twice more he expectorated,

the quicksilver vomit bubbling and hardening in the purple light until the soldering iron was almost completely

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/429 coated.

It looked like an upside-down icicle with a power

cord connected to it––except the tip of this silver shard gleamed with deadly sharpness and a searing heat.

Using

the purple light to rework its surface––with the assistance of some electron imaging––Milton managed to increase the primitive tool’s temperature and strength far beyond its original capacity.

He could feel its warmth radiating off

of his mutilated face.

When he switched over to infrared

imaging, the reading he got was off the charts, as if a miniature hydrogen reactor was burning on the tip of that tool. He looked around the room.

On the opposite wall,

beyond the police car, tool girls gazed out with rapt, idiotic glee.

For the first time in his life, something

about their bland, vacant expressions struck Milton the wrong way. alien.

Something about them seemed, well... almost

Stupid bitches.

From underneath his arm a gnarled

tube shot out and spewed a thick gout of hot liquid across the room.

Where it struck the wall the posters bubbled and

disintegrated, leaving a dark, smoking streak in the drywall behind them.

Stupid fucking bitches.

At his feet were the bones of his first scion, the fucking cop that tried to arrest him.

Briefly he bent down

and examined the contorted remains, wondering what had gone

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/430 wrong, and felt a small tickle of fear eating its way up his enhanced spine.

Here was proof, after all, that he

wasn’t invincible, as reluctant as he was to admit it. Next to the pile of bones were the remains of his brotherin-law Mitch, a shredded mound of tissue still seeping onto the concrete floor. He turned back to the workbench. last shot. meat.

This was it.

His

Fuck this one up and you end up like them.

Dog

If he were off by so much as a hair in either

direction, the results would be ruinous, and there would be no second chances.

Not this time.

He bent over the soldering iron with its molecularly enhanced coating.

As he drew close, the heat emanating

from it was enough to cause a reaction; hardened skin on his face crackled and shifted, but did not burn.

There, in

the garage, hovering over the brilliant burning lance he’d fashioned, sprouting tendrils of hardened flesh, mutated and disfigured, Milton looked like some kind of avant garde yeti paying homage to the Holy Icicle.

With one eye

perched on the end of a ropy appendage, looking back at himself, he positioned his mouth directly over the smoldering tool and opened it wide.

Something fell from

between sharpened teeth and hit the counter with a wet splat––most likely a chunk of flesh or piece of brain

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/431 matter that used to belong to his brother-in-law, but Milton was too distracted to notice.

With his detached eye

he was calculating the precise location of his target––the cluster of receptor nerves buried in the base of his skull– –and trying to line them up with the tip of the deadly, searing implement sitting in front of him.

He reached up

and grabbed his head between his hands, making minor adjustments to its position and angle. Then, with enough force to flatten steel, he rammed his face straight down, shoving the burning iron deep into the back of his mouth and through the soft, unprotected flesh back there.

His murderous red eyes––the one swaying

on the end of its rope, the other one still on his face–– flickered off and on, and then flashed cold, brilliant white, illuminating the entire garage in artificial sunlight.

Razor sharp pain shot through his entire body

and he collapsed to his knees, head spiked to the workbench.

The hot iron sliced easily through the back of

his head, cutting straight into delicate nerve centers gathered there before exploding with energy.

The strength

of the blast knocked Milton backward onto the floor beside his brother-in-law’s remains.

The tool remained lodged in

his throat as he convulsed on the concrete, arms flailing, trying but unable to remove it.

Thin tendrils and fat

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/432 tentacles twitched and writhed.

His eyes slowly dimmed

from blinding flares to deep purple gemstones.

His

breathing came in choked, gurgling gasps. Through a mental cloud of pain and uncertainty, Milton tried to analyze his systems, assess the exact areas of damage, but his systems were shutting down on him.

Not

good, he thought at first, but then preliminary data started flowing back. Although the collateral damage was considerable, what it showed promising. driven straight through its target.

The spike had been

A little too far, to

be sure, and its swath was wider than he’d predicted, but the receptor nodes had been hit. the full extent of the damage.

It was too early to tell

Milton suspected there was

a chance he might die right there on the floor, but at least it wouldn’t be at someone else’s hands. Smoke poured from his mouth, and a fat sizzling noise could be heard deep inside there, as if he’d swallowed a handful of horseflies.

Nanonic systems shorted out by the

blast were finally coming back on line, squelching his pain, resetting nerve and motor function––and shutting down his consciousness at the same time.

Milton felt his

surroundings fade away until he was floating in space. Vital signs were approaching critical.

He could sense

autonomic functions and neural pathways attempting to

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/433 reroute themselves.

Secondary functions were taken

offline, and a veil of serenity and peace slowly settled over him.

For some reason, the last thought he had before

slipping into a vacuum of nothingness was: fly me to the moon.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/434

27

Otuno opened his eyes when the ground stopped moving. Lying five feet away from him was the roof the Coulton house.

At the height of all the shaking he’d almost curled

up on the lawn, overcome by panic and fear; if not for the radiant projection of his old friend, beckoning to him, urging him on, Otuno realized he’d still be fifteen or twenty feet farther back on the lawn––and somewhere under that collapsed roof. Witch, Jamaican style.

A sort of Twenty-First Century Wicked The thought did nothing to slow his

heart, which continued to thump against his breastbone with alarming vigor. All around him, other houses were still standing. Some had cracked stucco or toppled chimneys, and there were a few broken windows that Otuno could see, but a lot of them showed no signs of damage at all.

Eddie’s (and

Xavier’s) old house, on the other hand, had been flattened. There were no piles of splintered wood or broken glass, no walls ripped away, offering unsettling views of formerly

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/435 private interiors, no mounds of rubble.

Instead, the

entire house had simply pitched forward and pancaked on top of itself on the front lawn––the entire thirty foot structure was now no more than ten feet tall, and less than that in a lot of places. Not too far away, whiplash coils of broken phone and cable lines lay on the sidewalk.

A severed power line

dangling from the utility pole sparked and danced on the roof of the DWP truck.

There’s enough voltage in the

chassis of that van to turn someone’s heart to pot-roast right now, Otuno thought, and that’s when he heard the laughter. Not laughter as much as chuckling. He looked back toward the collapsed house, and there on the roof, standing about six feet over him, was Xavier. His friend’s golden image was smiling from ear to ear, filled with evident pleasure despite the complete destruction of his house––the house he’d shared with his wife and raised his son in, the house where he’d been stored on a shelf for the past decade-and-a-half.

Otuno

had a moment to consider that if it weren’t for him, Xavier would still be on that shelf, buried under a ton of debris. The ghostly projection spoke.

“I guess the neighbors

finally got what they wanted, wouldn’t you say?”

Xavier

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/436 made a show of looking around himself, taking in the surroundings, radiant hands planted on glowing hips. now that it’s gone, I think I agree. Otuno didn’t know how to react.

“And

It was an eyesore.” Xavier chuckled some

more, then gestured at the abandoned DWP truck, now seemingly more amused than ever.

“I’d love to hear the

official explanation they come up with when those bodies are found.

That should cause some head-scratching of the

bureaucratic variety.”

The hologram moved to the edge of

the roof and jumped down, landing in the grass next to Otuno without a sound, still smiling.

That distant look

was in Xavier’s eyes. Otuno couldn’t contain himself. you talking about, man?”

“What the hell are

In the heat of the moment the

irony of calling a hologram man was lost on him. people were murdered, Xavier. callous?

“Those

How can you be so damn

And that house was more than just an eyesore;

it’s where your son lives––or used to, anyway.

How can you

act like it’s all a big joke?” At that Xavier paused, and the amused expression evaporated from his face. replaced it.

A look of studied seriousness

He considered something and nodded to himself

before looking back at Otuno.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” he

said, “you’re right, you deserve better.

I got a little

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/437 ahead of myself.

There are some things I haven’t told you

yet, mostly because I wasn’t so sure of them myself.

But

now...” The manifestation of light and sound that was Xavier Coulton appeared to take a deep inhalation of breath, and then went on. “I assure you, Isaiah, they weren’t very good people.” Xavier gestured toward the orange van again.

“I’m not

going to bore you with the long list of crimes and abuses, the robbery, vandalism, and cruelty, besides, there’s not enough time.

Suffice to say that with those two out of the

picture, property theft in the area will go down considerably.

And a number of children will no longer

suffer from predatory sexual abuse.

There’s forensic

evidence in the back of that van that’ll connect it to at least two recent crimes as well––serious ones. “As for our house, well,” he said looking back over the flattened ruin, “it was only temporary, anyway.

I

think it’s about time for both Eddie and I to be moving on.” When Otuno shot him a questioning glance Xavier said, “Come on, let me show you something,” and started walking–– if that’s what you call what a hologram does––around the demolished house toward the back of the property, not even

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/438 bothering to pause when a sizeable aftershock shook the ground.

There was the glint of a smile in his eyes now.

“The most important thing was that the old man was right about all of this.” “Who was right?” Instead of answering, Xavier led him to the back corner of the building.

A section of basement had been

exposed when the house pitched forward, ripping it off of the foundation.

Looking into the hole that had opened up

there, Otuno thought he recognized the small area where he’d discovered Xavier’s box just a couple hours earlier. Most of the cluttered cellar remained under layers of wreckage and debris.

Nearby earth-and-stone had caved in,

making a sort of dirt ramp down to the lower level.

Down

there, near the table Otuno had piled with those over-heavy bricks, something glinted in the beam of his flashlight. He had apprehensions about venturing into that chasm, especially after the recent seismic activity, and Xavier seemed to sense this. “Just step in the same places I do, and you’ll be fine.

Here, I’ll make it easy for you.”

The hologram

carefully picked his path down the incline of fallen earth, leaving shimmering footprints in the dirt behind him.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/439 Against his better judgment, Otuno followed those footsteps back down into the basement to retrieve the last load of bricks.

That’s when he discovered that they

weren’t really bricks after all––at least not the kind you’d use in construction.

There was also a small bundle

of old clothing that Xavier wanted him to grab.

As Otuno

carried everything back up to the car, his old friend explained their next move.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/440

28

Suzanne stumbled as they entered the hospital.

Eddie

held her arm over his shoulder and put his other arm around her waist for added support.

Her bruised lip and face,

although not as swollen as earlier, presented a livid, purple hue.

Every now and then her hand strayed to her

ribs, worrying something there.

She claimed to be fine,

but her voice belied stress and fatigue just below the surface.

Eddie was conflicted about making her do this,

and he wished they’d had some more time to rest.

But there

was no choice––time was running out. They’d taken longer than he’d expected getting cleaned up and changed at Sheila’s apartment.

When they left,

Suzanne and her friend had been deep in conversation, catching up with each other while Eddie drove.

Suzanne

explained everything that had happened to them, trying to convince Sheila to help with Senator Landry.

For her part,

Sheila admitted she didn’t really understand it all, but seeing her friend’s injuries (she seemed both repulsed and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/441 fascinated by Eddie’s amputated, partially-healed finger), and the look in their eyes, had been enough to make her believe something was going on.

The reports of violence on

the TV and radio, as well as the havoc caused by the earthquake only added to the sense that things were offkilter, that events were spinning out of control.

She

agreed to go along with her friends without much of an argument. Distracted as they were, neither Sheila nor Suzanne noticed what Eddie had, although it was damn hard to miss: the western horizon was lit in a deep, bloody red, as if the entire Pacific Ocean were on fire.

Even though the sky

was still dark, there seemed to be a faint, pink glow to the night air.

In addition, he felt a scraping sensation

in the back of his mind, like claws scratching a chalkboard; from somewhere distant came the drone of a thousand scabrous insects threatening invasion. stomach was a little queasy.

His

Things were very wrong

indeed, and only getting worse. In the elevator lobby of the Cedars Sinai, he found a wheelchair and made Suzanne sit down in it.

With their

injuries prominently displayed, and Sheila beside them wearing her nurse’s uniform and ID, they fit right in with the crowd of patients and health care workers milling

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/442 about.

The hospital was more crowded than usual, filled

with a sense of post-earthquake urgency. On the way up to the tenth floor, Eddie felt his pulse quickening, despite attempts to relax and stay focused. His mind was racing.

The biggest worry was that Senator

Landry wouldn’t even give him a chance to argue his case–– that the old man might be too wrapped up in his own illness, or too far gone to be of any use.

He had visions

of a crazy old man with thin white hair hiding in a shadowy, shit-smeared room.

Then a memory––but not one

from his lifetime––supplanted that vision.

In it rows of

machinery burned in a huge cavernous space while large armored humanoids ran about.

Then he saw his own

reflection in the wall as he was pushed toward it, only it wasn’t his reflection, it was someone else’s. an open mouth and a vacant stare.

Someone with

When that idiot

reflection hit the wall Eddie snapped back to the elevator, feeling slightly disoriented, wondering how long he’d been entranced.

The memory cap, he thought, feeling the depth

of new experiences that were now his own bubbling in his consciousness.

As disorienting as it felt, he knew he had

to draw on those experiences, learn everything that he could from them in a short amount of time.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/443 Suzanne was in the wheelchair, staring off into space.

Sheila was looking at both of them with a worried

expression. himself.

Eddie closed his eyes and tried to center

Above all else he needed to approach the senator

with a level head. Outside the elevator, on the tenth floor, they separated. Sheila went first.

“Wait a minute or two, then follow

me,” she said, and walked down the hall and around the corner.

They’d all agreed that Suzanne, even though

familiar to Landry’s security staff, would be likely to arouse suspicion without her uniform and ID.

After a

minute Eddie started wheeling her in the direction Sheila had gone, wondering just exactly what they were up against. A few doors down from room 1015, he found out.

Three

men wearing blank expressions and dark navy suits stopped them in their tracks.

Two of them were young, not much

older than college age, by the looks of them, trying to look commanding but not really pulling it off. few years, Eddie thought.

Give ‘em a

The third man was older and

calmer looking, with close-cropped hair graying slightly at the temples, and dark brown skin.

“Sorry folks, this

area’s off limits,” he said, stepping forward with his hands behind his back.

He looked down at Suzanne as if he

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/444 recognized but couldn’t quite place her.

A moment later

two more suits came walking up behind Eddie, cutting off his avenue of retreat.

There was no sign of Sheila.

Eddie

was sure they were about to be escorted back to the elevator and sent on their way when someone shouted down the hall. “Williams!” The voice was sharp and scratchy and full of authority. “Williams!” The gentleman who had addressed them said, “Excuse me please,” and turned to his younger counterparts to have a quiet word with them.

Then he walked away and entered the

room at the end of the hall.

The younger two stepped in

closer, arms crossed across their chests, making it clear that Eddie and Suzanne were to go nowhere for the moment. A faint garlicky aroma emanated from one of them. A minute later Williams emerged from the room.

He

pointed at Suzanne and, as if she had been waiting for a scheduled meeting, said, “The Senator will see you now.” When Eddie started to wheel her in, the agent held up his hand.

“Just her.

You I’m not so sure about.”

Turning

back to Suzanne with a look of apology on his face, he said, “I’m very sorry about this, ma’am, but I’ll need to pat you down before you go in. protocol.”

Standard security

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/445 “Not a problem,” said Suzanne. looked better.

Eddie thought she

Her voice was still a little shaky, but the

color had returned to her face.

She stood, arms

outstretched as Williams searched her for weapons.

Then,

instead of sitting back in the wheelchair, she insisted on walking on her own.

“I’ll be fine,” she said to a

concerned Eddie, and with a last look over her shoulder she disappeared into the Senator’s hospital room. After she was gone only Eddie remained in the hallway, surrounded by five secret service agents. Williams was obviously in charge.

The one named

“Personally,” he said,

eyeing Eddie up and down, “I think you look like trouble, and I told the Senator so.

Just so you know, this isn’t

how it’s supposed to work.

It’s not like just anybody who

walks in here off the street can...” “Williams!”

The sharp, gravelly voice again.

Eddie

had a pretty good idea who that voice belonged to. The agent turned away, and Eddie heard him say, “Shit!” under his breath.

Turning to one of his

colleagues, he asked, “How come he never uses the comlink?” and without waiting for an answer, walked away.

This time

he was gone for almost ten minutes as Eddie waited in the hall with the other agents.

Eddie was trying to figure out

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/446 which one the garlic smell was coming from when Agent Williams came back out again, looking slightly whipped. “I don’t know what they told him,” he said to Eddie, “but it must have been good.”

He nodded toward the wall.

“Do me a favor and lean up against there with your arms outstretched.”

Eddie did as he was told while one of the

other agents patted him down. A minute later he was being introduced to Senator Landry.

“We found this on him, Senator,” Williams said,

tossing a small white box the size of a pack of smokes on the bed beside the recovering bureaucrat. covers with a soft thump.

It hit the

“I’m not really sure what it is.

Some artifact of some sort, a stash box, maybe, but I’d be careful just the same.” The Senator was sitting up in bed, not in a hospital gown, but a dark navy bathrobe and flannel pajamas.

Tubes

from an IV drip were taped to the back of his left hand, and wires from a bank of bleeping monitors ran into a little hole in the side of his robe.

He had bushy white

eyebrows, but there was no hair on the top of his head–– white, thinning, or otherwise; he was completely bald. Sharp, dark eyes stared out from under hawkish features. Any worries Eddie had that the elder statesman was too self-absorbed or senile (or drugged out; that was another

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/447 possibility that had been nagging at him) were forgotten when he saw the intensity of those eyes.

Within them was a

depth of humanity, understanding, and intelligence; an acknowledgment of pain suffered but not indulged by selfpity.

Right away, he saw why Landry was a leader, someone

who inspired the best in those around him; why he was a man people listened to and believed in; why he could be the kind of commander soldiers would follow to their deaths. “It’s alright, Williams,” the Senator said, “I already told you––Mr. Coulton here has been vouched for.” Suzanne sat on the edge of the bed and Sheila stood nearby. The security agent tried one last time.

“Senator, I

really think proper clearance is––” “I’m not asking you what you think right now,” the bureaucrat snapped. in his eye.

He gazed up at Williams with a glint

“Believe me when I tell you security

clearances aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. Useful, yes, but right now we can’t afford to be slowed down by procedure.

And believe me when I tell you this as

well: when somebody gives you a sponge bath on a regular basis, bonds of trust are formed that transcend most security clearances, and the like.”

Landry winked at

Sheila, and even though she smiled and blushed, Eddie could

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/448 tell there was nothing lecherous about the gesture. Senator truly believed in Sheila and Suzanne.

The

“I

appreciate your conscientiousness, Trey,” he said, “I really do, but I’ll call you when I need you.”

He tapped a

walkie-talkie beside his bed, but Eddie knew that when the time came, Landry would probably just yell as he had before. Agent Williams––Trey––probably realized it too, but he nodded and backed up a few steps anyway.

When he turned to

head out the door, there was a hint of a smile on Williams’ face.

He seemed to be enjoying himself, as if the whole

exchange had been a game.

To an agent who’s as competent

and dedicated as he is, it probably is a game, Eddie thought, albeit a deadly serious one.

He also knew that

Williams would be waiting just outside the door, ready to react on a moment’s notice if trouble presented itself. That there was a deep bond between the agent and the Senator was obvious. Senator Landry turned to Eddie.

“The girls tell me

you know something about these... things... that are attacking us.”

Eddie noticed a television behind Sheila

displaying various scenes of carnage.

The audio was muted.

Every shot contained an image of something burning: grass, trees, cars, and storefronts alike were engulfed like dry

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/449 timber.

An aerial view showed a large section of the

Studio City Galleria’s roof collapsed, and smoke pouring out of it.

On Ventura Boulevard armored Humvees with anti-

tank weaponry had managed to slow the advance of the four seemingly invincible aggressors, but they were still losing ground. Eddie cleared his throat.

“Nanoborgs, Senator.”

Landry gazed at him, one bushy eyebrow raised. “Nanonically enhanced humans, if you will.

Sort of a

welcoming party from a future offshoot of humanity.” The Senator snorted and pointed at the television. “People are dying here, Mr. Coulton,” he said, “Please speak plainly.

I don’t have time for bullshit.”

“Believe me, Senator, there’s less time than you think,” Eddie said.

“I’ll admit that what I’m about to

tell you sounds pretty far-fetched, even to myself, but please, hear me out. all this up.”

I actually have proof that will back

He went on to describe everything he knew

about––from nano-technology and memory caps to the Elohim and Heinerich Waarduth’s defection.

He explained how the

very presence of nanoborgs in their midst was creating a rift in the fabric of reality that could have unforeseen repercussions.

During the lecture Senator Landry listened

without interrupting, occasionally looking over at the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/450 violence on the television. skeptical but receptive.

The look on his face was

Agent Williams had drifted into

the doorway to eavesdrop on what Eddie had to say as well, his expression more inscrutable. Eddie was nearly finished when a cel phone on the bedside table chirruped.

The Senator picked it up it on

the second ring. “Landry.” The voice on the other end of the line was loud and excited sounding, but Eddie could only hear its tone, not the content of what was said. furrowed and his eyes darkened.

As Landry listened his brow The only other thing he

said was, “Right, keep me posted,” and then thumbed the disconnect button on the phone. He turned a hawkish stare on Eddie. very compelling, Mr. Coulton.

“Your story is

Ms. Oliviera here backs up

your claim of having killed one of these things, and it’s obvious the two of you have been through quite an ordeal, so I’m going to be honest with you.

I’ve gotten pretty

good at reading people over the years, and I think you’re telling the truth––or at the very least I think you think you’re telling the truth. for the company you keep.” Suzanne.

And I also have great respect He nodded to Sheila and

“But the problem is that there’s a grave

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/451 situation here, and it may be about to get worse, for reasons other than you describe.”

He paused and took a

deep breath, fingertips touching his shiny forehead.

“I’ve

just been informed that the aggressors on Ventura Boulevard have veered off the main drag and are now angling their way deeper into the valley, directly toward a supposedly secret military storage facility that’s located in a civilian neighborhood.

It may just be a coincidence, though, no

one’s sure at this point.” At that Sheila spoke up.

“Storage facility? What

exactly are they hiding there?” Landry sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. say.

He looked uncomfortable about what he was about to “It’s a communications bunker that houses, among

other things, a cache of smallpox virus, which violates just about every state, federal and international law you could think of.

If that virus gets released into the air

it would result not only in massive casualties, but a whole lot of other problems as well. time is indeed running short.

So, as you say Mr. Coulton, You mentioned you had some

proof, some way to backup your claims?” Eddie thought communications bunker? But he let it slide.

He noticed that Suzanne was sitting on the bed

slumped over, head tilted forward, chin on her chest, and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/452 stepped over to her.

“It’s right there next to you,” he

said to the Senator.

When Eddie put his arm around

Suzanne, she moaned and muttered something under her breath, something strange but familiar.

If he hadn’t been

so distracted by what he was about to do, he might have recognized those bizarre utterances for what they were.

As

it was most of his concentration was on the small ivoryhued box lying on the bed by the Senator’s left hand.

The

rest of his mind was pouring over the intense latticework of new memories, looking for the command, the sequence of images he knew was there. Landry picked up the pallid artifact, seeming to really notice it for the first time.

As he turned it over

in his hand, Agent Williams drifted further into the room, closer to the bed. “Senator, I’d strongly advise against that,” he said. “Advisement acknowledged, Williams,” Landry replied, and continued to inspect the object. a remarkable piece of work.

“You know it’s quite

It looks so ancient, but in a

way it looks... high tech, computerized.

Completely

modern.” “More modern than you realize, Senator,” Eddie said. The Senator understood what Eddie was getting at. nodded his head.

“It’s one thing for you to imply that

He

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/453 it’s an artifact from the future, Coulton, but how does that prove anything?” Eddie ignored the question, and instead extended his left hand.

He could feel the Senator studying the newly

healed stump of his index finger.

He wondered how closely

the Senator had been listening to his story. the hint?

Does he get

Eddie touched the ivory box with his middle

finger, envisioning the sequence of images he’d found in his memory. The dull white object erupted in a complicated pattern of light, and a soft hum filled the air.

Bright silver and

gold lines shot across the ceiling in a complicated pattern.

Senator Landry’s eyes widened with amazement.

On

either side of them both Sheila and Suzanne uttered sighs of relief and wonder.

Eddie felt a surge of confidence, as

well as the sense of a weight being lifted off his shoulders.

His mind was stripped of worries and

distractions. For a moment, that is. His reverie was interrupted when Agent Williams leapt forward with a yell and grabbed the shimmering bundle out of the bureaucrat’s hands.

Before Eddie knew it more

agents had entered the room and were pushing everybody back, forming a protective barrier around the Senator’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/454 bed.

Hands grasped his arms and shoulders, and in the

corner of his vision he saw suits hauling Suzanne and Sheila out of the room.

He had just enough time to marvel

at the number of agents that seemed to come out of nowhere when suddenly the scene flipped and his memory took him somewhere else. The suits became hulking nanoborgs; the cramped space was filled with them.

Sheila and Suzanne were reduced to

pale figures with bald heads and gray jumpsuits.

In the

middle of the room was an ancient looking human sitting on some sort of electronic dais.

Wires ran from his wrinkled,

papery skin to panels on the console around him.

Some of

them twisted up and disappeared into the darkness above. Diodes blinked and flashed everywhere.

The old man looked

straight at him, and Eddie had a sudden flash of familiarity.

He knew this person, this ancient, ashen sack

of skin and bones being kept alive by machinery. the old man from his dreams, or visions.

This was

This was

Heinerich Waarduth––the Heinerich Waarduth, the monster responsible for everything that was happening to them, for all this horror.

Anger coursed through Eddie’s veins.

He

had a moment to ponder that it was all just a memory before an unspoken communication passed between them, and Eddie suddenly realized the truth.

The last piece fell into

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/455 place.

It was so simple he would have laughed, if it

weren’t for the sheer tragedy of it all. heart sank.

Somewhere his

Heinerich Waarduth, the notorious and

groundbreaking researcher, whose name would strike terror in the hearts of billions across the galaxy, was nothing more than a slave himself––a human slave being kept alive by a force wholly alien and sinister.

He was a pawn whose

genius mind was controlled by a power that dripped with malice and sought dominion over all.

The message Waarduth

sent Eddie consisted of only four words, but those words sent a dark chill up his spine.

There was a look of

resignation combined with dread on the old man’s face, as if he’d already foreseen his own unpleasant demise. They’re not human anymore was the message he’d projected into Eddie’s mind.

Somewhere somebody began yelling and

Eddie closed his eyes. When he opened them Senator Landry was shouting at his security staff. into the room.

Suzanne and Sheila were being brought back The suits began disappearing almost as

quickly as they had materialized, and within a minute, the three of them were alone again with the Senator, who appeared to be fuming. himself.

Eddie blinked, trying to steady

The flashback had been vivid, and he felt like he

was about to be propelled back into it at any moment.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/456 Waarduth’s parting words were stuck in his head: they’re not human anymore.

Suzanne seemed to sense his unease and

sidled over to him, put her arm around him.

The feeling of

human contact was simple and wonderful, and helped to anchor him in one place. Agent Williams came in then.

He had taken off his

sports coat and wrapped it around the cause of all the uproar, effectively muting the object’s glow, but a muffled hum could still be heard emanating through the cloth.

As

Williams approached, the Senator’s expression changed––a look of eagerness replaced one of anger and skepticism––and Eddie knew that somewhere in the tumult Landry had figured it out.

Williams handed the makeshift package over.

“I’m sorry about that Senator, but I still think...” “I know, Trey, I know, but I need you to trust me on this one,” Landry said to his senior security aide.

His

voice was gravelly and authoritative, yet sympathetic at the same time.

“I think there’s something going on here

that’s bigger than we realize.” Williams mulled this over for a second, and then said, “There’s just one thing I need to ask our friend, Senator. One question, and I’ll back off. the answer.” Eddie.

You decide if you like

Landry nodded his head.

Williams turned to

“If you’re the intended target of this whole

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/457 attack, like you claim, how come none of these things are coming after you?”

He pointed to the television.

It

seemed like a fair question. “They’re meant as a distraction,” Eddie replied, “to make sure nothing gets in the way of my capture.”

They’re

also marking and preserving bodies for later retrieval–– genetic host material.

What the Elohim call flesharvest he

thought, but didn’t bother to add. little more than drones. to Suzanne.”

“These creatures are

I got away from them once, thanks

He held up his incomplete left hand, used it

to point to the scar on his temple.

“But the one who

created them is far craftier, and he’s still out there, looking for me.

The next time I may not be so lucky.”

In

his mind Eddie saw a silver-grey Mercedes speeding down the road, a dark, ungainly figure in the driver’s seat. His remarks had the desired effect on Agent Williams, who was now glancing about the room as if he expected something to come crashing through the walls at any moment. He tilted his head forward and muttered something into his sleeve. Senator Landry shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’m satisfied, Trey.” nothing.

The agent appeared frustrated but said

Landry turned to Eddie, his eyes glinting with

excitement.

When he unfolded the coat fine bright lines

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/458 shot across the ceiling.

The soft humming noise grew

louder. “Ok Mr. Coulton, what were you going to show me?” the Senator asked, as if he didn’t already know.

When he

looked down eight impossibly thin, luminous threads had emerged from the top of the box, all converging on a delicate silver bead––a translucent spider made from spun glass and diamond.

The gleaming insect started to flash a

sequence of subtle, mesmerizing hues, and a bright golden laser of light extended from its midsection toward Landry’s wrist.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/459

29

Fifteen minutes later, the Senator opened his eyes, smiled, and with some reluctance handed the mysterious little box back to Eddie. show had ceased. remarkable.” words.

The dazzling, hypnotizing light

“Remarkable,” the Senator said, “truly

Other than that he seemed to be at a loss for

Every pore of his body radiated health and

vitality.

He ran his hands over his stomach, then with the

touch of a button elevated the head of the bed into a partial recline.

He unbuttoned his shirt and looked down

at the bare skin of his belly where a smooth, pink scar ran just above his belt line.

A hiss of breath escaped him as

his fingers traced along the six-inch incision.

Two other

smaller cuts in his sides just below the ribcage had healed to barely perceptible white lines.

The only other sound in

the room was a low rumble from the ventilation system and a steady beep from the heart monitor. “I can’t...” he started to say and then seemed to change his mind.

He looked up at Eddie.

“It’s incredible–

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/460 –the pain is gone.

They cut into me five days ago.

Five

days ago!”

Eddie noticed that the Senator’s hand was

trembling.

The old man’s eyes were moist.

“But that’s not

the most amazing thing,” he said. Landry sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

He grabbed the sensors taped to his chest by their

wires and ripped them off in one motion, causing Eddie to wince.

A flat-line alarm sounded from the heart monitor;

almost immediately footsteps could be heard in the hallway running toward them. hungry.

“The most amazing thing is that I’m

Sweet Baby Jesus I’m actually hungry again.”

Eddie heard a muffled sniffling sound behind him.

He

turned to see Sheila wiping her eyes, and noticed that Suzanne was nowhere to be seen; apparently she’d slipped out of the room sometime during the demonstration.

Before

Eddie had time to consider this, a nurse burst in on them carrying a plastic case beneath one arm.

Whatever it was

she expected to see, Landry sitting up on the edge of the bed with tears of joy in his eyes wasn’t one of them. Sheila stepped in then.

“There’s no emergency, Paige.

The Senator’s all right.” Paige looked confused.

She was about to protest, but

something in the Senator’s demeanor––the ease of his posture or glowing health of his complexion––caught her up

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/461 short.

That definitely wasn’t what she expected.

she could recover Sheila went on.

Before

“He is hungry, though;

do you know if Danny’s anywhere on the floor?” At that Paige found her tongue.

“He’s got the food

cart down the hall right now,” she said. her brow knit with reservation.

Eddie could see

“What the heck is going on

here, Sheila?” she asked, leaning over to turn the heart monitor off. Sheila pulled Paige aside, and with Landry’s permission showed her how the incisions in his belly had healed over.

Paige was flabbergasted.

Landry stood up and

arched back, stretching his arms up over his head as far as he could.

He let out a huge grunting sigh of satisfaction

as he did so, languishing in the act.

“I can’t tell you

how good that feels,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to do it for weeks, but there was always this horrible stitch in my gut, a jagged pull, like there was a thorn lodged somewhere in there. is gone.

After the surgery it was worse––but now the pain Now even the arthritis in my knees is gone.

like Sheila said, I’m hungry.”

And

His gravelly voice cracked

with emotion on that last sentence. and turned toward the on-duty nurse.

He cleared his throat “So right now I need

you to bring me two things, Paige, if you’d be so kind: a doctor to discharge me, and some dinner to eat––though not

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/462 necessarily in that order.

The quicker the better, too.”

Again Eddie saw those qualities of likeability and charisma that made Senator Landry a natural leader. way of making you want to believe him.

He just had a

Paige nodded and

ducked out of the room as if all he had to do was ask. Doctor Haynes, the attending physician that night, was incredulous as well when he examined the Senator, but had to admit that the aging bureaucrat’s vital statistics were better than most men twenty years his younger.

There was a

faint trembling in Haynes’s voice; obviously he realized that he was witnessing something amazing.

When Landry

explained that he had urgent matters to attend to, the doctor seemed to understand (the television off to one side, piping scenes of violence into the room may have had something to do with it, Eddie thought).

He scribbled

notes in Landry’s chart faster than he spoke, and agreed to discharge the Senator on the strict condition that he return as soon as the situation allowed for more comprehensive follow-up testing. After the doctor was gone Landry spoke to Eddie between forkfuls of Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes. “You’ve got the floor, Mr. Coulton.

What’s our next move?”

Eddie was just about to respond when the cell phone on the bedside table rang again, its shrill jangle unnerving.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/463 The Senator picked it up, shoveling a pile of carrots and broccoli into his mouth as he listened to the latest report.

If Eddie thought that bombarding a days-empty

stomach with so much food was a surefire recipe to make a person sick, he supposed he thought wrong, at least in the Senator’s case.

Watching Landry gorge himself was making

Eddie little nauseous.

He turned to Sheila while the

Senator was on the phone.

“Where’d Suzanne go?”

“She stepped out to the restroom just as things were getting going with Landry.

I thought she’d be out by now.”

“Is she okay?” “I think so, but I was kinda distracted at the time.” “If she’s not back in five minutes, will you go check on her?” Sheila nodded just as the Senator hung up the phone. “More bad news,” he said.

“By all calculations those...

creatures... are heading straight for the storage depot in the heart of the valley.

Their progress is steady; we’re

able to do little more than slow them down without risking excessive casualties.

It’s estimated they’ll reach the

facility in a little over an hour from now.”

A final

forkful of gravy-soaked vegetables disappeared into his mouth.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/464 Without thinking Eddie glanced at his watch: it was almost eleven pm.

How did it get so late so fast?

There

was something else too, something significant in what the Senator was saying, but Eddie couldn’t quite pin it down. “Can’t you just move it somewhere else?

The smallpox,

I mean,” Sheila asked. The Senator shook his head. left.

“Not in the time we have

The military’s chomping at the bit to call in

fighter jets.

They want to bomb the bastards back into the

Stone Age, but the collateral cost to civilian lives and property would be unconscionable.

I don’t know how long

I’ll be able to hold them off.” Now it was Eddie’s turn to shake his head.

“Tell them

that nothing short of a tactical nuclear weapon will work on these things.

They’d have to level half of LA to stop

them.” The look on the Senator’s face told him that was the last thing he wanted to suggest to his military colleagues. Suddenly Eddie made the connection, and his pulse quickened.

A military communications bunker in a civilian

neighborhood!

Of course!

It had to be.

He asked Landry.

“This storage facility––you also called it a communications bunker. chance?”

Is this facility in North Hollywood, by any Eddie knew of only one communications depot in

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/465 the valley: the radio towers near his home.

The same place

he needed access to. When Landry nodded Eddie revealed the rest of his plan, explaining in depth about the knot, how it seemed to be enhanced by broadcast equipment, and his plan to use the radio towers. and I... ”

“I know it sounds weak, Senator, but Suzanne

He looked back toward the doorway but Suzanne

still had not returned. didn’t work.”

“Neither of us would be here if it

Then Eddie tapped his right temple with his

only index finger.

“I have a lifetime of new memories up

here, sir, all attempting to deal with this phenomena.

On

some level they succeed in understanding it, too––or at least understanding how it interacts with the surrounding environment.

It’s not an exact science, by any means, more

a crude comprehension of my capabilities and limits, but it’s all I have to go on.

All those experiences point to

one thing: to generate the kind of signal strength we need to deal with... what is it, six of those creatures... ” “Six that we know of,” Landry confirmed. “Six betaborgs, and the alphaborg that created them. To stand a chance of stopping them all, Senator, something akin to that broadcast facility is going to be required. Can you get us access, given its security level?”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/466 This provoked a wry grin from the Senator. old man, Mr. Coulton. times.

“I’m an

I’ve been around the block a few

As you may have noticed in the media, not everyone

likes me, and one of the reasons for that is because I always get my way.

That includes getting access to the

things I want access to.”

He gestured to Agent Williams.

“Trey, call ahead to Depot 31 and get advanced clearance for our three guests here.

If anybody gives you any grief,

just pass them along to me.” An aide brought Senator Landry a change of clothes, including dark pressed slacks and a white, button-down dress shirt.

As he stepped into the bathroom to get

dressed, he said, “I only hope we can pull this off before it’s too late.” Eddie glanced at his watch again and thought, we have less than an hour now; it’s going to be close. When Sheila went to go find Suzanne, Eddie found himself all alone in the room, and he felt something change.

The overhead lights suddenly took on a duller,

dimmer hue, and the air seemed to become denser, thicker than usual.

The distant buzzing and scraping he’d noticed

outside had returned; only now it sounded like it was louder.

Closer.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/467 Senator Landry emerged from the bathroom a moment later and he seemed to notice something too.

As an ill

patient in a hospital bed he’d made a commanding impression.

Now, up on his feet and radiating with energy,

dressed in his usual sharp attire, Eddie thought the man cut a truly formidable figure.

The old bureaucrat’s brow

was furrowed and he looked around with suspicion, hawk-like stare, taking in the entire room. Before either of them could say anything Landry’s cell phone rang for the third time.

This conversation was

short; Landry listened for a few seconds and then interrupted the caller. air of finality to it.

His tone was cutting and had an “Authorization denied, Commander.

You are to continue with current measures until further notification, is that clear? minutes.”

I’ll be on site within twenty

The senator hung up the phone amid further

protests from the caller. Agent Williams came back into the room then, hand to his earpiece.

The expression on his face was somewhere

between panic and disbelief. was having fun.

He no longer looked like he

“Senator, there’s something you need to

see,” he said, and approached the wall on one side of the room.

The curtains there covered a row of large windows

that had a westward view.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/468 Eddie felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as Williams pulled the cord and the beige fabric parted. There out to the west, a dark, blood-red orb was pushing its way up over the edge of the earth––a huge, fiery sun that encompassed more than half of the horizon and cast a deep crimson pallor over the landscape.

Because

of its incredible immensity it seemed so close you could almost leap to it, even though it was almost certainly hundreds of millions of miles away.

For all its size and

intensity, however, it didn’t seem to be incredibly bright. The sun, Eddie thought, but not our sun.

He fought to keep

the drawstrings of panic from tightening around his chest. Somewhere in the delicate weave of reality, planes of existence that were never supposed to meet were beginning to collapse in on each other.

The scratching, scrabbling

noise he sensed now felt like the hostile union of two universes relentlessly grating upon each other, wearing each other down.

Or ripping each other apart.

“We need to get to that facility now, Senator,” Eddie said.

“It may already be too late.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/469

30

Suzanne locked herself in the toilet stall and put her head in her hands.

The dizzy feeling was passing, but she

still had maddening images of flickering lights stuck in her vision. The display had been calming, almost soothing at first.

The little box, with its silvery spider and soft,

whirring hum invoked a dreamlike, almost hypnotic state of mind.

Then the laser emerged and plunged into Landry’s

wrist, and a sick feeling hit her all at once.

The

intricate flashing patterns became daggers of light that pierced the back of her brain and burned like hot metal shavings.

She felt them drilling into the base of her

spine, while a harsh sensation erupted in her gut.

There

was dizziness and nausea, and something else as well.

A

weird feeling, like something was gnawing away at her insides, leaving a vast emptiness in its wake. get away from there.

She had to

While everyone else was distracted,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/470 she whispered to Sheila and ducked out of the room, trying to hide her discomfort. The pain in her stomach grew worse.

By the time

Suzanne reached the restroom it was so bad she doubled over and collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath.

When the

cramps turned into convulsions, she realized she was about to get sick as well.

Hot bile rose in her throat.

She got

to her knees and struggled toward the toilet stall, but before she could make it a tight band clamped down on her stomach.

She wretched and gagged but nothing came up.

Three more times her gut heaved; each time brought up little more than spittle.

Then, almost as fast as it had

come upon her, the sick feeling passed.

The pain in her

side diminished. Her wits returned and she was able to take in her surroundings.

There had been no one else in the nurse’s

lav at the time to witness this little episode, which was good; she didn’t want anyone to see her like this.

Still

dizzy, flashing lights dancing in her vision, Suzanne had hauled herself into one of the stalls to get some privacy and collect her thoughts. Now she waited for the annoying flickering to stop. Even though the pain was gone there was still a feeling of dark emptiness in her gut, as if a part of her was missing

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/471 somehow.

The wound in her side where the Cheops-thing had

bitten her felt cold and numb on the surface.

She peeled

back the bandage on her ribs to get a better look, and saw that dark stain still spreading under her skin, reaching up toward her heart.

For the first time she admitted to

herself that something was seriously wrong. A voice in the back of her mind spoke up then, a voice saturated with condescension and contempt.

That’s right,

bitch, it said, you’re fuckin’ dying. “Shut up,” Suzanne murmured to a Milton she knew wasn’t really there.

Spots danced in front of her closed

eyes. His snide laughter echoed in her head.

Not only are

you dying, he said, but you’re going to get your friends killed, as well.

His voice had an eerie persuasiveness;

she found a part of herself––an exhausted, beaten, and hopeless part of herself––starting to believe him. “No.

Shut up.

Go away,” she said.

Why don’t you save them the trouble, and blow yourself away now, cunt. “SHUT UP!

Just get the gun from the car and... SHUT UP!

SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Suzanne yelled

at the empty room and then burst into tears.

The voice of

Milton Creed, having planted sufficient seeds of worry and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/472 doubt, did finally shut the fuck up––for the moment, at least. Suzanne’s whole body was trembling.

“Shut the fuck

up,” she said once more. The lavatory door squeaked open and thunked close. “Suze?

That you?”

Sheila’s voice echoed off the

tiled walls. “I’m in here,” Suzanne replied, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Are you ok?

I thought I heard somebody yelling.”

“I’m fine,” Suzanne said. She was lying, of course. “Just give me a minute.”

She covered the wound in her side

up and tucked in her shirt, wondering what to say about it, if anything. You’re going to get your friends killed. “Eddie wanted me to check on you, make sure you were all right,” Sheila said.

“We’re about to leave, anyway.

We’re heading into the Valley.” You’re going to get your friends killed. Suzanne decided to remain quiet about her injuries. Her problems, after all, were minor compared to everything that was going on right now––earthquakes, nanoborgs, public disturbances, purported quantum rifts and the like.

She

was also becoming convinced that Eddie might still have

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/473 feelings for her.

Calling undue attention to herself would

only further distract him, and probably would get them all killed.

She could wait until this was all over, had to

wait until this was all over.

Suzanne composed herself and

emerged from the stall, flushing the toilet even though it hadn’t been used. Sheila seemed relieved to see her. they’re waiting for us.”

“C’mon girl,

She held out her hand and was

about to say something else when she paused. panicked voices filtered down the hallway. creased her brow.

The echo of A slight furrow

Suzanne sensed it too––a sudden change

in the air, a subtle shift in the light, a tiny variation in the hum of the ventilation system.

They both looked

around the lavatory with suspicion, as if something were about to leap out of one of the stalls. Sheila broke the silence.

“What was that?”

There was

an undercurrent of fear in her voice. Suzanne thought she knew. right.

Let’s get a move on.”

“More proof that Eddie’s She took Sheila’s hand.

As they were leaving the rest room Suzanne caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sinks.

Her

swollen lip and cheek were almost back to their normal size, and even the bruises around them seemed muted. purple areas were now an ugly brownish-black color––an

The

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/474 improvement, in other words, but nothing to write home about. Then something caught her off guard. In the corner of one eye, just as she was turning away, she thought she saw a dull red flicker. flash, and then it was gone.

Just one

She leaned in for a closer

look, peering into the depths of her bloodshot eyes, but there was nothing.

Sheila remarked on how much better she

thought Suzanne looked; obviously she hadn’t noticed anything.

Suzanne couldn’t be completely sure that she’d

really seen it herself.

It could have been a trick of the

light––after all, she still had pulsating after-images of the strange little box burned into the back of her vision. And she was tired, too.

Maybe she’d imagined it.

The more

she thought about it, the more she was sure it must have been her imagination.

She didn’t really want to consider

the other option. “Let’s go.” They left to rejoin Eddie and the Senator.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/475

31

One by one, his systems came back online. Tactile. Taste.

He was lying on something cold and wet. The rancid flavor of blood and burnt flesh

filled his mouth. Olfactory.

The stench of shit and vomit and motor oil

and rotten meat filled the air. Auditory.

Something nearby sparked and sizzled.

The

background noise of traffic rumbled in the distance. Somewhere far, far away, he could hear sirens.

A

helicopter flew overhead. Visual.

His eyes were at floor level. In the

foreground was a corpse and beyond that, a police car.

The

images were oddly split. Other sensors started coming back online then in rapid succession: ultraviolet, infrared, electromagnetic, gravitonic, and more. to reboot.

Weapons and tool systems attempted

The preliminary damage report he received was

not encouraging.

Just about everything had been impaired

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/476 to a certain extent, and some items had been completely destroyed, but Milton didn’t care. I’m alive. He waited for the full report to come back.

There was

no evidence of the hyperfrequency receptors in the back of his head.

No trace of the nodes his masters used to

subjugate him.

He knew that items such as his exoskeleton

were capable of repairing themselves fairly expediently, but only a few of his complex internal systems were capable of the same self-maintenance.

The receptor nodes weren’t

one of them. I’m Free. Something strange coursed through him then, a disconnected feeling of elation, as if he were sensing somebody else’s emotions.

Entwined in those emotions were

dark threads of foreign matter, whispers of alien thoughts and feelings. Alive.

Free.

The last thing to come back online was motor function; Milton’s limbs began to twitch. body jerked and shuddered. to get things under control.

Tendrils hanging off his

It took a few moments for him His eyes––the one dangling at

the end of a fat tentacle and the other one still in his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/477 head––glowed a dark, menacing purple color as he struggled to get to his feet. When he finally managed to stand, his body was hunched forward, leaning off to the left.

He swayed, staggered,

and grabbed onto the workbench to remain upright. didn’t seem to be responding too well.

One leg

Somewhere in the

back of his mind was an image of a newborn calf attempting to walk for the first time.

Large patches of fleshy

tentacles hung lifeless from his sides, as limp as dead snakes. Alive and free.

Fuck you all.

He’d been unconscious for no more than fifteen minutes. Milton discovered he’d fried most of his communications devices as well, making it impossible for him to contact his scion nanoborgs, but he could still sense their presence on the datalink.

They were all

accounted for and closing in on the target he’d picked. Two of the six had taken significant damage, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed. Good. At least the datalink was still functioning.

Milton

opened it up to a full scan, and almost at once picked up the strange blip he’d encountered earlier, only now its

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/478 signal was stronger and more consistent than before, enabling him to scrutinize it in much greater detail.

He

detected animal and human DNA, as well as the existence of pre-mutated nanophage organisms.

The genetic material was

a perfect match for the cat, and a feeling of triumph surged through his armored chest.

The overall signature

was unmistakable––he knew it had to be Suzanne.

He could

almost reach through the datalink and smell her long, dark hair; feel her perfectly round tits. What had started out as a whim (and a cruel joke) had actually paid off.

Somehow the fucking Cheops-thing had

gotten to her, and now she stuck out like a sore thumb, whether she knew it or not. She was also carrying the seeds of her own demise. Milton suspected that her metamorphosis, when it finally came, would be different than it had been for the other victims, but it would still serve his purposes very nicely. The thought made him laugh, which came out sounding more like a fat, wet belch.

Thick dark mucous oozed from the

ruin of his mouth. Within a minute he’d locked onto the signal. on the move, heading north into the Valley.

It was

Chances were

more than likely that she had that fucker Coulton with her,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/479 and if not, she’d be the perfect one to help find that asshole.

Now the blip was heading east, directly toward...

For a moment he couldn’t believe it, but then it made perfect sense.

She was heading straight for the storage

depot, the same place his soldiers were going. be a coincidence.

Of course.

It couldn’t

She’s with him, and he

thinks he’s going to fight them off, stop them somehow. He’s going to make a stand, probably to try to impress her, just so he can get into her pants. anger.

This caused a flare of

Let him try, he thought with amusement, and

continued to follow the blip.

He had an ace up his sleeve

that they weren’t counting on. Initially the nanoborgs he spawned were intended to help collect additional genetic material for the flesharvest, nothing more.

After discovering that Coulton

had escaped, however, Milton had unleashed their full fury as much out of anger and rage as a need to buy some time to think.

He never guessed that they would also serve the

purpose of drawing his prey back in again. Everything was falling into place. Coulton. Find that fucker, and the universe is your oyster. Milton couldn’t tell where his true desires ended and the programming embedded in his cells began.

The obsession

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/480 was overtaking him again.

Behind it there lurked a dark

shadow, something horrifying, filled with strange sensations and impossible textures.

It whispered to him,

bombarding his head with bizarre images.

He felt an alien

presence back there, dark, brooding and deadly.

Then, just

as it was about to overtake him, the specter receded, leaving him with just obsession.

Obsession and anger.

Find that fucker. Thump.

Scrape.

He shuffled toward the police cruiser, not looking back at the remains of his brother-in-law or the cold heap of gleaming bones lying on the floor behind them.

His

entire body canted to the left at an uncomfortable-looking angle.

Dead, useless ropes of flesh hung off his carapace

on that side, some dragging across the ground.

His left

leg wasn’t working so well, either, giving him a limp that accentuated his off-kilter stance. Find that fucker. Thump. Scrape. Thump. Scrape. All the pieces were in motion.

There was nothing for

him to do now but see this through to the end and collect his due.

Two fat tentacles emerged from the tangle at his

sides and fired a blast of white light, vaporizing the garage door in a cloud of smoke.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/481 The keys were still in the ignition.

He hardly took

notice of the burnt-out radio as he backed out of the garage and floored the police cruiser down the alley.

The

blip on his comlink had disappeared again, but he wasn’t too worried.

It would be back, and besides, he knew where

to go. His obsession continued to grow, fueled by a dark, seething rage.

All other concerns became as distant and

muted as the screams of the pedestrians he sped past. Everything else faded away and he was left with only two thoughts that repeated over and over in his mind. Find that fucker. Kill Suzanne.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/482

32

In 1991, during the LA riots, Eddie had been working as a runner in a studio in Hollywood.

On breaks he would

go up to the roof of the building, look out at the fires in the distance, and try to determine how much closer they’d gotten since the last time he’d gone up for a look.

What

had struck him at the time, even more than the chaos, was how the city blocks right around him had been unusually quiet.

A curfew had been imposed.

Few cars could be seen

in the normally busy streets and there were no pedestrians anywhere.

Standing there above everything, all he could

hear was the clack of a nearby streetlight, a dog barking in the distance, and a smoke-laden breeze sighing between the buildings.

The incessant drone of traffic noise that

usually blanketed this town this town had been lifted. Instead of making him feel secure, however, the unusual tranquility had only served to heighten his sense of anxiety.

Anarchy was brewing just a few miles away, edging

slowly toward him.

As luck would have it the civil unrest

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/483 tapered off, and those fires never came much closer, but Eddie never forgot the uncomfortable feeling he had looking out from that rooftop. Now, as they arrived at their destination in the Valley, he felt a nagging sense of déja-vu.

The streets

here were deserted and quiet, most of the nearby houses dark.

Flames roiled just a few blocks away and a wail of

sirens could be heard slapping between the houses. occasional explosion rocked the night.

An

The air was thick

with the smell of smoke and impending doom, and for a moment Eddie was transported back to that rooftop in Hollywood.

He was looking out at the flames, only this

time he knew the fires were coming and that they would be here soon.

They were coming and they were coming for him.

His heart pounded in his chest. It was the huge red sphere pushing its way over the western edge of the world that snapped him out of it.

The

bloody orb spanned half the horizon and throbbed with a sickly radiance, bathing everything in a faint pink glow. Despite its immense size the rogue sun still didn’t seem to offer much illumination.

A buzzing drone of a million

scratching insects filled the air and seemed to drill into the back of Eddie’s eyes.

The sound undulated with the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/484 slow pulsing of the sun.

He looked around, wondering if he

was the only one who sensed it. The Senator stepped out of his limo and came back to Eddie, Suzanne and Sheila, flanked by two bodyguards.

They

were parked in a gravel driveway in front of a nondescript, one-story brick building about the size of a doublewide trailer.

The headlights from Suzanne’s car lit

up the front of the structure, which was faded and weatherworn, and gave every appearance of being defunct or abandoned.

Two small windows underneath a rusted metal

awning stared out like dark, vacant eyes.

Its only other

defining feature was a group of yellowing plastic letters mounted on the brick that read 50 000 WATT STATION. Behind the small building radio the towers shot up into the air––three needle-like shafts, hundreds of feet tall, alternating segments painted red and white.

In the

pink light Eddie could see thick cables anchored at intervals along the length of each tower angling back down toward the ground.

He had to crane his neck to see the

flashing red beacon on the pinnacle of each spire.

The

open lot they sat on was the size of half a city block, and encircled by a chain link fence topped with razor wire. Armored Humvees and a few military vehicles with machine gun turrets mounted on their backs waited for the oncoming

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/485 assault just outside the fence.

A layer of mist hovered

over the open field and spilled out over its perimeter, giving the whole scene an otherworldly feel. Agent Williams, who’d driven Suzanne’s car, got out and joined the rest of them.

He was looking at the flames

teasing the night sky not much more than a block or so away.

He touched his fingertips to the base of his right

ear, tilting his head to that side. A trio of fighter jets ripped by overhead, so low it seemed as if they barely cleared the towers. up with suspicion and concern.

Landry gazed

“What’s the situation,

Williams?” he inquired. Williams looked around. position.

“All our ground units are in

We can slow them down, but not for long.

Another aggressor has joined with our attackers, bringing the total number to six now.

Their progress is steady––

current estimates give us only ten to fifteen minutes before the bunker is under direct assault.” “What about the Air Force?” “Commander Harcourt is still clamoring for a bombing run.

With all due respect, Senator, this is fuckin’ crazy.

It’s far too dangerous for you to be here.” either side of Landry nodded in agreement.

The suits on

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/486 Just then a ball of white fire arced over their heads and plummeted into the field behind the small brick building, followed by a resonant thump and a bright flash. Ten minutes!

Eddie glanced at his watch and realized that

it had stopped working; the hands were frozen at 11:25. What time is it now? Landry shook his head. not to be here, Trey.”

“It’s far too dangerous for me

There was a glint of buoyancy in

the old man’s eye that gave Eddie hope. by Landry’s strength and resilience.

He was astounded

At least somebody was

confident with their chances of success.

The Senator

continued, “What’s the casualty estimate?” “It’s bad, sir,” Williams said.

“Ballpark figure of

fifty-to-sixty fatalities and at least twice that number injured, with reports of more coming in.

Most of the

casualties are from the initial onslaught.

The Guard has

managed to evacuate most of this area over the past few hours, which has actually helped to keep the numbers down since then.” Landry rubbed his bald head.

“Bad, news, but it could

be worse,” he said, looking at the huge pulsating orb rising above the earth to the west.

It was half exposed

now, and threatened to swallow the sky.

There seemed to be

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/487 dark shapes boiling just under its immense surface.

“Far

worse.” Eddie’s heart was racing.

With each pulse the

drilling noise in his head grew louder. The seven of them followed a pair of tire ruts that led behind the brick hut, where a rusted roll-up door was hidden from street view.

Here they could see the entire

open lot, which Eddie guessed was about the size of two soccer fields set side-by-side.

The three radio towers

lined up one behind another from this angle, so it looked like there was only one of them.

A sizeable brushfire was

now burning out in the middle of the field, about a hundred yards away.

It flickered through the layer of mist that

covered the open expanse. When they reached the door a spotlight came on, and Eddie had no difficulty imagining the camera––probably just beneath the blinding light––that was conveying their image to a security office somewhere.

There was a metallic thunk

and a creak, and the roll up door grated open.

A short,

squat figure came out and ushered them inside.

In there,

where one might expect a stuffy old office piled with archaic literature and old radio equipment, gleamed walls of stainless steel.

The space was mostly empty and just

wide enough for a truck to back into.

A bank of video

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/488 monitors displayed the facility grounds from various angles.

Eddie realized they must have been on camera long

before the spotlight came on. Below the monitors a bulletin board was mounted on the wall.

Some photographs thumb-tacked there caught Eddie’s

eye, and he stepped in for a closer look.

Four snapshots

showed an aerial view of the depot and radio towers, the open lot they sat on sticking out like a sore thumb in the midst of the developed city blocks all around.

A large

symmetrical design had been cut into the long grass around the center radio tower, some kind of weird symbol or hieroglyph.

It reminded Eddie of crop circles he’d seen in

tabloid newspapers and TV shows that touted alien mysteries.

There was something familiar about its shape,

something that nagged at his memory.

Eddie flashed back to

his dream from the previous night, scattered images of trudging through waist-high grass and then waking up naked on his front lawn.

In that dream he’d seen this same shape

from high atop one of the towers. Did I do that?

Did it really happen?

In the back of his mind he was pretty sure

he had, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. The guard who had greeted them all––a pudgy, officious little man with short dark hair whose nametag read ‘Lt. J. Igro’––noticed Eddie looking at the pictures.

“Somebody’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/489 idea of a joke, we think,” he said.

“A little over a week

ago some smartass broke in and vandalized our lot.

We

should have captured the whole thing on security camera, but that same night the system was down for maintenance.” Eddie kept his mouth shut. joke.

He didn’t think it was a

He did think it was a sign of some sort. Senator Landry strode past them toward a pair of wide

metallic doors at the far end of the room.

Engraved in

large block letters over the doors were the words SECURE DEPOT 31. Lt. J. Igro was still talking in a nasal monotone, giving a rundown of the facility status and its defenses. The Senator interrupted him, pointing to the metallic doors.

“Take us down to the relay room, Lieutenant.”

Igro stammered.

A pink flush filled his round cheeks.

“I understand you’ve obtained clearance, Senator, but this is an emergency situation.

My top priority right now is to

keep this facility secure.

The lower levels have been

sealed off by order––” “Then unseal them now, Lieutenant, that’s an order,” Landry said.

Each word had a sharp imperative thrust.

“Sir, I... ” the lieutenant began.

He looked at the

group of them and seemed to change his mind.

He pulled a

piece of paper from his back pocket and held it out.

Eddie

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/490 could almost see the little man puffing up with authority. “I have direct orders from the Governor, sir. facility is to be protected at all costs. one is to be admitted.”

This

Absolutely no

There was a hint of triumph in his

voice; obviously he thought the little slip of paper entitled him to pull rank on the senator.

Clearing his

throat, Igro asked, “Now, would you care to state your purpose for coming here?” Landry snatched the paper from the lieutenant’s hand and crumpled it into a ball without even looking at it. Igro flinched.

“Fuck the Governor,” Landry said, “he

doesn’t understand a goddamn thing about what’s happening. Both you and he will be responsible for thousands of innocent deaths if you don’t let us in now.” A nearby explosion rocked the small building they were in.

“I’m sorry Senator, I can’t do that, ” Igro said.

his voice had an air of smugness. the audacity of the little man.

Now

Eddie couldn’t believe He heard exasperated

groans coming from Suzanne and Sheila.

Landry stood

expressionless for a moment, then turned and gave a slight nod to Agent Williams. A second later Igro was down, with three Secret Service agents on top of him.

Agent Williams had one knee

pressed into the pudgy man’s sternum and his elbow pressed

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/491 into the man’s throat. his limbs.

The other agents were sitting on

Williams leaned in close to the lieutenant’s

sputtering red face and said, “Give me the access code, you prick, and I might let you breathe again.” That was all it took.

Gasping for air, veins bulging

in his temple, Igro grunted and nodded toward his chest. Landry reached down and fished a small notepad out of the shirt pocket there.

He inspected it for a few moments,

shaking his head like a father who’d just discovered his child playing with matches. “Look at this, Trey, the little bastard actually has them all written down.

Isn’t that against regulations?”

There was a taught smile on the senator’s face and anger in his voice.

He turned to Igro squirming on the floor.

“Isn’t keeping a hard copy of secure codes a violation of orders, Lieutenant?” Igro didn’t respond.

He just sat on the floor,

huffing and puffing, looking sullen. Service agents still held him down. asking the little man a second time.

The three Secret Landry didn’t bother He nodded once more,

and Agent Williams dragged Igro off amid protests and shoved him in the lavatory. Another explosion rocked the air outside the small building.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/492 Williams locked the lavatory door from the outside by handcuffing the doorknob to an adjacent doorknob.

Then he

shoved a desk in front of the door just for good measure. They could hear the little lieutenant beating on the walls of his new cell, spewing profanities and threats until they entered the elevator and the large stainless doors slid shut behind them.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/493

33

Otuno waited in silence. He stood at the corner of the open lot, just inside the chain link fence, getting more and more uneasy as fires approached from the east.

He still had trouble believing

all the things Xavier had told him.

A half hour earlier,

when the western horizon erupted and that menacing red sphere began to rise over the earth, bright bolts of panic had coursed through his bloodstream. dizziness swept over him.

Now a wave of

Events were spinning out of

control and far beyond his reckoning.

What Xavier had

confided in him was just too incredible, too astounding to be true, and yet the supporting evidence was all around them.

And those damn bricks... Otuno was filled with simultaneous hope and fear––hope

that Xavier was actually right, and the underlying fear that he wasn’t.

In the end he decided to trust his old

friend––or rather, the apparition of his old friend––for

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/494 better or for worse.

After all, hadn’t Xavier basically

done the same thing with him all those years ago? Xavier explained that Otuno still had a vital role to play in the outcome the situation.

Eddie was the one who

held most of the cards, but he was also the quarry sought by two mutually opposing forces.

The young lad was going

to need a little help. If he failed, the universe as they knew it would change forever. They were on the far side of the field, as far away as possible from the advancing mayhem.

On the opposite end of

the open lot Otuno could see a small brick building.

In

the open expanse between him and that building stood three radio towers, looming high above the smoke and mist. Xavier guided him over to a bare patch of earth about twenty feet away.

When Otuno stepped on the exposed ground

it seemed to give a little. hollow resonant sound.

He stomped his foot; it made a

Otuno got down on is hands and

knees and brushed the loose dirt away, revealing a battered wooden door.

Xavier spoke.

“Your first task is to get that thing open.” The door was old but the wood was still strong and in decent shape. footing.

It was padlocked to some sort of concrete

Otuno pulled on it as hard as he could, but the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/495 damn thing wouldn’t budge. hurting his foot.

Kicking it only succeeded in

The first rock he picked up crumbled to

pieces when he smashed it against the hardened steel lock. The second one broke in half after two blows.

This is

futile he thought, searching the ground for another rock to use.

But what’s the alternative? His fingers ran over something cold and hard, half-

buried in the dirt and roots of the scrub growth––a metal rod of some sort.

He pulled it free with some effort, and

a surge of hope arose inside him. rebar about three feet long.

It was a discarded piece

Not a sledgehammer or a pair

of bolt-cutters, but he thought it would do the trick just the same.

Otuno carried the rod back to the wooden door,

wedged it under the hasp that held the padlock on, and leaned his weight against it. At first nothing happened. all his might.

Otuno pressed down with

He balanced himself on the end of the metal

bar and bounced, lifting his feet off the ground. rusted piece of metal dug into his belly.

The

Just when he was

about to give up there was a sharp groan and a cracking noise, and Otuno did an abrupt face plant in the dirt. Somewhere behind him he heard Xavier laugh and say, “Nicely done, old chap!”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/496 Otuno got up and inspected his work.

The lock was

still intact but he’d managed to wrench the hasp off the door.

It was anchored to the wood by only one screw now,

and even that was hanging halfway out.

When Otuno grabbed

the door handle and lifted, the hardware fell away and the door creaked open, revealing a stairway that led down into darkness.

He turned to Xavier.

“What do we do now?”

“We wait,” his friend replied and sat down on the top step. The fires were less than a block away.

On the far end

of the lot military vehicles were lining up against the fence.

The immense red globe continued rising to the west,

filling the sky but shedding very little light. approached.

Two cars

They drove up to a gate in the chain link

fence, were quickly let through, and parked near the brick building.

Otuno saw a group of people get out.

They were

obscured by smoke and mist, and too far away for him too recognize, but he had an idea who it was, nonetheless. Beside him Xavier’s hologram emitted an unusual hollow whistling noise.

Otuno turned just in time to hear his

friend say, “They’re here.”

Before Otuno could respond,

the golden apparition flickered and blinked out of existence.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/497

34

Eddie took a moment to collect himself.

The elevator

was quiet and cool, a metallic coffin insulating them from the outside world.

The descent only took a few seconds,

but it stretched out for minutes in his mind. time do we have left?

How much

Out of habit he looked at his watch,

which was still stopped at 11:25. Sheila stood next to him with her arm around Suzanne. When Eddie caught their eyes they both smiled. Concern was evident in their expressions, but he could see a deeper tension and fatigue etched into Suzanne’s features as well. The swelling on her face had gone down, the dark purpleblack bruises diminished to hues of brown and dirty yellow. There was something fleeting in her eyes––what was it? Anger?

Sadness?

Whatever it was seemed to increase the

distance between them even though they stood only a few feet apart.

A complex mixture of guilt and attraction

surged in his blood.

I’m sorry, Suze, he thought just as

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/498 the elevator chimed and doors opposite the ones they’d entered through slid open. Stale, re-circulated air hit Eddie in the face.

A

dimly lit corridor stretched out before them, about sixty feet long.

At the far end of it sat another set of metal

doors similar to the elevator doors, except that over them the words RELAY STATION B were engraved on a bronze placard.

The sign appeared tarnished and stained.

As they

hurried down the hallway Senator Landry gave a brief overview of the facility. “At one time, about twenty five or thirty years ago, this facility represented cutting edge, state-of-the-art technology.

Set up as part of a military radio network,

the relay station and others like it enabled us to send and receive encrypted communications halfway around the globe, keeping our armed forces informed, enhancing our readiness and ability to respond to crises.

Now it’s all but

obsolete––accomplished faster and more efficiently now with satellite technology. “About fifteen years ago, when it became obvious this facility’s usefulness was waning, I authored a proposal to have it decommissioned and converted into a secure storage area.

As a cover the radio station was to be maintained,

even though most of the other relay stations were defunct.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/499 The broadcast equipment itself has been unused in over a decade now––since the first Gulf War, I believe. “Below us two storage levels currently house a variety of classified materials, including some germ-warfare agents we’re not supposed to possess. original proposal.

That was not part of my

The walls of the facility have been

reinforced for earthquake safety but the underlying structure is more than six decades old, and well below current building codes.

The quake earlier tonight caused

some significant damage––which could be repaired, given time––but the structure was never meant to withstand a direct assault of any sort.” Eddie noticed cracks running along the concrete walls and ceiling.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he

could see thin strands of dust pouring out of some of those cracks and accumulating on the floor like sand from an hourglass.

A layer of grit coated his tongue and throat,

stung his eyes.

Channels in his mind were starting to

open; there was a force gathering somewhere in the back of his consciousness. He felt the rumble before he heard it: a deep vibration that registered in the center of his chest.

By

the expressions on their faces Eddie could tell that the others felt it too.

Then there came a thunderous roar and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/500 the ground beneath their feet shook with enough force to knock them sideways.

More cracks opened up in the ceiling

above them; new rivulets of sandy earth poured down, making it more difficult to breathe.

A loud crash emanated from

the end of the hall where the elevator was located, accompanied by a belch of thick black smoke. want to consider what that meant.

Eddie didn’t

Agent Williams, head

tilted to the side, fingertips touching his ear, spoke up. “They’re here, Senator. taken a direct hit.

The surface building has just

Half of it has been leveled.”

voice was clam and steady.

His

Behind him Suzanne and Sheila

clung to each other for support.

Eddie thought about

Lieutenant Igro trapped in the lavatory, and wondered if he’d survived the blast.

He hoped he had, despite his

dislike for the man. Reading from the little notepad he’d taken from the lieutenant, Landry’s fingers danced over a keypad mounted on the wall.

A second later there was a resonant click and

a hiss of air.

The doors to Relay Station B slid partially

open, revealing a small room filled with electronic equipment.

Senator Landry, Eddie, Suzanne and Sheila

squeezed through the opening; Agent Williams and his two cohorts remained out in the corridor.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/501 Inside, amidst the radio equipment lining one wall were more video monitors.

One of them showed a line of

armored vehicles slowly being forced back toward a large smoking crater.

Half of the depot building had been

swallowed up in that crater. Behind him Eddie thought he heard Sheila say something about being trapped, but his concentration was elsewhere. On another screen the base of one of the radio towers was on fire; a few of the steel cables that held it upright were severed.

Amazingly, it hadn’t fallen yet.

wasn’t what concerned Eddie the most, however.

That It was the

video camera pointing westward, showing the immense fireball rising above the earth.

It filled the TV screen

and pulsated with a disturbing red glow.

He could see

thousands of dark alien shapes crawling just under its surface.

The buzzing drone had returned, too, drilling

into his back teeth.

Eddie knew if that sound could reach

him all the way down here that events were reaching a crescendo.

One way or another, this was all going to end

soon. He strode past the senator and sat down at the small broadcast console in the middle of the room. racing.

His heart was

Instead of trying to focus his thoughts Eddie

closed his eyes and let them run free.

A wave of memories

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/502 and experiences washed over him, around him, through him. In his minds eye he saw his Dad saying, “Ones near the stairs always run away, but the ones down below hold their ground,” as a fat spider landed on his face and bit into his cheek.

The scene flipped and he saw the hulking

Ogborn-creature saying, “We’re going to play a game called this little piggy,” before lopping his index finger off with a pair of rusty stem-cutters.

Another flash and he

was dressed in a grey jumpsuit, surrounded by nanoborg soldiers.

The floodgates opened.

He saw himself being

operated and experimented on, sleeping in a tiny cell, arguing with Milton, making love to Suzanne.

He was

thirty-three years old and three thousand years old at the same time.

He saw a decrepit Heinerich Waarduth, his

ancient body stuck full of wires and tubes, telling him, “They’re not human anymore.”

Thoughts and words swirled

around in his head and in the center of them all there was an accumulation of energy.

A sharp bright coil began to

compress in the back of his mind, winding tighter and tighter.

The knot was starting to form.

It felt

impossibly still amid the tumult of his thoughts. Eddie opened his eyes.

The broadcast equipment was

familiar to him; he’d had a part-time job at the UCLA radio station during college, and had worked on a console very

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/503 similar to this one.

He reached up, flipped a couple of

switches and turned a knob.

He punched a button labeled

XMIT and a red light on the wall with the words ONAIR above it came on.

Then he pushed the master fader up to the top

of its run. The last thing Eddie did was grab the microphone in both hands.

He didn’t bother with the headphones.

Somebody was calling his name. The mic was an old RCA model that came attached to a short stand so you could put it on the desk right in front of you, which Eddie did. thoughts and images.

His head was a maelstrom of

He could feel the knot rising up hard

and fast, a tight bundle of psychic shards, deadly calm at the center, ready to explode.

Behind him voices were

calling out, and somebody was shouting, but he paid no mind.

He looked up at the video monitor showing the

burning field and the advancing line of alien attackers. The armored vehicles were backed up to the remains of the brick building in a last gasp defense.

The three radio

towers loomed above and behind everything, impossibly tall and thin. His mind contracted, the spring expanded, and his brain detonated.

Somebody behind him screamed.

Blood

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/504 erupted from his nose. darkness.

Then they were all plunged into

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/505

35

Nobody noticed at first when she sat down on the small couch in the back of the room and put her face in her hands; everyone’s focus was on the video monitors.

She

heard Sheila say, “We’re gonna be buried alive down here,” as the room started to spin in big, lazy circles.

Suzanne

blinked and rubbed her eyes, trying to combat the dizziness.

A dull vibration resonated in the numb flesh of

her wounded ribs, exacerbating the nausea. clouded her vision.

Dark shapes

Panic was starting to set in.

All along she’d been telling herself the wound in her side was no big deal––that it was nothing to worry about. She even had difficulty believing it had really happened. Bitten by a dead cat?

Right.

In her mind’s eye, however, she saw the mutilated creature blinking tiny pinpoints of red light as it sank sharp fangs into her midsection.

She saw the lifeless

eyes, the dark viscous slime that oozed from its gaping maw.

The vibration in her side was growing, tightening its

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/506 grip on her ribs.

She had difficulty breathing. She was

beginning to realize the seriousness of her miscalculation. She needed help, but fear and embarrassment had kept her from speaking up.

All around her, she felt a malicious

presence building. “Eddie?” He was sitting at the radio console, hands on the controls, his mind spinning off in some other plane of consciousness.

Sheila and the senator were concentrating

on the video monitors.

Nobody seemed to hear her.

She

tried again. “Eddie?” A hive of angry insects swarmed in her ribcage. Somewhere in its buzzing drone she heard Milton’s voice. You should’ve killed yourself while you had the chance, you fuckin’ cunt. “Shut up,” she moaned. I told you what was going to happen, didn’t I?

Each

of his words added to Suzanne’s sense of overwhelming dread.

A gray fog clouded her vision.

The threatening

presence was growing all around her. “No. Shut up,” Suzanne said, louder this time. caught Sheila’s attention, who turned and noticed her

This

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/507 friend hunched over on the couch, rocking back and forth, arms clutched her sides. Suzanne looked up and caught Sheila’s eye. “Help me,” she said, and with that all hell broke loose. convulsions racked her body.

A wave of

She fell off the couch and

smacked her head on the linoleum floor, arms twitching. Her eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. Sheila yelled and ran to her friend’s side.

Within

moments Agent Williams was there too, shouting instructions to his subordinates.

They struggled to hold Suzanne down.

Senator Landry was yelling be careful, be careful. Suzanne’s eyes fluttered, and she spouted guttural nonsense.

Her shirt rode up, revealing her bandaged

midsection and the dark stain that was spreading under the skin there.

Everybody was frantic except Eddie, who sat at

the radio console, unperturbed, his back turned to the whole fiasco. Then Suzanne emitted a ghastly shriek, an unearthly scream filled with pain and surprise and fear, and her body went limp. A second later sparks and glass were flying everywhere.

Electronic equipment exploded.

lights blew out.

The overhead

Tremors shook the floor, dust and smoke

infiltrated the air.

Fresh cracks opened in the ceiling,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/508 raining down streams of sandy earth. stay afoot.

Everyone struggled to

A tremendous metallic groaning noise resonated

through the ground above their heads, as if the very gates of hell were being torn asunder.

Three deep pounding

vibrations––the footfalls or death-knells of giants–– slammed through the facility.

In the front of the room,

Eddie’s unconscious form slumped to the floor amidst a pile of smoldering radio equipment.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/509

36

Milton was screaming downhill into the Valley at more than 120 miles-per-hour, siren blaring, lights flashing, when the wave passed through him.

It was a massive pulse

of energy, tempered only by distance, and for a moment he lost control of the police cruiser.

He veered across the

freeway toward a concrete barrier, missing the tail end of a lone SUV by only a few feet.

Instead of hitting the

brakes, Milton punched the gas, pulling the cruiser out of a fishtail and avoiding the barrier at the same time. flew past the SUV.

He

What few other vehicles there were on

the road managed to pull out of his way as he cruised by. He’d been studying the massive red orb rising over the horizon, wondering at its presence, basking in the quantum rift and temporal distortion it threw off.

He could feel

the slow unraveling of space-time, sense the slow dissolution of reality.

The next earthquake, when it came,

would rock more than just Southern California. was winding down, but what the fuck did he care?

This world He would

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/510 be done with it soon.

He sensed his Elohim masters

somewhere close by, waiting to open the wormhole that would take him home. Then the sudden ragged pulse of energy had interrupted his reverie. that?

What the fuck was that?

What the FUCK was

His mutated eyes twitched and blinked a deep purple

hue as he struggled with the car.

Impaired systems

scrambled to make sense of the data. He felt as if a spiny fist had been shoved into the base of his neck, delivering a million-volt charge to the ravaged nerve endings there. He tilted his head back on its thickened base and let loose monstrous howl.

The rough skin around his mouth stretched

into a grimace, spread wide by pincer-like mandibles, exposing rows of razor sharp teeth. The fist of pain relaxed its grip.

As his mind

recovered and information coalesced, Milton began to grasp the gravity of what had just happened.

A deadly wave of

kineto-psychic energy had sliced through him, seeking the proper receptors to infiltrate and destroy the core of his being.

Weakened by distance, not finding what it sought,

the wave had passed through him and dissipated, but not before betraying its source. for sure.

It was Coulton; he knew that

The deadly pulse had carried the little fucker’s

mind-print along with it––the mind print Milton had been

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/511 programmed to capture at all costs. triumph and vindication.

He felt a surge of

If he hadn’t managed to destroy

the hyperfrequency nodes in the back of his head, he would never have survived that harsh pulse of energy.

And now

the little cocksucker had betrayed his location. Then Milton noticed something else. The entire datalink had fallen quiet. For a moment he thought it had gone offline, but diagnostics insisted that it was fully functioning.

After

a few moments there came a faint blip, not much more than an echo of an echo, but it was enough. flash of dark hair and full lips.

With it came a

Suzanne.

She was with

Coulton––that much he could tell––but something else was wrong.

The datalink was functioning, but it was too quiet.

There was no other activity. All of his soldiers were gone. He rescanned furiously; every time the results were the same.

The only thing left was the ghost of a blip that

represented Suzanne.

Nothing else.

entire fucking army gone.

They were gone, his

The logic of it sunk in.

They

had been much closer to the epicenter of the deadly blast he’d just experienced, and––unlike himself––completely vulnerable to its poisonous essence.

The only reason

Suzanne had survived was because she was still in a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/512 dormant, undeveloped phase; her mutation was only just now awakening. The thought of Coulton destroying his soldiers sent Milton over the top.

Overwhelming rage began to boil up in

the depths of his black murderous heart.

Along with the

rage came another presence, a dark alien entity that stretched, expanded, and wrapped its spiny legs around his mind and his soul. heart.

It fueled the inferno of hatred in his

Milton welcomed its presence.

It dug in deep with

serrated claws and sharp fangs, growing and expanding with a fury that surged through every cell of his body.

Spidery

limbs contracted; the dark beast devoured his mind and consumed his soul, spewing vitriolic acid in its wake. Bizarre images and strange phrases whirled in his head.

In

the midst of it all, the obsessive desire to find that fucker Coulton and kill his bitch Suzanne burned more brightly than ever.

If he thinks he can stop me now, he’s

got a big fuckin’ surprise coming.

They both do.

The

little cocksucker’s attempt at heroics are gonna be his fuckin’ downfall. Soon he would have his ticket out of here. looked around.

Milton

He felt a deep loathing for everything he

laid his mutated eyes upon. world and everything in it.

He was growing tired of this

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/513 He pushed the speeding car even faster.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/514

37

Electrical sparks and occasional flashes of light punctuated the darkness.

The smell of smoke and fried

electronics hung in the air.

A battery powered emergency

light came on over the door, filling the room with a dim yellow glow and even more shadows. Dirt filled his eyes, nose, and throat. coughed.

Eddie

He was lying on his side, the legs of a desk

chair digging into his ribs. seemed to have reawakened.

All of his old injuries A jagged ache pounded his head

with a rhythmic pulse, cleaving it open with every throbbing beat; it was as if someone had smashed him in the side of the head with a brick.

His limbs were weak, and a

burning pain emanated from the stump of his missing left index finger.

He wanted to close his eyes and go back to

sleep, block everything out, but what he heard nearby caught his attention, kept him from letting go. “Is she breathing?” “Is she alive?”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/515 “That scream––what the hell happened?” There were many questions but few answers. tried to piece it all together.

Eddie

One of the voices he could

hear was Sheila’s, so he knew that they had to be talking about Suzanne.

He remembered a scream right before he’d

passed out, a blood curdling ear-piercing shriek. knew whom it had belonged to. felt a flood of concern.

Suze!

Now he

What happened?

Eddie

He struggled to get up, but only

succeeded in making it to his knees before another coughing fit overtook him.

His head felt like it was going to split

open. Then Senator Landry was standing before him, offering him a hand. realized. okay?

“Ms. Oliviera is injured worse than we We need to get her help immediately.

Are you

Can you walk?” Eddie swayed on his feet.

The throbbing in his head

was so forceful that each stroke knocked him off balance. He grabbed onto the desk for support, keeping one hand on Landry’s shoulder.

Between coughs he managed to ask, “How

bad is she?” “She’s breathing, but her whole midsection appears to be one giant bruise,” the Senator said. help you.”

“Come on, let me

Eddie leaned his weight on the old bureaucrat.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/516 Sandy earth poured from cracks in the ceiling, accumulating on the floor in little piles.

Smoke and dust

filled the air.

As they walked

Landry seemed unaffected.

across the room he said, “That was quite an impressive show.” Eddie looked up, hopeful. said, “Did it work?

He coughed once more and

Is it over?”

It felt as if he could

still hear that awful buzzing drone, the harbinger of that massive red orb rising to the west.

In his mind’s eye he

could see the rogue sphere hovering over the horizon. Things still felt like they were spinning off balance. The senator shrugged his shoulders and jerked his thumb toward the ceiling.

“All communications are down.

We need to get topside for a status report.” Amidst the smoke and chaos, Eddie never got a chance to comprehend the severity of the Suzanne’s condition. More to the point, he didn’t comprehend the nature of her injuries.

If he had, he might have used the ivory box to

try to fix things right then and there.

By the time he

made it over to the doorway, though, Sheila had already covered up her friend’s wounds.

“Looks like she got beat

up worse than we thought,” she said to Eddie. like her to keep this to herself.”

“It’s just

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/517 In the dusty glare of the emergency light, Suzanne’s tousled hair looked jet-black, her lips ruby red.

Eddie’s

heart shattered when he saw her lying on the couch, limbs slack.

She was a strong woman (probably the strongest he

knew) who had gotten caught up in events beyond her control.

Except for the fading bruises on her face, her

skin was as pale as bleached bones.

Right now she appeared

more fragile and vulnerable than ever. The two younger agents lifted Suzanne between them, draping her arms over their shoulders, locking their arms behind her back.

It was obvious nobody wanted to stay

underground longer than they had to. Before he knew it they were on the move with Sheila in the lead, Eddie bringing up the rear––assisted by Agent Williams and Senator Landry––and Suzanne in the middle, held up by the other two agents.

The tips of Suzanne’s

toes scraped along the floor as they carried her.

In the

dull glow of the emergency lights Eddie could see that there had been a small cave in down by the elevator.

It

was obvious they weren’t getting out that way. About halfway to the elevator, on the right hand side, there was another door.

It was usually kept locked

by an electronic device operated by a keypad; now the keypad flashed the same number over and over like a broken

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/518 VCR.

The door stood slightly ajar.

Even so, Agent

Williams and one of his cohorts had to lean their shoulders into the heavy panel just to slide it open a few more feet. It groaned and scraped across the uneven floor.

As they

squeezed through Eddie noticed something he hadn’t seen before: above the flashing keypad there was a small placard engraved with the words NORTHWEST RAMP, and underneath that in smaller letters

SURFACE ACCESS.

Another corridor stretched before them.

The dust was

thicker here; the ceiling had taken a significant amount of damage, and portions of the walls had buckled inward, making the path narrower in places.

Many of the emergency

lights were out, creating long swaths of darkness interspersed with segments of dim illumination. was slow.

The going

They were all coughing, watering eyes creating

streaks on their dirt-covered faces.

Occasionally Suzanne

moaned and uttered something under her breath.

Eddie

sensed that the floor was angled; they were slowly ascending as they made their way over and around the debris.

His head pounded and he still had trouble standing

on his own.

Even with Agent Williams and Senator Landry’s

support he stumbled over fallen bricks and other unseen obstacles.

Twice they had to squeeze through gaps where

the corridor had been nearly closed off by collapse.

Once

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/519 they had to crawl under a fallen support beam of some sort. It was only sheer luck that the cave-ins hadn’t completely closed off the tunnel.

Suzanne’s unconscious form made

these narrow stretches difficult and time-consuming to negotiate, but somehow the agents eased her through with a gentility and aplomb that few others could have achieved under the circumstances. After what seemed like miles of struggle they came to a final, impenetrable stretch of darkness.

There could

have been fifty or five hundred feet of tunnel left in front of them; without any light there was no way to tell for sure––and there was no way to ascertain what waited for them at the other end. They paused to regroup.

A locked door?

Another cave-in?

Sheila volunteered to investigate

the passage ahead while the others waited.

Agent Williams

stepped forward and, between coughs, said he’d go with her– –that in a hostile environment it was always best to do things in pairs.

In another situation a comment such as

this might have provoked a ribald remark or something of the like from Sheila, but right then all she cared about was fresh air.

Her lungs ached from coughing and the

inhalation of soot and soil. who nodded his assent.

Williams looked at Landry,

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/520 Leaning against a wall for guidance, the unlikely couple disappeared into the gloom.

They had been gone less

than two minutes when Eddie heard a voluminous clack.

He

recognized the noise; it was the sound of the push-bar on an emergency exit door.

Vague pink light infiltrated the

corridor in front of him, and he saw Sheila’s and Agent Williams’ silhouettes framed in a doorway about forty feet away.

Beyond them was a short flight of steps, and beyond

that––a rectangle of night sky.

A gust of cool air hit him

a second later, and he took in deep gulping breaths, clearing his head as he cleared his lungs.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/521

38

The first thing he saw when he topped the stairs was the radio towers, or their remains, that is.

One of them––

the middle one, Eddie thought––had fallen almost straight over, its upper reaches flattening a few houses outside the perimeter of the lot.

The other two towers had doubled

over on the way down, creating something akin to a colossal modern art display.

Great fountains of twisted steel

erupted all around him.

Thick girders that used to point

toward the heavens were now driven into the ground at various angles, the metal latticework that held them together ripped apart, bent into tortured, gnarled shapes. For a moment Eddie imagined he was looking through the bent iron bars of a destroyed prison cell.

Fat steel cables

hundreds of feet long that used to hold the structures upright now entangled the whole mess like gigantic vines. Fires burned all around, but there was no sign of the nanoborg aggressors.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/522 The next thing he noticed was the huge bloody orb hovering over the western horizon, cut into random segments by the tumult of bent steel thrusting up into the air in the foreground.

The glow of that orb seemed somehow less

intense, less menacing than before.

The dark shapes

clawing just under its surface had faded to nondescript blemishes.

Eddie didn’t know if it was just a trick of the

light or an odd cloud formation, but the top portion of the immense sphere was cut off, and seemed to be disappearing into what looked like an enormous rupture in the atmosphere, a jagged, red-rimmed rip in the sky.

The harsh

buzzing drone that accompanied the bloody orb was muted, more distant than before. The next thing Eddie saw made him forget everything else.

His hopes and fears, his pain, his fatigue––all of

it sloughed away in an instant.

The wind was knocked out

of him as if he’d been punched in the gut. prepared for.

This he wasn’t

This he could never be prepared for.

He

couldn’t believe his eyes; the golden apparition was familiar, welcome, and overwhelming at the same time.

If

Agent Williams hadn’t been supporting him Eddie would have done a face plant right there in the knee-high grass.

A

thousand questions assaulted his mind; a thousand emotions erupted in his heart.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/523 All he managed to say was, “Dad?” It was his father and yet it wasn’t his father. holographic projection winked at him and smiled.

The

The look

on Xavier’s face was a combination of joy and sadness. With detail so intricate and believable, features so animated and life-like, the transparent hologram appeared to be more than just a vision; it seemed to embody actual substance and spirit.

The only thing missing, Eddie noted,

were his father’s trademark spectacles.

Bright amber tears

welled up in those illuminated eyes, but the smile remained on his face. “Me, or the remainder thereof.” steps toward Eddie.

Xavier took a few

The Secret Service agents made moves

to intervene, but Eddie waved them off.

“It’s really good

to see you, son, really goddamn awfully bloody good.” There was more than a hint of lament in his voice. hands reached out, passed through each other.

Their

They stood

there for a moment, regarding each other in silence.

The

expressions on their faces spoke volumes––Xavier’s of love and regret, Eddie’s of love and forgiveness. Xavier cleared his throat and went on. “That you’ve made it this far bodes well for all of us, although I confess I’m not too surprised.

Exceptional

character is deeply embedded in the Coulton genealogy.

I

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/524 told Waarduth as much decades ago when I stumbled into this fiasco.”

He looked around at his captive audience (who,

like Eddie, seemed to have forgotten everything else for the moment) and then motioned toward the abomination hovering over the western horizon.

“And the old man showed

me the consequences were I to refuse.

As you can see,

there’s still some unfinished business to attend to.” Agent Williams, who’d thought he’d seen it all already, was shaking his head in disbelief.

This amused

Senator Landry, who seemed to grasp what was happening and was obviously tickled by the turn of events.

Sheila knelt

by Suzanne’s prone form and watched them all, not sure what to think. “Somebody’s coming.” Eddie turned toward the familiar voice.

He’d been so

distracted by the sight of his father he’d failed to notice another old friend standing close by, bathed in pink smoke and mist. link fence.

Isaiah Otuno pointed toward a break in the chain “Somebody’s coming,” he said again, “over

there.” Before Eddie could remark on Isaiah’s presence he saw it too: a dark mass moving through the underbrush, moving with a loping gate, coming fast.

A strange light emanated

from the hulking form, an eerie purple glow that reminded

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/525 Eddie of the black light bulbs used in many of the nightclubs he performed in. for them.

The light was heading straight

Within seconds he could hear it bashing through

the weeds, getting closer. Agent Williams barked a command and his two subordinates moved in on either side of the Senator. Williams himself took off into the brush, in the direction of the interloper.

Something about that approaching figure

emanated malignancy and wrongness. growing inside him.

Eddie had a bad feeling

Landry must have felt it too, for the

agents were holding him back, and he was shouting, “No, Trey, for fuck’s sake no!” But the wheels, as they say, had already been set in motion. The last act proceeded to play itself out with brutal efficiency. Before Williams made it five paces into the grass a bright red beam shot out from the dark approaching form. It sliced off the tops of the taller weeds and struck the agent square in the center of the chest, stopping him in his tracks.

He stumbled backward a few steps and then fell

over, revealing an upper torso that was a bubbling crater of charred flesh.

A thin plume of smoke arose out of his

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/526 open mouth.

His wide staring eyes were completely white,

as if they’d been boiled in their sockets. Each second seemed to last for minutes.

Eddie heard

the remaining agents yelling for everyone to get down, get down, as one of them stepped forward and started squeezing off rounds from his pistol with practiced deliberation.

A

horrible howl arose from the underbrush, followed by an explosion of laser beams that sliced through the air all around them.

The second agent went down.

was flying everywhere.

Lethal energy

One of those deadly rays passed

within a few feet of Eddie’s head.

Others struck the

twisted metal of the fallen radio towers, causing great pieces of steel to come crashing down nearby.

The howling

from the underbrush wasn’t a howling anymore, but a malicious, mocking laughter.

As it drew closer Eddie knew

exactly to whom it belonged. It was Milton.

Somehow Milton had survived.

The dark shape continued to bear down on them. With growing dismay Eddie realized that his plan had failed after all.

On the far side of the lot someone had

noticed the commotion and a few vehicles were starting to head in their direction, but there was no way they would arrive in time.

Eddie sensed a new sound in the air, a

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/527 humming noise growing louder and louder, and wondered how long it had been there. A misshapen form stepped out of the tall weeds.

Dull

purple light radiated from a honeycomb cluster of diodes in the depths of one eye socket; a similar bundle of lights blinked at the end of a long tentacle that hovered at eyelevel like an angry cobra.

A tangled mass of fleshy

tendrils hung off his chest and torso, and thick plates of armored carapace covered the rest of his body (Eddie thought he saw a few fresh punctures in that smooth shell, courtesy of agent number two).

One of the monstrosity’s

cheeks was a massive wound filled with hard, sharp ridges. It had a caved-in, pinched look that gave his whole face a lop-sided, crescent-shaped appearance.

His tall frame

canted to one side, and he seemed to be dragging one of his legs behind him as well.

Despite all the mutations the

sadistic bastard had undergone, however, his evil laugh remained the same. Milton stuck his arm out in a familiar three-fingered pointing gesture, and said, “Next one who moves is fuckin’ history.”

His voice hadn’t changed much either.

To

illustrate his point he fired a blast of from his fingertips that passed through the chain link fence and

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/528 vaporized the front end of a small car parked there. Everyone remained huddled on the ground, save one. Xavier took a step forward.

“Some of us already are

history,” he said. Milton seemed to notice the glowing apparition for the first time.

His purple eyes stopped flashing for a moment.

What passed for confusion alit on his mutated features, then just as quickly it was gone. “You’re not looking so good there, chap. familiar with the term damaged goods?”

Are you

There was a look of

amusement on Xavier’s face. “Fuck you old man––you’re nothing,” Milton said, and shot a bolt of energy at the glowing hologram.

The beam

passed through Xavier and exploded in the dirt thirty feet behind him. Milton turned his hulking mass toward Eddie. you feel it, motherfucker?

“Can

In a few minutes I’ll be taking

you back to where you belong.”

The flesh around his mouth

pulled back, revealing a demonic grin full of jagged teeth. Indeed, Eddie could feel something, a swelling harmonic vibration growing all around him. was familiar. memories.

That sensation

It tugged at something in his new store of

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/529 “Before that, though,” Milton continued, “we’re going to have a little fun.”

He muttered something under his

breath that Eddie couldn’t hear. Sheila started screaming.

It wasn’t a scream of pain,

but one of abject and overwhelming terror.

It came in

short, hyperventilating whoops, and turned Eddie’s guts to jelly.

If he went the rest of his life (assuming there was

a rest of his life) without ever hearing that sound again it wouldn’t be long enough.

At first he didn’t understand

what was happening, but then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. “Get up, Eddie.” Suzanne’s voice sounded oddly strangled, as if her throat were packed full of wet mud.

Milton’s words hit

home, and a lump of dread blossomed in Eddie’s chest. We’re going to have a little fun.

He didn’t want to turn

around, for fear of what he was going to see.

He could

hear gasps coming from Senator Landry and the remaining bodyguard.

Sheila’s screams had segued onto long

whimpering moans. “Get up Eddie.

On your feet.”

More urgent this time.

She sounded as if she was crying through her words.

A

sharp metallic click followed her command, and Eddie could

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/530 envision the gun that was being pointed at the back of his head.

“Eddie, please––” “Better do what she says, fuckface,” Milton’s eyes

blinked and flashed, sharp teeth glinted.

“The portal’s

about to open.” Slowly, Eddie got to his feet and turned around, and his heart broke into a million pieces.

The gun wasn’t

pointed at his head, as it turned out, but that would have been more desirable than where it was pointed. Suzanne held the pistol in both hands, poised to blow her brains out.

The weight of the piece propped her lower

jaw open; its barrel was pointed straight up at the roof of her mouth.

Hideous dark blotches were spreading beneath

the skin of her beautiful face; tiny pinpoints of red light flickered in her perfect eyes.

There were tears streaming

down from those eyes. Eddie was holding out both his hands, palms up. one of them was the ivory box.

In

He had no recollection of

taking the thing out of his pocket. Suzanne whimpered, her jaw working to resist the cold steel shoved between her teeth. “What did they promise you Milton? Xavier again.

I’m curious.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/531 Milton whipped around. I am?

“How the fuck do you know who

Who the fuck are you?” At this Sheila took off running toward the fence.

Milton laughed and barked a guttural command; in one smooth motion Suzanne pivoted and took her friend out. of the gun was deafening.

The report

It echoed off the buildings in

the distance and rolled back upon them like thunder. Sheila pitched forward into the undergrowth and didn’t get back up.

Sobbing now, Suzanne turned the gun back on

herself.

Something in the distance caught her eye.

Xavier went on as if nothing happened.

“Did they fill

your head with visions of the stars and promises of immortality?

Did they fool you into thinking you were

actually the one in control?” “Shut up, asshole.”

Purple eyes blinked wildly.

Milton scanned the nearby terrain, looking for the source of the maddening hologram. The approaching vehicles were now halfway across the field; Eddie could hear the whine of their engines getting closer.

Above that he could still hear the strange humming

vibration that filled the air, growing louder every second. Xavier seemed not to notice. Milton.

He continued to badger

“I’ve got bad news for you, governor: none of it’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/532 true.

You’re as expendable as the soldiers they allowed

you to create.” “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Milton shouted. and your friends are all dead.

“One word from me

Is that what you want?

It was probably all of the arguing that enabled Lt. Igro to get so close to them without being observed.

Eddie

was sure the little man had been killed when the depot was destroyed, but all of a sudden there he was––about fifty yards distant, skirting along the edge of a grass fire, running at them and screaming about his towers and his facility and how nobody was gonna fuckin’ defy him, not on his watch.

He was waving a weapon madly about.

All heads

turned in his direction. At the same time the humming noise reached a crescendo. Ten feet away, just beyond Agent Williams’ smoking corpse, the air ripped open.

A jagged semicircle rimmed

with blue lightning blinked into existence, and the vibrations ceased.

Except for a massive thud that Eddie

felt in his chest, the opening of the portal made no sound. Within its archway he saw the blackness of space, and framed in the distance, a familiar sight.

The twin star

system––cold white planets encircled by crimson rings, orbiting in sync with a figure-eight torus of asteroidal

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/533 space-debris––was hard to forget.

It was Tau-Phaedra, home

base of the Elohim faction of humanity and the origin of all this madness.

This time it wasn’t just a vision,

however; Eddie realized he was gazing across millions of light-years of space and over two thousand years into the future as well.

The thought took his breath away.

Around

him a breeze had picked up; leaves and smoke and loose debris were getting sucked into the opening. Once again Milton barked a foreign-sounding command, and Suzanne turned and fired at Igro’s approaching figure. There was a flash of return fire from the angry lieutenant. Numerous shots rang out.

Before the little man went down

face-first into the weeds, he managed to squeeze off a couple of rounds in their direction. The bullet entered the front left side of Eddie’s ribcage and exited somewhere near the center of his spine, liquefying everything in its path.

He felt a hot fist slam

into him, and suddenly couldn’t breathe. his shirt.

Coldness spread inside of him.

Blood poured down A split-second

later the pain struck, and Eddie would have crumbled to the ground were it not for the ivory box in his hands.

It

flared to life, exploding with a dazzling kaleidoscope of color that enveloped his entire body, somehow keeping him upright and rigid.

Milton recoiled from the sudden flash

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/534 of brilliance as if it stung him. the opening of the time portal.

Eddie stumbled toward White light filled his

eyes, obscuring everything else, and his last cogent thought was I’m dying. As if this was what he’d been waiting for, Xavier shouted, “Now Isaiah, now!” Hunkered down in the underbrush, Otuno opened the tiny film canister that he’d been carrying around; the one Eddie had given him the previous afternoon.

The Guardian Beetle–

–fat, ugly and oily looking, emitting a dim golden light–– emerged and took flight.

It moved faster than one might

expect for such a big insect, its wings making thick wet slapping sounds, and landed on the base of Suzanne’s throat, slicing open the skin there with sharp claws and burrowing into the soft flesh underneath.

She screamed and

dropped to the ground like a puppet, gun falling out of her lifeless hands. Milton caught the motion in his periphery, but by the time he realized what was happening it was too late.

He

cursed and spat an urgent string of commands––to no avail. Suzanne was no longer under his control. and bellowed a howl of frustration. happen this way.

He leaned back

It wasn’t supposed to

The goddamn hologram was playing some

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/535 sort of game with him, fucking everything up.

Few things

made him crazier than somebody fucking with his plans. “It’s over, Milton, you’ve been replaced,” Xavier said then, pointing a shimmering finger toward the time portal. Two alien forms could now be seen through there, jettisoning across open space, approaching the doorway. “They’re coming to finish the job for you.”

Xavier paused,

then added, “looks like you’re history, mate.” Milton cursed and shouted. he was seeing.

He couldn’t believe what

Purple eyes flashed incomprehension.

were taking over for him?

They

After all he’d suffered through

and accomplished, this was his reward?

If they thought

he’d give in that easily they had another thing coming. Milton leveled a weapon at the approaching nanoborgs, but when he attempted to fire, nothing happened. fuck?

What the

He felt it then––one by one his systems were being

shut down.

This isn’t happening.

I’m the one who’s in

charge––they can’t control me anymore.

Even as the

thoughts turned over in his mind, however, Milton realized their patent falseness; something was definitely overriding his internal systems.

Rage pumped through his veins as he

considered the possibility that he’d been played all along. Dreams of immortality and power were slipping from his grasp.

It was definitely not supposed to happen this way.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/536 He was losing his grip––but all was not lost yet. There was still a chance to redeem himself.

Fuck what that

stupid fuckin’ hologram says, fuck everybody––I’m calling the shots, and it’s time to collect my goddamn due. Hemorrhaging streams of obscenity, Milton launched himself at Eddie.

They collided and teetered a few steps closer to

the portal before the colorful nimbus of light surrounding Eddie reacted with a flash, knocking them apart.

As Eddie

collapsed Milton reached for the flickering object he held in his hands. attraction.

The enigmatic box generated a powerful It awoke a burning desire deep within Milton’s

rage and held him transfixed.

Tiny voices whispered that

the unsuspecting device was Coulton’s secret weapon, his last line of defense, that it was the only reason the little bastard had made it this far––that without it the meddling motherfucker would be powerless.

The miniature

box surged with energy, full of promise and potential. Through the portal the approaching figures were getting closer.

Milton was desperate for something––anything––he

could use to his advantage.

He wrenched the sparkling

artifact from Eddie’s grasp. And almost immediately realized his mistake. Multi-colored swirls of fire started crawling up his arms.

He batted at them, screams of anger turned into

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/537 piercing shrieks of pain.

Autonomic systems designed to

remedy such situations either failed to or refused to come online.

Within seconds flames had engulfed his entire

upper torso; Milton thrashed wildly.

Iridescent tendrils

traced a cocoon of light in the air as they whipped about. He was trying to rid himself of the burning, radiant box, the origin of the intense fire was consuming him, but the small device seemed to have imbedded itself in the flesh of his hand.

His luminous form twisted and danced on the

threshold of the gateway.

Somewhere in the background he

could hear that goddamn motherfucking hologram laughing at him, laughing at him.

The two nanoborgs approaching from

the other side had almost reached the doorway. consumed with agony and rage.

Milton was

Amidst his gyrations he

stumbled over the remains of Agent Williams, lost his footing, and fell head over heels through the jagged blue archway. One moment Milton was there, the next he was in freefall a billion miles away, looking back at them through the portal, two nanoborgs closing in on either side.

As

soon as he was through, the blue edge around the doorway started to fade.

Milton’s screams were cut off, and the

vacuum of space extinguished the brilliant fire that engulfed him.

The ivory box floated free of Milton’s

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/538 hands.

From the other side of the portal Landry, Otuno,

Xavier and the remaining Secret Service agent looked on as the small white object began to unfold, opening up like an intricate origami puzzle. Just before the implosion, Xavier spoke up.

“Observe,

my friends, the terrible beauty of antimatter; few who witness it have ever lived to retell the experience.” There was a brief flash––for a moment an intense shaft of daylight projected through the vanishing archway––and then an expanding sphere of darkness started pressing outward.

Milton and the other two nanoborgs were vaporized

in an instant as the ball of black nothingness spread. time portal was fading.

It held on long enough, though, to

show the star system of Tau-Phaedra being ripped apart, planets and asteroids disappearing into that expanding void. Then the gateway winked out of existence without a sound.

The

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/539

39

Fires still burned nearby, and the twisted remains of the radio towers lay all around, wrapped in a whiplash bundle of steel cables.

Off to the west only half of the

massive red orb was still visible; the portion that remained had faded to a deep purple color, its edges fading into the night sky.

Military vehicles had stopped some

distance away, and soldiers were approaching them on foot. Eddie lay on the ground, still surrounded by an aura of colorful light. Xavier looked around with a huge grin on his radiant features.

“Right,” he said, “two down, one to go––we’ve

saved the world, now it’s time to save my son.” to his old friend.

He turned

“Isaiah, if you’d be so kind.”

Otuno fished the small white box that was the source of Xavier’s hologram out of his pocket.

It was identical

in many ways to the artifact that had caused Milton’s demise, but not nearly as ornate. ground and stood back.

Otuno placed it on the

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/540 A bright sphere materialized in the air and expanded above the box until it was a globe of white light roughly twenty feet across.

Unlike the portal that the Elohim had

opened, this gateway was opaque and had perfectly smooth edges.

As everyone looked on, a generic-looking humanoid

form bathed in golden light stepped through and scooped up Eddie’s prostrate body.

No defining features could be seen

on this newcomer, facial or otherwise.

With Eddie in its

arms, the figure turned and bowed slightly, as if acknowledging the rest of them, and then stepped back through the portal. Less than a minute later Eddie reemerged on his own two feet, naked as the day he was born, a small purple circle about the size of a dime in the side of his chest the only evidence of his recent injuries. snapped shut behind him.

The portal

He looked around, seeming not to

notice the cold night air or that his privates were prominently displayed for all to see. The first thing he saw was her. “Suzanne?” he said, going over and kneeling by her side.

Her face had regained some of its natural color.

He

could see her chest rising and falling with regularity. “She’s going to be fine.

We caught the mutation in

time; it was only in the beginning phases.

When she wakes

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/541 up she probably won’t remember much of the last few hours, though.” Eddie glanced up, tears gathering in his eyes.

Smoke

from nearby fires drifted around them, the carnage of the radio towers loomed overhead.

He couldn’t believe it was

all over. Pride was evident in Xavier’s expression.

“Welcome

home, son.” “Dad?

How...” he began, and stammered.

million things he wanted to say.

There were a

He didn’t have a clue

where to begin. “It’s okay Eddie, take your time,” Xavier said. Behind the hologram stood Otuno, Senator Landry and the surviving Secret Service agent.

A group of about

twenty soldiers had encircled them, weapons at the ready. Xavier nodded toward Isaiah, who tossed a small bundle of clothes in Eddie’s direction.

He gave his son a

conspiratorial wink. “There’s going to be plenty of time for us to catch up.”

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/542

40

Three days later Eddie pulled into a deserted rest stop off of I-95, just over the Connecticut border.

The

flight to New York hadn’t taken more than five hours, but with security screening on one end, baggage claim on the other, and an interminable wait at the rent-a-car office, things had dragged on longer than he anticipated.

He was

glad he didn’t have to explain the ivory box Otuno had given him to any overzealous security officers.

Eddie

placed the object on the console between the seats and got out to stretch his legs, shake off some fatigue.

Snow

crunched underfoot and cold air struck his face.

The sky

was bright, clear, and deep, deep blue.

He found himself

thinking about the events of the past few days. He remembered getting shot in the chest and taking a moment to realize it––white light filling his vision, everything growing distant––and a moment later being back in the field, standing naked before his friends. memory of the intervening minutes.

He had no

Eddie had listened in

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/543 wonder as his father described the final struggle with Milton and the detonation of antimatter that had very likely signified the end of the Elohim race.

Chills ran up

Eddie’s spine as he thought about the billions of future souls, alien or otherwise, that had been extinguished in that terrible instant.

He became uneasy when Otuno

described how a golden apparition had carried his broken body through the second portal.

Even though Eddie had no

recollection of that particular event, he knew the entities that rescued him had also picked apart his mind, scanned his brainwaves, and laid his soul bare searching for the essence of the knot––that anomaly hidden somewhere in the memory cap implanted by Heinerich Waarduth.

He’d only been

gone a minute from the perspective of those on this side of the time-tunnel, but who was to say how long he’d actually been over on the other side?

Perhaps it was best he didn’t

remember anything. Of the seven of them that left from the hospital that night, five had survived.

Agent Trey Williams and one of

his subordinates––Agent Bobby Desmond––had given their lives in the service of their leader and their country, and whether they knew it at the time or not, their world as well.

What little solace Eddie took from their bravery and

dedication in the line of duty was marred by the knowledge

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/544 that very few people would ever understand what they had really accomplished for all of humanity. Sheila was still being treated for a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but was expected to make a full recovery. The nanoborgs had caused millions of dollars of property damage, both public and private.

The earthquake

had caused many fires and much damage as well; in many cases, it was hard to distinguish the losses from the temblor from the carnage the attackers had caused.

Police

and hospital reports accounted for a total of sixty-nine civilian fatalities, with forty-eight of those directly attributed the recent ‘incursion of armed militia’. were twenty-one military fatalities.

There

The press dubbed the

entire incident ‘The North Hollywood Nightmare’ and likened it to an infamous bank robbery shootout that had occurred in the same neighborhood some twelve years earlier, where armored suspects had wielded automatic weapons and held the police at bay, but the two incidents were really nothing alike.

There was just no other basis for comparison.

Nobody had a good explanation for who these insurgents were, where they came from, or how they’d been defeated. The public was assured that the entire matter was being investigated thoroughly, but for some reason there seemed to be very little physical evidence to go on.

What struck

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/545 Eddie was how, except for a few groups considered fringe radicals and a couple of tabloid publications, nobody wanted to grapple with the otherworldly, alien nature of what had occurred.

Almost everyone––educated and

uneducated alike––tried to explain the whole thing in terms of the world they knew, and what didn’t fit in was simply discarded.

Suspicious fingers were leveled at foreign

terrorist groups.

Eddie supposed that was closer to the

truth than most people realized. Now, after just a few days, the news media had turned their short attention span to newer and fresher tragedies. As for the bloody orb that had risen in the sky, well, somehow that had only been a localized, Southern California event.

Meteorologists attempted to explain it off as a

freak air inversion or Aurora Borealis effect.

Some

decried it as part of a secret military test or experiment. Eddie wasn’t sure what that huge bulging sphere had really been––other than the doom of this world––but whenever he recalled the muted pink light it radiated and the mysterious alien shapes squirming inside, part of him was glad he never found out.

By the following morning it had

faded away completely and the sun, the yellow ball that has graced our earth’s skies for millennia, rose as usual.

He

suspected the phantom planetoid was to blame for sporadic

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/546 satellite and communications failures that had occurred all around the globe––not increased solar flare activity, as the experts smugly suggested.

(Although perhaps the alien

orb was responsible for the increase in solar activity, which then had in turn caused the failures, who was to say?) The quantum rift had been real.

The nanoborgs had

been real; the threat they posed to the human race––in the present as well as distant future––had been real too.

That

future reaching back into the past had almost undone the entire fabric of space-time.

Xavier described the whole

thing as a calculated risk taken by an aging Heinerich Waarduth––the man who’d created nanoborg technology in the first place––to eliminate the menace he’d wrought upon humanity. succeeded.

And by all indications, the old man had Waarduth had played every angle and foreseen so

many eventualities it made Eddie’s head spin. A complex web of barren branches ensnared the vivid blue sky.

The rented Buick gleamed amid rays of bright

sunshine. Life since that night had been a string of revelations for Eddie––some good––like the discovery that close association with someone of Senator Landry’s stature seemed to rid one of the scrutiny usually associated with an

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/547 investigation––and some not so good––like finding out that his house had been destroyed by the earthquake. Some of the surprises were life changing; Eddie was still recovering from what Otuno had shown him.

At first

they’d looked just like ordinary bricks stacked in the back of his old friend’s car, only stouter and heavier for some reason.

Then Otuno picked one up and poured the remaining

contents of an old water bottle on it. by, smiling but quiet for a change.

Xavier stood close

After a minute the

outer layer of the brick softened and crumbled away like loose soil, revealing a thick, gleaming bar of gold underneath.

Eddie couldn’t believe his eyes.

In all there

was a total of thirty-two ten-pound bars, with an aggregate value of over two-and-a-quarter million dollars, going by weight alone.

This was antique Egyptian gold, however––all

legitimately acquired by Xavier––and infinitely more valuable as a result.

Some estimated the treasure to be

worth between fifteen and twenty-two million dollars. According to his father’s wishes, he would split the fortune with Isaiah Otuno.

At the age of 70, Otuno was

finally going to retire from the University––and go into independent research.

Eddie intended to donate a large

portion of his half of the money to the families of Agents

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/548 Williams and Desmond.

That would still leave plenty to

support his modest lifestyle for a very long time to come. Then there was Suzanne.

What amazed Eddie most of

all, more than the chaos and riches, was Suzanne.

As

Xavier promised, she had made a full recovery within twenty-four hours, and remembered nothing of what transpired in the final hours of that evening.

In

addition, she confessed to still having some feelings for Eddie as well, and wanted to try to make another go of their relationship.

They were uniquely matched to help

each other heal––after all, very few others would ever understand what they had suffered through together.

For

the first time in a very long while, Eddie felt ready to be close to someone, to share intimacy and emotion.

This time

he had no intentions of running away. She was waiting for him back in LA.

They were going

to take things slow. He got back in the car and activated the hologram. The apparition that appeared on the seat next to him was his dad, for the most part, yet at the same time it wasn’t. It looked and talked and behaved like the wonderful eccentric Eddie remembered from his childhood.

It had the

ability to generate spontaneous thought and accumulate new memories.

What the glowing form lacked in physical

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/549 substance it more than made up for with personality and presence. humor.

It even had his dad’s questionable sense of

If, instead of meeting the hologram in person,

Eddie had only talked to it––say, on the phone––he’d be hard pressed to prove it wasn’t his father––until the discussion came around to certain topics.

Although

detailed right down to the last character nuance, and bestowed with knowledge of the distant future, the Xavier sitting next to him seemed to know very little about the last ten years of his own life.

That was because this

particular scan of his mind had been captured at the time of the traumatic spider attack, when Eddie had been only eight years old, so a good chunk of the life they had shared––everything after that incident––was missing. Despite all this, the ghostly apparition projected humor, heart and soul, and appeared to be genuinely interested in Eddie’s life; in conversation it felt like his father, and for that Eddie was glad.

He would take what he could get.

As he swung the Buick back on the highway Xavier started to ask Eddie more about the current political environment, a topic which he seemed to find inexhaustibly fascinating. They’d been talking almost non-stop for three days. It had taken Eddie a while to come around to some of the obvious questions.

Why him?

Xavier explained that there

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/550 had been very little choice: he’d been shown two futures, one in which human society and all it had achieved was destroyed by a dark alien force, and one in which humanity was given the opportunity to fight back.

Xavier had

possessed enough wisdom to understand the validity of that threat; he’d been entrusted with proof of future nanotechnology––the V-K boxes––and agreed to Heinerich Waarduth’s plan.

The burden had been too much, however;

years later Xavier tried to let his eight-year-old son in on the secret. Waarduth’s plan.

Somehow, that too was all part of The large rogue Black Widows had been in

the cellar not only to stop Xavier, but also to insure he lived beyond his years to oversee certain tasks. Milton?

Why

Well that had been more coincidental timing than

anything else.

Milton was the first person to try to

contact Eddie after the Elohim nanophage elements had finally translated space-time; furthermore, something about Milton’s psychology and physiology must have fit the bill. Xavier explained that Milton’s antagonistic feelings toward Eddie probably helped make him a shoe-in. They were still discussing politics when Eddie found the exit he was looking for.

Two blocks north, two blocks

east, and he was pulling into a parking lot in front of a sprawling, rustic looking complex.

The expression on

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/551 Xavier’s shimmering face was one of nervous expectation, the anxious disbelief one experiences before a longanticipated reunion. Excitement bubbled in Eddie’s gut as well. He looked over at his dad.

“This is really going to work, isn’t it?”

Xavier winked at him behind his glasses; sometime in the past few days those spectacles had returned.

“Landry’s

condition was far more intractable, and you saw what it did for him.” Eddie rehearsed the phrases he was going to need, repeating them over and over again in his mind.

He nodded

to his father, and the hologram blinked out. Spired cupolas and steep gables thrust up into the cobalt heavens.

Dripping icicles and patches of melted ice

twinkled in the sunlight.

As he walked up the path toward

the front door of the Twilight Gardens Nursing Home, Eddie patted the ivory box in his shirt pocket. He was looking forward to seeing his mother again.

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/552

Malcolm/Quantum Rift/553