Marlene watched from her living room window as lightning flashed in the distance. She rested her arms on her bulging belly and felt a slight kick that made her flinch. Thunder rumbled. Silence. Then thunder again. She tried to remember that grade-school lesson, the one about how long it takes for a storm to reach its next stop. Then she heard hailstones pinging against the roof.
“I don’t like this, Rob.” Her voice sounded as though …
Drowning. Refracted light and the waves wreathe his body, borne away on the susurrus of a fading heartbeat. He’d fallen overboard, pushed by invisible hands drawn by some faint tinnitus, his equilibrium shot. His life, now, too.
Gasp! A sledgehammer of light in his eyes (the pupils shrivel to pinpoints, and for a moment relief blossoms in the waking part of his mind – I live).
Shade, blessed shade. Some graceful, svelte body, feathered by …
The fractal on Halpin’s screen writhed through a dozen color shifts in as many seconds. One flowed into many, many into one – and the gaps between were jagged mouths, gnawing at a void blacker than imagination.
Susan backed away from her colleague’s desk. “Where did you download this thing?”
“It’s a distributed computing project. Strictly volunteer.”
He tapped one corner of the screen, where translucent spikes stabbed in counterpoint to the fractal’s movements.
“That’s got …
