PULP & POPCORN

Page 69
Commander Future stepped around the desk so he could scan what Williamson was
typing. "Anything unusual today?"
Williamson smiled. "The whole thing is unusual. Every second it exists is unusual."
"You know what I mean…"
"Our only guest is the one you brought."
"Good. Thank you." Commander Future laid his hand flat on the surface of the
screen, and for a moment, I could see words flash up his arm, like the suit was somehow
absorbing the data. One last ripple and the suit went still again as the Commander looked
at me. "We're going inside now. You're going to see an ulcer in time-space. Prepare
yourself."
I flashed back on the moment in Triumph Plaza, during what I later learned was my
job interview, when I peered through what looked like a broken pane of glass in the sky. I
shuddered at even the fleeting thought of what I saw on the other side of that break. Blood
and sorrow and suffering, pure malice in physical form.
The Commander saw my reaction, saw me shrink back from the door. He put one
giant hand on my shoulder to steady me. "Don't worry. It's contained."
Even with him standing there reassuring me, my anxiety levels spiked as he reached
out and opened the door. Inside the room, there was what I would describe as an energy
event, maybe eight feet in diameter, roughly three feet off the floor. This wasn't anything
like the broken-glass appearance of the thing from Triumph Plaza, though. It was more like
a clean hole, and all the light in the room bent in towards that hole, pulled towards it.
There were several small devices in the room fixed to the wall and the floor and the ceiling
in an irregular pattern, all of them generating a violet light that fully surrounded the event.
"That is an Intrusion."
"What does that mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like Something that has no rightful place in our time has
broken in, and what that happens, there is a… scar… left behind."