Chapter 11

The dish above continued to alternate pops and showers of electrical sparks with a deeply disturbing humming sound, and I saw that above the platform, there was a semi-spherical shape loosely defined by the same sort of firefly-sparkles that had accompanied the earlier transformations. More disturbingly, the computer voice chose that moment to announce calmly, "Communication with the secondary dish has been lost," and then without missing a beat, "Communication with the secondary dish has been restored." Before I could ponder the implications of that, it added unapologetically, "Secondary dish: connection checksum failed."

I was pretty sure that didn't mean everything was A-OK.

I had not forgotten the two people on the platform, and they both seemed to be alive but by no means fully conscious. They were moving slightly, and under other circumstances I would have rushed to help them, but... the truth was I was absolutely terrified of stepping onto that platform. I wasn't worried about the electrical sparks or the ominous hum. But those otherworldly little sparkles absolutely petrified me; I imagined that they were tiny little pockets floating around where reality was changing. I had no idea what might happen if a person was standing directly in a spot where all of a sudden the laws of physics were repealed and 2+2=7, but I was not interested in volunteering my services to find out.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Can you hear me?" I looked around for something to use to reach them, but the place was bare, completely bereft of lassos, ladders, or giant remote-controlled hands. Why are there never any giant remote-controlled hands when you need them? I thought wildly. "Hey!"

The paler of the two figures sat up abruptly, and I got a chill from seeing her. It was the woman I had been introduced to as Courtney Collins. She was nude, and despite the seriousness of the situation part of my mind evaluated her body, an evolutionary male reflex that apparently doesn't disappear no matter how dire the circumstances. Small breasts with dark nipples on an athletic frame, a bit of a paunch at her stomach but certainly a body that should wear a bikini proudly, and tan lines that suggested she did in fact wear a bikini, although they did not offer any evidence as to her state of mind when doing so. She shook her head as if to clear it and then looked at me, wincing at another shower of electrical sparks came from overhead.

"Warning: the data stream from the secondary dish is corrupted. Do you wish to reset the secondary dish?"

What the hell. "Hey hey hey yes!" I yelled.

"The reset for the secondary dish failed. Secondary dish: connection checksum failed."

So much for that idea.

"Courtney!" I said forcefully. She looked around at me, obviously still disoriented.

"Courtney!" Lauren's voice joined mine as stepped past me towards the two on the platform.

I grabbed her arm. "Lauren, no." I said softly. "You can't get up there. It's not safe."

She looked back at me but stopped, then turned back towards the platform. "Courtney, it's me. Lauren. You need to get out of there." She paused. "Courtney!" she almost screamed.

The woman waved a hand weakly, and then rose to her feet before noticing the other form at her feet. "Wa... wait," she said. She leaned over and began pulling the prone figure towards the circle's boundary. Another pop sounded overhead, and again I felt a queer sort of twisting sensation inside me as I heard it. The firefly-type sparkles inside the semi-sphere were increasing in both size and frequency, so that they now appeared to be little glowing worms, appearing and wriggling for an instant in midair and then vanishing again.

I looked at Lauren and she looked back at me, both of us sharing a feeling of dread. "Do you see them?" I asked her softly. She nodded, her face set.

"What are they?" she whispered.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "I think they might be... little spots of another reality, and I don't want to know what happens if you touch one."

She swallowed hard and then turned back to the woman who was movingly agonizingly slowly, dragging her burden behind her. "Courtney! Hurry!" she yelled. "Please!"

The pervasive hum, which I had taken to be from the electronic equipment, was getting louder and it seemed to be coming directly from the platform area. Occasionally, it would be punctuated with tiny snaps, as if the Keebler elf and fifty of his friends were all summoning waiters to their respective tables. As Courtney reached the end of the platform and stepped off, she lost her grip on her burden and fell forward empty handed. Lauren and I both caught her and eased her to the floor, and then I steeled myself to reach in and grab the other woman. As my hand crossed the vertical plane of the platform I winced, but nothing seemed to happen and I reached farther in. As I touched the arm I was reaching for I recoiled involuntarily. I had been expecting to feel skin; what I felt was a soft short fur that was, while not unpleasant, not at all what I had been expecting. I swallowed my reaction and reached in again with both hands, getting a firm grip and pulling the final victim free of the platform.

At the last possible instant, one of the glowing worms appeared just above my left wrist, touching my watch for its instant of life. I flinched away, but it was gone before I really began to move and a moment later both the figure I was pulling and all of my body parts were past the invisible demarcation and, I most sincerely hoped, out of danger.

"Oh, my God." This from Lauren, who had turned from helping Courtney to look at my rescued victim. "Oh, my sweet Jesus, he did it to her again."

We were looking at... at... at what might have happened if someone had used one of those computer picture transformations to change a cat's face into a person's face, but stopped it halfway, or perhaps the results if a human and a tabby cat could interbreed. The body was unmistakably human, but covered with a short, dark fur that was colored to produce an effect of layers, exactly like a tabby. The face was furry too, with whiskers sticking out from the nose area to the left and right.

I suddenly remembered Lauren's description two days ago, in my car, of the third girl, Lisa Antoine, saying motherfucker made me grow fur all over, like a cat.

I looked at Lauren, horrified. "Is that Lisa?" I asked.

She was pale but nodded. "You can see it. It looks like her. But... it's not... I never saw her like this. She said he did this to her but I never saw it." She turned away and shuddered.

I looked back at the platform. The hum was getting louder, the glowing twisty worms were getting bigger and staying in the air longer before they vanished, and for the first time I became aware that there was a noticeable breeze in the room. This was unusual, since I recalled that earlier the air had been still. The breeze seemed to be coming from the open bank-vault door that led to the outside, and it seemed to be blowing past us and through the center of the room.

I was trying to put the pieces together when Lauren touched my arm. "Rick?" she asked. "What should we do now?"

"I have no clue," I responded. It was beginning to be necessary to speak up just to be heard over the humming, buzzing noise.

"Hey hey hey shutdown!" I tried.

"Shutdown cannot commence while a task is pending. Do you wish to complete the task?"

Crap. "Hey hey hey... yes?" I offered weakly.

"Task cannot be completed while a warning is active. Display active warnings?"

I sighed. "Hey hey hey yes," I tried again.

"Warning: the data stream from the secondary dish is corrupted. Do you wish to reset the secondary dish?"

"Seems to me we've seen this show before," I muttered. "Hey hey hey yes."

"The reset for the secondary dish failed. Secondary dish: connection checksum failed."