by Richard Fox
“Marc, you’re being ridiculous.” The air hardened and spat him back toward the flame. Marc tripped over his own feet and tumbled to the ground. He snapped back to his feet and looked for a way, anyway, to put some distance between him and the flame.
The flame, white on silver or silver on white—Marc couldn’t tell as it morphed in the air—floated toward him slowly.
Marc made the sign of the cross with two fingers and looked away. He heard a sigh.
“Look at me.” The flame, again.
Marc opened an eye. The flame was a few inches from his hands but he still felt no heat.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you. Understand?” The flame bobbed in the air gently until Marc nodded. “I am an emissary from an alien intelligence sent to save your species from extinction and I need your help to do it.”
Marc pointed a finger at the flame and tried to touch it. His fingertip passed into the flame’s surface without sensation.
“I thought unsolicited physical contact was against your species’ norms,” said the flame, the tendrils rustling with the words.
Marc snapped his hand back.
“Did you say something about…extinction?” The flame bobbed in the air. “How? Why?”
“An armada is coming.” The flame morphed into an oblong shape with a half dozen tendrils sticking from it, like a misshapen spider. “They are the Xaros and they will annihilate your species with ease. Unless you and I work together, your extinction is assured,” the flame said, floating closer to Marc, who stood dumbfounded. The flame came so close that he could see his reflection on it. Deep blue motes of light sprang from the flame and evaporated in the air.
“Why me? What am I supposed to do about an alien armada? I’m a B-minus grad student with a mountain of student loans, not some…some world leader!”
The probe returned to flames and a hologram of a white paper popped into the air next to it. Pages flipped open from the book, the mathematical proof he’d finished the night before.
“We expected that your species would have progressed to the edge of your solar system by now. To see such potential squandered on wars and Internet cat videos was disheartening, but this is well beyond what you should be capable of. The advancements you discovered in material science and energy storage are a springboard to technological advancement that will give you a 27 percent chance of survival, provided everything goes as planned. We can start here.” The proof stopped with the picture of a lattice of carbon atoms. The last page had the words “No way!!!!” scrawled next to the diagram.
“I don’t understand,” Marc said.
“You will, but we need to get started right away.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Sixty years.”
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Read BREAKING THROUGH for FREE
This is not a fairy tale.
Sixty-six days is all fighter pilot John McNeal has left on his service contract, after that his combat days will be over for good.
If he survives that long.
After a mysterious rift in the fabric of spacetime strands him on an alien world John must join forces with some unlikely heroes to have a chance of surviving. He soon discovers that this strange new world isn't alien at all, but this is not the land of pixies, pirates or boys who don't grow old.
There is hope, however, someone has been here before and returned to tell about it, all John has to do is figure out how they got back home. It won't be easy; this world is not the fairy tale he remembers and he will have to fight to get home.
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