The Device: Part III

(Story begins here.)

``What the hell is that!'' Sally shrieked, leaping back and crashing into the wall behind her hard. Her back immediately started throbbing with pain. ``Is it a damn cockroach? You know I hated those things---why didn't you give me a warning?''

``Huh?'' Tom replied, looking somewhat confused. ``Oh! It's not a cockroach. It only has the silhouette of one, see?'' He raised the object to his eye-level, against the fluorescent light, and held it steady.

Sally waited for a bit and stared at the object that was thus held. She observed no movement in the object, and with her confidence building, took a small step forward to have a closer look at it. No sooner had she gotten within twelve inches of the object when she saw a small beady something glinting for a split second. It was enough to make her spring back to her corner of the room.

``It... it moved! Tom you bastard! You lying bastard!''

``What moved?'' Tom said once more. ``The thing is completely inanimate as far as I can tell.''

``I saw its eyes move!''

``It doesn't have any damn eyes, Sally. Get a grip. I think you're just prejudiced against the shape, and playing straight on your own fears and biases, that's all. Don't forget that you're supposed to be the engineer that has to verify that my claims that what the device is capable of doing to be true. No one will believe you if you sound like a nut job.''

``Just get that thing away from me!'' Sally screeched, half-screaming and half-crying from the shock.

Tom sighed. So many years, and he had nearly forgotten about Sally's irrational fear for cockroaches. He couldn't really understand why she had such a strong phobia---it was not as though she had to live through a torture relating to being immersed in a tub full of the moving writhing cockroaches. And she lived in the city, where cockroaches were actually far and few and mostly harmless. Those cockroaches out in the rural areas, now those were the scary ones. About half an inch longer than the ones in the city, those cockroaches were rambunctious enough to even catch and eat small prey, a behaviour that was hitherto unseen. Tom shrugged his shoulders: thoughts for another time.

He held the cockroach-shaped object in his right hand and reached for the three-inch cube from the shelf with his left. He picked the cube up easy---despite looking like it was made of concrete, the cube itself was made of some kind of exotic material more like a plastic. As a result, it was actually quite light while still rigid to hold. Tom had requested for CT scans of the cube to learn more about its interior, but the national parks authority relayed the message that nothing intrusive was to be done to it, and that included irradiating the cube with any form of high intensity radiation. It sounded incongruent to Tom, considering the nature of the authority and the expressed prohibition of certain actions. He suspected that some other agency was involved and was using the national parks authority as a front, but wasn't in the position to argue anything. Grant money was hard to come by, and it was an interesting study so far, to say the least.

With the cube in his left hand, and the cockroach-shaped object in his right, Tom brought the two of them together in front of him. Sally was watching from the corner, fascinated. As the two objects got closer to each other, a glow started to emanate from both of them. It was subtle while they were still arm's length apart, but as they got closer, the glow started to overpower even the fluorescent lamp above. Strangely enough, Sally could see that the glow was increasing in intensity, but at not point was it ever so blinding that she couldn't continue observing.

Then she saw Tom do what she would later describe as ``a physically impossible action'' at the inquiry.

The cube and the cockroach-shaped object started intersecting each other in the middle of the brilliant and ever-increasing intensity glow. Sally glanced at Tom---he didn't seem like he was expending any form of effort whatsoever and looked quite relaxed. She shifted her gaze back to the two objects. The cockroach-shaped object was slowly embedded within the cube, and as it made its way through, the cube itself started to change its shape. The change was bizarre---some parts started to shrink and disappear while other parts started to appear out of nowhere, and they all took on shapes that one would hardly ever see in the real world. It was almost as though the cube was adjusting itself in a higher spatial dimension and all that she was seeing was a mere three-dimensional shadow of a higher dimension manipulation. The changing shapes continued on for a bit, accelerating in its rate until the glow suddenly went away and a new object seated itself comfortably in Tom's open hands.

``What the hell just happened?'' Sally asked, finally finding her voice.

``I just assembled the key to the device.''

``No you did not! I just saw you move the two objects together and... and... it did stuff and assembled itself on its own!''

``Yes, that's how the key is assembled. Once used, it will re-form the cube and the other object that you saw earlier.''

``And you know this because...''

``Because I've already used the key and the device once. That's why they were willing to suspend their disbelief and order me to get an engineer to come in and verify my claims. Because I've already used the device with the key. I've seen what the device can do. And they just want another person to verify it.''

Sally was speechless. She turned to look at the key that was sitting on Tom's open palms. It looked almost like an ordinary old-fashioned key, bronze in colour, complete with a large loop on one hand and long-ish stem and cut teeth. But that was all there was in resemblence to the familiar. There was a barely imperceptible modulation of the surface of the entire key, as though it were some form of liquid with very high frequency waves travelling along it. Sally could swear that she saw some spikes that appeared momentarily only to disappear again. All in all, it was mesmerising, even as none of the patterns that seemed to be appearing repeated itself.

``May I hold it?''

``Sure, why not?'' Tom replied, holding out the key with one hand towards Sally.

She reached forward to pick it up from him.