Chapter 9

I was shocked. I hadn’t wanted to endanger the girl’s life. Actually I wasn’t sure what I wanted from her: I enjoyed the sex, perhaps too much, but I couldn’t stomach the prospect of public disgrace or worse.

I was keen to know what the girl had to say for herself. The next day was a scheduled work day and I didn’t want her driven away by the machines at work. I decided to stay home to make things easier for her in case she could make it. I rang Ben Hardisty.

“Hi Ben,” I said when he answered. “It’s John Pearson. A minor emergency has come up and I need to be home tomorrow. Can I swap days and come I the following day instead?”

“No problem. I’ll inform Eliogu and the team. Do you have anything scheduled for tomorrow that needs to be taken care of?”

“Stella Mason might be ready to weld the two pieces of the component together into a single unit. I promised to show her how to do it.”

“I could take care of that for you,” volunteered Ben. “What type of weld were you planning?”

I gave Ben the details. “It needs to be done that way to provide a comfortable margin to pass strength testing.”

“I see,” said Ben. “I’ve used that technique before but it’s not really my thing. I’ll check whether anyone else has the expertise. If not, I can assign Stella to a temporary task until you’re back. There’s always someone slipping behind who could use a hand.”

“Thanks.”

“I hope you get your emergency sorted,” said Ben.

So did I!

I woke early the next morning after a disturbed night’s sleep worrying about all the things I didn’t know. After a hurried breakfast, I risked a quick visit to a local corner shop to buy a daily newspaper: it would provide a much needed distraction until the girl turned up, if she turned up. Was she even a girl? She had looked much older when she had vanished the day before.

Nearly twenty four hours had passed and there was no sign of the girl. I didn’t know what she had meant by ‘allowed’ but it was beginning to look as though I might never see her again.

My afternoon was looking free. Perhaps I could go into work after all and help Stella Mason with the weld.

The sound of my doorbell ringing made me jump. I wasn’t expecting any visitors. My inclination was to ignore it and hope the caller went away. It wouldn’t do to have a visitor in the house if the girl turned up: I might lose any chance I had of an explanation.

The doorbell rang again. I sighed. I decided I’d better answer it in case it was important.

I went to the door and opened it. The girl was standing there in her usual white and yellow sun dress and white Panama sun hat. She looked back to her previous age of mid-teens, but no longer exuded the confidence and exuberance of previous visits.

“May I come in?” she asked, her melodious unaccented voice interrupting my scrutiny.

“Of course,” I replied, standing aside for her to enter. “It’s safe. My device is switched off.”

“Thank you.”

I escorted the girl into my lounge. “Have a seat.”

“I don’t have a physical presence here,” said the girl. “I could simulate sitting but it would be distracting to maintain the illusion. Try to touch me.”

I reached out with my hand but it passed right through her. Then as I was retracting my hand, an invisible, small, warm, soft feminine hand grasped it and gave me a quick handshake. I gasped with surprise and the girl giggled. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” the girl said.

“How did you do that if you don’t have a physical presence?” I asked.

The solemn look returned to the girl’s face. “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to tell you. Our culture is significantly more advanced than yours. I’m under strict orders not to divulge information about areas in which ours is ahead of yours until we’re sure the knowledge won’t be misused. But since I can’t share any of our advances, I can’t give you any kind of framework for understanding what’s going on.”

I could sort of understand her dilemma, so I nodded my acquiescence.

“Yesterday triggered a mandatory review by our Ethical Oversight Committee, and we were given strict orders that I was not to be allowed to return until the committee’s investigation was complete,” explained the girl. My supervisors and I have defied those orders for two reasons. Firstly we owe you an apology because you’ve been treated very badly. We didn’t treat you with the respect you deserve. I particularly was under-prepared for my role. I was chosen for it purely because of an accident of my genetics.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“I’m not allowed to explain the science even if I could. Even the little I understand is still heavily disputed and radically different from what we believed twenty years ago. But there are some observed facts that we’re confident about,” the girl continued. “Extremely few of the people in your reality are capable of seeing me like this. If it weren’t for my fortuitous genetics, none of them would have been able to. Similarly, because of your fortuitous genetics, if you had the technology to travel to my reality, extremely few people in my reality would be able to see you rather than none. I would be one of them. We really are quite a special pair.”

The girl’s statement had a ring of truth. The shopping centre security guards hadn’t been able to see the girl and her image hadn’t been captured by either their security cameras or the Peak Pervert photographer’s camera.

“What’s the second reason?” I asked.

“To beg you for a favour.”

“What sort of favour?” I asked warily.

“The construct we were generating got badly depleted yesterday and is now unbalanced and unstable. It needs an input of energy from you to restore it to a stable equilibrium.”

“I don’t understand. What construct?”

“The body we’ve been building with our shared energy.”

“The torso thing?”

“Yes.”

I had a momentary panic. “You’ve been taking energy from me? How does that affect me? Will it shorten my life expectancy?”

“The effects should be beneficial. After every encounter, you should have been feeling younger and healthier and more focussed.”

I thought back to the days after our encounters and, true enough, I could remember generally feeling more energetic and purposeful the next mornings.”