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on the table with its insides exposed to the world. Hari hovered nearby, doing his best to watch quietly.
    The excitement of being so near to completion radiated through his body, making it difficult to stand still. He channeled that energy by pacing. His sneakers squeaked with every step.
    Gerald grabbed a tool with a thin metal proboscis and, ignoring Hari’s shallow breathing, carefully navigated the swarm of wires and circuitry.
    “Well,” Gerald said, removing his glasses. “Whether it’ll do what you want it to, I haven’t a clue, but…”
    “But?”
    Gerald scratched his ear. “But, I don’t think it’ll blow up or anything tragic like that.”
    “Excellent.” Hari appeared beside the table, reassembling the Key’s outer covering in a flash. “How about another test run?”
    Gerald grunted as he maneuvered through the debris field, back to the relative safety of the couch.
    Hari observed a striking resemblance between Gerald and a dancing walrus in that moment. He thought it best not to share that insight as he took the reassembled Key between his fingers.
    The Key had grown substantially larger with the new adjustments. The weight, having increased disproportionately to the size, gave the whole apparatus many similarities to a brick. The device wouldn’t win any style awards, and that filled him with a twinge of regret.
    That’s a problem for another day , he decided, freeing that thought from his mind with a visible shake of the head.
    Hari, rigid as petrified wood, held the Key in an outstretched arm. The weight of the device caused the underdeveloped muscles in his arm to squeal in protest. Consequently, years later, if anybody were to ask what Hari had been thinking the precise moment he fired the Key, and ripped a hole in the fabric of space and time, they would likely be surprised to find him making resolutions to spend more time in the gym.
    The blue beam collided with the far wall in a brilliant display of light before collapsing back into the Key. Left in its wake there remained a vapor trail. The air where the light had struck shimmered like an invisible curtain.
    Hari couldn’t be certain, but it seemed plausible the air on the other side of the room had become somewhat heavier than it had been moments before. Vapor trails, like those observed rising from asphalt on hot summer days, traced their spindly existences towards the high vaulted ceiling of the lab.
    Any lingering thoughts of the gym Hari might have been having abruptly vanished when a woman stepped through the vapor. In an instant, years of scientific training faltered, leaving Hari’s mind to the whims of his Catholic upbringing. Without hesitation, he thought for sure he was witnessing an angel.
    Gerald made an odd gurgling noise from his post at the door. Hari knew he wasn’t alone in his assumption of the divine.
    Hari couldn’t tell definitively from across the room, but he was reasonably sure the woman stood taller than him. Lean and muscular with skin that bordered on porcelain, the angel remained fixed in place.
    This is it , Hari thought. I’m either having a stroke, God is speaking to me, or this is an alien . Of the three, the stroke was most probable, and yet, most undesirable.
    Until doctors could convince him this was a hallucination brought on by a grand-mal seizure induced by staring at the blue light too long, Hari decided to operate under the assumption that this was, in fact, an alien.
    Slowly he raised a hand and waved. He pushed air through his vocal cords in the hope they would make words of an intelligent sort.
    They did not.
    And so it was that mankind’s first word to an alien race was, “Gaeurgh?”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
    Ryol
     
    The harsh light burned Ryol’s sensitive eyes. She restructured her mind to cope with the new stimuli. Ryol reduced her photosensitivity and the world dimmed. The searing pain behind her optic nerve ebbed. Then, she applied