"Deus Sex Machina" by "URN My Power" III - "Demoness" Brand tossed a turkey leg bone into the trash as he made his way outside. He was aware of Jade and Nikki sleeping off their Thanksgiving dinner in the bedroom, and smiled at the sisterly bond that had grown between them. He seated himself on a warm rock to watch the sun set. Tropical sunsets are the best. he thought with delight. A fluttering sound announced the arrival of one of the small, dragonlike creatures he'd been experimenting with. Brand stroked the creature and scratched it in its favorite spot, on top and near the back of the head. The creature trilled its pleasure and accepted a piece of meat from his hand. This was one area where Brand was made to feel deficient. The miniature dragon was no smarter than a housecat, yet was the most intelligent thing Brand had managed so far. At least he'd thought to give the creature a decided aversion to throwing up in shoes. He transported some mice from the walls of his mother's home, far away from here, onto the beach. Hungrily, the dragonlike creature pounced, its talons sinking into rodent flesh. Two more appeared, attracted by the death-squeaks of the first mouse. As more and more of the creatures approached, Brand conjured more mice. "Beautiful." his mother said, sinking to the sand nearby to admire the colorful, flashing bodies of the pygmy dragons. She was dressed in a sarong and bikini top, her hair tied back to keep it out of her eyes. "I still wonder why I can't make them smarter." Brand replied. "You're a smart boy, you'll figure it out." she said, rising and kissing him on the cheek. "I have faith in you." "Where's dad?" "In the kitchen, having a traditional after-Thanksgiving Alka-Seltzer." she said. "I've been meaning to tell you...your time-warp equipment...um...I didn't get downstairs in time to unplug it when a storm came through." His expression was unreadable, so she continued. "Lightning hit the pole outside. There was a lot of smoke. Luckily nothing caught fire, but..." "But the machine was fried." he finished. She bowed her head, nodding as much as the gesture would allow. He lifted her chin and smiled benevolently. "It's okay." he said. "If I need to, I can build the machine again. Besides, knowing dad the way I do, not being able to get downstairs and unplug the machine was probably not your fault." He turned to watch the sun dip the rest of the way below the horizon. "Did anything weird come out?" he asked. "I'm not sure." she said. He turned back to her. "I couldn't see anything that night, what with the storm, and it was so dark because the power was out...but when the electrician came down, we noticed that right above the pad had started shimmering." "Shimmering?" Brand asked, rising to his feet. "Sort of like...like the road on a hot day, you know?" she said. "The electrician fixed the power, and we haven't let anybody down there since." Brand shifted his place in the world so he could stand in his basement lab. What he found was distressing to say the least. The area directly over the transportation pad did indeed waver like heat-shimmer. Three more shimmers floated like the blobs in a lava lamp. One of them seemed to red-shift, indicating an extended wavelength of light passing through it--a bubble of slow time. The other one seemed to blue-shift, indicating a shorter wavelength of light passing through it--a bubble of accellerated time. The third one was noticeable only by the way light refracted as it crossed the bubble's frontier. Looking through the bubble, he saw images of things that had happened here and things that hadn't happened yet. He saw himself working on the machine. He saw the time he'd snuck downstairs with Amanda Crook, when she'd given him his first kiss from a girl who wasn't related to him. The scene shifted again, and it was night time. Electricity surged through the equipment. He saw his mother coming down to check. Something came out after she left. Something with wings, and red skin. Brand instinctively recoiled, tripping over the bottom stair. "Shit!" he muttered. "Shit shit shit shit shit shit FUCK!" He'd been careless, and as a result, something had been unleashed, more dangerous by the very fact that it was an unknown, than all three of these time-bubbles combined. Speaking of the bubbles...The accellerated-time bubble had touched the ceiling, and now said ceiling was rotting away at a fantastic speed. Brand reached out for the bubble, confining its energy into a blue jewel. He confined the red-shift bubble into a red jewel. He put the third bubble's energy in a mirror, that would allow him to see other times and places. "Now for that last shimmer." he said. To his dismay, it resisted all of his attempts to manipulate it. "Fuck." he growled. "The one thing I can't do a damn thing about, and if my science fiction has taught me anything, it'll probably threaten the existence of the entire world." He put a stasis field around it to keep it from spawning any more bubbles, and held up the mirror. He was able to get it to show him where the demoness had been, like a trail of afterimages following a secret character in one of his favorite fighting games. That would have to do.