22: Null Time
I’D taken Veya Ragem from the Null.
And stuffed Rudy’s presents for family inside an extradimensional space monster with tentacles, but I chose to focus on the positive, that being less terrifying than what I had to do next.
I’d grown convinced what I detected was damage. There were holes in the Null. Maybe from its encounter with Noam, natural aging, or rot. Whatever the cause, this wasn’t the indestructible monster of Lesy’s nightmares.
I hoped.
Time to find the boom. Keeping my exterior disguise—though by this point I was far larger than I should be and only a rotting Null wouldn’t have noticed a giant Web-being flowing clumsily through its insides—I retraced my path through the core.
In the end, I relied on the presents. The filaments so disliked them that each hung within bubble-like gaps of no flesh/don’t touch and I grew more and more curious what Largas Freight was using to wrap its cargo. Clearly the stuff had anti-Null potential.
Right now, they were my guides, because the boom should be drifting near one of the small gaps. I’d check each until I found it, remove the bit of me and escape.
Me! There!
Unfortunately, my ability to detect web-mass was equaled by the filaments’. A number were wrapped tightly around the boom’s case, glowing and crackling as they took what they—and the Null— needed.
Freeing the timer.
Time to head in the opposite direction.
I shifted a good hunk of mass into energy, aimed for what looked like a hole in the fabric of space and was hopefully one in the Null, and I—
—wound up outside. WAAAY outside, because by the time my terror was replaced by a more thoughtful, how far do I run?
I’d gone a long long LONG way.
Paul was not going to be happy.
Still, I sensed no empty anywhere and WAAAY behind me there was a sharp drumming as if gravity and light poured down a new well. I’d done it!
And, on the plus side?
I’d more mass than I’d ever need. I began to hum to myself as I reached out my senses, interpreting the spectra of stars.
Ah. There.
I began my journey home.