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Reply-To: Quanta Magazine <quanta+@andrew.cmu.edu>
From: quanta+@andrew.cmu.edu (Quanta Magazine)
To: tosspot!lee@uunet.uu.net
Subject: Quanta - February 1991 - Part 3(3)

commented, looking about the wreckage.



   Much later, back on the station `Quiet Reason', they went their separate
ways.  Zephyr returned to the nebular trade conference.  Mirdis cleared up the
paperwork incurred in their exploits.  Gavar's homeworld Hellsgate denied the
existence of any exiled Prince Gavar Mordenkainen; the Ryme bureaucracy duly
made out the forms and filed it away.

   Mirdis and Ariaou met once again in the same conference room, near the
chess board the Dragon Queen had been studying on their arrival.  They spoke
for a short while over tea.  Finally, Mirdis rumbled, "Then there is nothing I
can do to persuade you to remain?  Our scientists could undoubtedly learn much
from Sundancer's horn."

   "Nothing.  I must return to Meetpoint, Mirdis," Ariaou replied quietly.
"Call it fate, perhaps, or a duty to be fulfilled."

   "Very well.  From Zephyr, reservations for a first class suite on the
starliner `Princess's Favor'.  And I give you this to remember Ryme."  The
Dragon Queen picked up an orange-streaked marble piece from the chess board.
At first Ariaou thought it was the pawn; then she looked closer to see that it
was a unicorn rampant with eyes of glittering sapphire.

______________________________________________________________________________

Conrad Wong is a CS student at U. C. Berkeley, about to graduate and face the
terrifying world of "Real Life".  He is not looking forward to it.  Except,
that is, to having more money to spend on the necessities of life: new science
fiction and fantasy books, anthropomorphic comics (Conrad's particularly fond
of `Rhudiprrt'), and getting permanent net access.  His hobbies include feeble
attempts at writing (one of which you see above), drawing, computer games, and
MUDs.

cwong@cory.berkeley.edu
______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

			       A Subtle Change

			       Matthew Sorrels

			      copyright (c) 1991
______________________________________________________________________________



				  Bright Sun


   She was the most attractive brunette.  Large, round, intelligent eyes, with
a bright, sparkling smile.  Not the type of girl a man dreams of, but the type
of dream a man searches for.  Roger wasn't much for dreaming though.  Day in
day out his life was always constant, but his eyes held the gleam of the sun
in the middle of the day.  No one could stay in that sun long.

   "Roger, I want you to meet Cheryl Wilson. She is starting work here today.
I thought I would put her next to you and have you help her get adjusted.
Cheryl, Roger is one of the best data entry clerks we have.  If you have any
questions, he should be able to answer them, and I will be meeting with you
this afternoon to handle the left over paperwork; welcome aboard."

   "Nice to meet you, Cheryl.  If there's anything I can help you with please
let me know," Roger stammered out, "I know what its like to be new here, so
don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it."

   They worked side by side through the next six weeks.  Roger worked for a
large multinational corporation, just one insignificant person out of
thousands in this building alone.  Day in and day out he entered data into the
massive computers.  His job never varied, each day it was the same routine:
type, check, type, check, type, check.  Cheryl caught on quickly and soon was
working at the same rate as Roger.  They didn't talk much, no one talked much.
An occasional nod, a quiet hello, sometimes a smile; that was life on the 93rd
floor.

   The room they worked in was long and wide, a gymnasium of office space.  In
small cubicles, over four-hundred data processors entered everything from
survey data to insurance claims.  Roger had spent the past six months of his
life typing in the same repair bill, each time with different numbers and
different names.

   "Roger, what are you doing this evening?" Cheryl asked with a flip of her
hair as she was getting her coat on, her question slicing through the bustle
of the office at quitting time.

   "Not much.  Probably watch T.V. and go to bed early."  Roger said with the
tiredness of someone who had been doing the same thing for just a little too
long.

   "Why don't you come over to my place for dinner.  I don't feel like eating
alone tonight.  I have some steaks and some nice wine, it should make a
pleasant dinner."

   Roger began to swell with thoughts of what this could spell the beginning
of.  "I would love to.  What time would you like me there?"

   "Here's my address.  Lets see... I need some time to shower and change.
Why don't you make it eight o'clock?  Is that ok?"

   "Great! Do you want me to bring anything?  Dessert?"

   "Sure, that sounds fine.  Whatever you like, as long as it doesn't have
bananas in it."

   "Ok.  I'll see you at eight."

   Roger's mind began to race.  He had nothing to wear, he had nothing to talk
about.  Literally, he was nothing.  He stopped after work at a department
store and bought an outfit that would go with the evening.  He felt like a
young kid going on a first date.  His heart was racing, his head was spinning.
For twenty-eight, he didn't have a lot of experience with women; he wasn't
quite a virgin but he wasn't Mr.~Smooth either.  He was just like every other
person, full of fear of true intimacy, full of confusion, full of life.

   He showed up at three minutes to eight.  She was dressed in a simple black
dress; just a hint of romance was in the air.  Dinner was served on the only
china in the house.  The wine was a bit sour, the meat a bit fresh.  But it
was the best dinner Roger had eaten in years.  They ate slowly.  Conversation
was strange, at first, but after a while seemed natural.

   "How long have you lived in the city, Roger?" She asked glad that she
didn't start talking about the weather.

   "Oh, lets see... about 5 years.  I moved here right after school."

   "It's so strange to live here, for me.  I went to school in Kansas and I've
spent most of my life in small towns.  I don't think I was quite ready for the
anomie that the city causes."

   "Yeah, at first it takes some getting used to but that's the fun part.
What kills you here is the constant nasal drone, the day-in-day-out sameness.
You would think that in a big city, life would never get dull, but it does,
terribly dull."

   "Is your life terribly dull?" She said with a sarcastic smirk as she
cleared the table and started to fix the dessert.

   "Oh yes, terribly," he replied not realizing her sarcasm, "Sometimes,
nothing ever seems to happen at all."

   She put on some light instrumental jazz, filling the small apartment with a
kind of high-tech warmth.  As the music began to play he looked into her eyes
and knew then that something had already happened between the two of them.
They spent that night together, two people---one being.



   They got married six months later and moved into a small family starter
apartment on the south side of town.  Life was finally going like it is
supposed to.  At last, Roger had something to live for, a reason to live in a
world without any reason.  He was put in charge of the data entry division and
Cheryl quit work to have children.  It was the classic American dream.

   On August 16, 2005, his son was born.  The nine months had been an
experience that neither parent would forget.  The company Roger worked for was
having major problems in the global market place, and Roger couldn't sleep
some nights from the tension at work.  Day in and day out it was his wife's
face that gave him the strength to get through the day.  Fortunately the
pregnancy went fine.  Roger looked in his newborn son's eyes for a glimmer of
hope.  His own emptiness answered him back.

   Time passed, his son grew, his life settled.  Things were the same as they
had always been for beginning families.  It was a kind of exile from the real
world, where the only things that count live under your own roof, the
brightness of his wife's smile when the money was tight, the gleam in his
son's eye when he found out something new about the world, and a widening
isolation from striving for anything new, a life upon the stagnant water.



   				A Sudden Rain


   On Roger's 33th birthday he went to work, just like he always did.  Each
morning waking up at seven to catch the shuttle into town.  Each morning
kissing his wife on the forehead as he left for work.  Each day buying the
paper at the paper stand.  Each day the same as the last.  At the end of work
that day Roger took the Fenston-Hampton mag-lev train home.  Sitting on the
hard bench staring out into the landscape, Roger just waited.  His eyes didn't
even blink when the computer called his stop.  He crossed his legs and kept
riding.  Soon the airport stop was called.  By now the train was nearly empty,
Roger was one of about five people left.  From the moment he stepped off the
train, his hair blowing in the high wind out near the airport, he always
looked toward the ground while walking into the terminal.  He went to the
nearest airline desk, placing his briefcase on the ground.

   "I would like a ticket on the 8pm moon shuttle." he said with out a pause.

   "Very good sir, and when will you be returning?" the flight clerk asked.

   "One-way."

   "And how many bags will you be checking today?"

   "None."

   "All right sir, thats one way to the moon on flight 564 leaving at 8pm
arriving on luna station at 1am.  That will be $456.34, can I get your name
and how you be paying for this?"

   "The name is Roger Lansta, and I will be paying cash."

   As he was sitting in the terminal, molded into a little plastic chair,
mindlessly staring out into space, he couldn't even focus on what he was
doing.  In one of the corners of the terminal, a conversation was taking place
between a decrepit bag lady and a retarded man in a wheelchair.  For the past
thirty minutes, the bag lady had been making her psychotic way around the
terminal, talking into space about her non-existent life and her opinions on
the way the world should be.  Most people just ignored her, but the poor man
in the wheelchair seemed to welcome her company.  Roger's ship would board
soon.  All he had to do was manage to sit still just a little while longer.

   "I used to be a big star.  I did tons of movies.  I was famous."  the poor
woman claimed.

   "I like movies.  Like pretty pictures." the man in the wheelchair answered.

   "But my real job was as a spy, I used to be undercover for the CIA.  I
traveled all over the world.  But I'm retired now."

   "I had a job.  Good job, very good."

   "You know what they have done to the trains?  You know when they painted
them the new colors?  That was my idea.  I have many friends in city hall,"
the woman continued without even noticing that the man in the wheelchair.

   Roger boarded the ship and sat down in his seat.  He closed his eyes and
listened to the roar of the ship as it broke free from Earth's gravity.  His
mind was a complete blank, if he was to think but one thought his whole world
would have collapsed like a red star.  As the ship entered orbit around Earth,
he saw the edge of the sun pouring down on the ship, burning his eyes.
Somewhere in the dark void of space, he gave up what was left of his life.



   				  Moonlight


   "What am I doing here?  I'm thousands of miles from my family, from my
home, my wife, my child.  Why am I here?" Roger screamed into the silent walls
of his mind, but he did not leave.  His inner thoughts were now racing, trying
to explain his actions.  "I can't focus on my life any more.  I can't tell I
am alive.  To feel you're alive you must sometimes break the glass.  You can't
tell you're anything, unless you know what it's like to be nothing."  The
inner argument didn't help his soul, but the screaming did tire him to sleep.
The nights did not pass easily, but he did not leave, he did not call home.

   Roger took a job, processing low gravity metal alloys.  The work was long
and hard, sweating in a weightless shop twelve hours a day, coming home to a
bare little hovel, eating a meager dinner, passing out only to find morning
once again.  Two years passed, Roger slowly built a life out of the nothing of
the moon.  Living space on the moon was cheap, as was everything else---food,
clothes, entertainment, but there was a price---constant work.

   "If there is a hell, this must have been the model it's based on."  Roger
often said to his co-workers.  But in this constant pain, there was something
that called to Roger.  He didn't like living here, but he didn't want to
leave, yet.

   The work did its damage to Roger, and in time he was a living corpse.  He
had lost thirty pounds and did not sleep regularly anymore.  Two more years
went by.  Roger outlasted everyone he knew.  The work became routine.  Get up
in the morning, work, go to sleep at night.  The demons that hunted Roger had
finally left him.

   "Roger, Roger..., ROGER!  Look at you.  Your dead tired, your not doing us
a bit of good here.  I want you to go home and sleep.  Go home Roger, come
back tomorrow."  His boss was becoming worried about Roger's health.

   "I'm ok.  Just tired.  So tired.  I can't rest, though --- can't.  I have
to keep going."  Roger shook his head a few times and ran his hands through
his hair.  "I'm fine.  I can go a few more hours, I just dozed off a bit."

   "Roger, you nearly ran that drill press through your hand.  If you don't
leave I'm gonna have to call security.  Don't make me do that.  Go home."

   "Ok.  Ok.  But I still think I'm fine.  I'm fine."



   				 Sea of Rains


   One night a few weeks later at about 4 AM, with a fire burning through his
blood, Roger ran out into the the night.  Stealing a moon buggy and driving in
a blind fear into the Mare Imbrium. He finally stopped and stared into the
vast depths of space.  Up above were the stars glowing, tiny embers piercing
the veil of darkness.  Roger still felt the pulling at his soul, the same
force that had driven him to abandon his family, abandon himself.  It was
hungry again.  A call across the universe, one he had to answer.

   The next night he left on an outbound ship.  The ship was the `MakeFast', a
crew of two hundred headed for the outer colonies just beyond Alpha Centauri.
It would take over six years to make it to the first planet, even with the
Tesser propulsion drive.  But on ships like this they always needed able
hands, so Roger had no trouble getting on board.  Once again, his life took
the form of endless boredom.

   "Did you hear about Zebob getting crunched in the gateway yesterday," One
of Rogers friends mentioned.

   "Yeah, I heard."

   "Damn shame if you ask me, but he was a bit of a daredevil."

   "Daredevil?  Well yes I guess he was.  But I don't think he would have felt
it was a shame.  It would have been a real shame if it had been an accident.
Zeb never did like fate.  He really believe that he was the master of the
universe.  Probably why he was so wild."

   "But now he's dead.  All he had to do was wear the safety rig.  But no!  He
wasn't going to do something that pansy.  Always the show-off."

   "He was no more a show-off then the next guy.  He really believe that his
life was his.  He wanted that thrill.  It was his life and he ended it.  I
envy him.  He lived his life and he caused his death, nothing could be
simpler.  It was pure."

   Roger's friend stared at him for a short time, in disbelief.  "Whatever you
say Roger, but its still a shame."

   Six years passed on board the `MakeFast'.  Roger felt at peace, for some
reason, with the blank and empty dark sky.  He often asked himself how the
first deep space explorers must have felt, to meet this void head on, and not
flinch.  The first planet that the ship came upon was quite a welcome sight
for the crew.  The planet looked like it would provide plenty of ore and other
rare materials and could be savaged for a few years before moving on.  The
ship was put into a permanent orbit and a small colony was put on the planet.
The atmosphere was breathable, and there was some soil that could be
cultivated.  The change to planet life didn't take all that long and, once
again, the patterns of a stable life had begun.

   Roger was placed in charge of a small mining group that worked in the
mountains near the colony.  The work was not as hard as mining on the moon had
been and the ores were plentiful.  Time went on.  Each day another tussle with
the world, each night a fitful sleep.  Roger was no longer a young man,
running from the world.  Each night he searched the heavens, every day he
longed to move on.



   				   Sunburn


Knowing that he couldn't stay put on this planet much longer, he began to
gather up supplies in order to leave.  The ship had four scout vehicles that
could be driven by one person, with the help of the onboard computers.  It
took him nearly a month to gather enough food and equipment to risk stealing
one the the scouts, but he was once again determined to move on.

   One night, Roger took the scout ship `MakeShort'.  The ship had enough fuel
and food to last for about a year if he didn't eat or drink much.  This part
of the galaxy was filled with stars and planets that were within a few months
of each other.  Roger skipped around the galaxy for about ten months, when he
came upon a solar system with two suns.  The suns were orbited by four
planets, all quite large compared to the Earth.  Roger set down on the most
hospitable of the four but in a system with two suns, hospitable meant little
more than looked like it had some atmosphere.  Light years form reality and
unable to leave, Roger made his home once again.



   				   Dry Rain


   After two months, all the water was gone.  Roger realized for the first
time that his death was coming.  It was something that he had resigned himself
to on the day he had left earth.  His restless nature had driven him, on
beyond all reason, into the vast depths of space, and now to the end of his
world.  He ran out into the desert for four days, always moving forward,
refusing to stop for more than short breaks, driven by some need that only he
could understand. He made his last stand on a hilltop in the middle of a
burning sea of sand and wind.

   He stood up.  His ragged clothes flapping in the wind on top of the dune.
His whole body scorched red from the sun.  He looked into the bright light and
for the first time in years, smiled.  His face was grim and determined.  His
body was thin and weak, but he stood straight up.  The sand swirled around him
as his body took its last breath.  As he feel forward into the sand, his face
still kept that gaunt look of irresolute determination to not stand still.
Even as the sand began to mutate his body, that look remained, unchanging in
the burning desert.



   				   Sunrise


   John left home when he was sixteen.  One morning, his mother went into his
room, only to find that he had taken all his clothes and left.  She cried for
an entire day but knew that there was nothing she could have done, it was in
his blood, in his soul.


______________________________________________________________________________

Matthew Sorrels considers himself a modern existentialist.  Torn between an
overwhelming need to hack hardware and a craving for the purest form of code,
he will most likely be found at the unemployment office searching for that
entry-level position.  You can easily identify him as the depressed person
that consumes massive amounts of Diet Coke(tm).

ms90+@andrew.cmu.edu
______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

				  Popping In

			      Christopher Kempke

			      copyright (c) 1991
______________________________________________________________________________



				   Twilight


   The windshield wipers came on the moment Billy Goldwin's mother started the
car, testimony to some past rainstorm.  She shut them off immediately, for
they served no purpose on this particular day; the sun, though barely above
the horizon, had no clouds to block it.

   Billy's mood was not so bright.  Summer vacation had just come to an end,
and the interminable, probably endless days of school were about to begin
again.  Already his reluctance to submit to this fate had resulted in missing
the school bus, and a near-successful attempt to hide his continued presence
from his mother made him even later.

   His mother's own outlook was, therefore, less than perfect.  She didn't say
a word to him as they slipped down the avenue away from their home, selected a
few choice phrases for the next couple of blocks, then relapsed into the
impenetrable silence as they covered the remaining three miles to the school's
street.

   Billy could see the three-story school building ahead, and sank deeper into
his gloom.  The doors were closed, he would be late. To have a pink slip on
the very first day of second grade, in addition to the suffering of mere
attendance, seemed more than he should be expected to survive.

   With a passion he'd never felt before, he wished the school would
disappear.  In his head he could picture the street as it would appear without
the school, the building gone entirely.  It was a lovely dream, a Nirvana in
which this particular hell no longer existed.  He sharpened the mental image
of the absent building, seeing only the shading trees and empty avenue.  Billy
lost himself in his sudden dream.

   And a moment later that dream came true.

   Billy and his mother had just enough time to realize that there was
something wrong before the howling began; followed by a thunderous crash and a
jerk that tore away all consciousness.


   Martin Kendall's feet sat on an oak desk in a cave in the Colorado rockies.
A coin fell through the air in front of him, vanished inches above the desk,
and reappeared near the ceiling.  A moment later, as it again neared the desk,
the stunt repeated itself.  Kendall had been doing this for nearly half an
hour, just barely able to control the coin at terminal velocity.

   An intercom buzzed, and he dropped his feet to the floor with sudden
alertness.  The coin, suddenly ignored, buried itself in his desktop.

   "Martin?"  The voice of his secretary was badly distorted by the cheap
intercom.  "Sorry to bother you, but Henry brought me this a few minutes ago,
and I thought you should see it."  A manila folder materialized on the desk.
Kendall opened it at once.

   It was a handwritten note, labeled "Transcription from Police Channel, St.
Williams, Iowa".

   "Jefferson Park School appears to have vanished.  No trace of the building
remains above ground level, and there is not enough debris present to
hypothesize an ordinary explosion of any kind.  Several nearby objects
appeared to be picked up and tossed TOWARD the scene of the
disappearance, including several cars, whose occupants are currently being
taken to Central Hospital for treatment.  I will require backup and several
ambulances."

   Beneath it was scrawled hastily, "This looks like one of ours."

   Kendall had his hand back on the intercom before he finished reading.  "Get
me four or five Teletrix and have them meet me at the school as fast as you
can get them there.  Is Henry still out there?"

   His question was answered a second later when the specified party appeared
in front of his desk.  About fifty, Henry was still in perfect shape, with
slightly silvered hair which seemed to argue with his blue jeans and tennis
shoes.  His face almost always wore a slight smile, but today it showed no
trace of humor.  His eyebrows rose in a silent question, his body almost
quivering with repressed motion.

   Kendall nodded, and the world changed.  Without sound or transition, the
rock walls of the Colorado cave were replaced by blue sky and defoliated
trees.  The chair on which he had been sitting a moment before vanished.  Only
the fact that he had begun to stand saved him from collapsing to the ground.

   Henry was standing next to him, glancing around to be sure no one had
observed the teleportation.  Satisfied, he gestured toward a large, regularly
shaped pit in front of them.  Policemen were scattered around it, with the
disoriented, suspicious wandering of people facing the completely unknown.

   "That's the basement of the school building.  The leaves and branches all
around it are from the trees here.  They were apparently sucked into the
vacuum left when the school disappeared."

   Kendall nodded silently.  "You're right --- it does look like a Shifter, or
a Teletrix who wants us to think so.  Let's see if we can get in there without
the police harassing us."

   "No problem."  Henry held out a small wallet.  Kendall opened it, saw a
badge and a card which read, in part, 'George MacWills, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.'  He smiled.

   The policeman who stopped them let them pass after seeing the badge.  Henry
dropped carefully into the pit and helped Kendall down.

   The place was a disaster.  Folding chairs, old desks, and pieces of brick
wall had been picked up, smashed, and indiscriminately tossed about by the
winds.

   "Quite a mess," Kendall commented.  "Not likely there's going to be
anything here to give us clues.  What time was it here when this happened?"

   "About eight thirty."

   Kendall froze, turned around slowly.  "So school was in session?"

   Henry nodded slowly.

   "Oh shit."

   "The parents will start arriving once the word gets out, and there will be
enough media attention to keep people talking for ages.  There were almost
fifteen hundred students there, plus the teachers and..."  his voice trailed
off suddenly.

   Kendall followed his gaze, saw nothing at first, then a few droplets of
crimson showed a macabre path to something Kendall didn't want to look at at
all.

   But he did.  It was the lower half of a body, eviscerated and scattered
about the floor, discreetly covered with leaves, almost invisible.

   "He must have been walking down the stairs when the school was teleported.
Half of him left here, the other half went... wherever the rest of the school
went."  Henry's voice quivered audibly, though he kept it just above a
whisper.

   Kendall shivered a bit himself.  "This can't be seen from above.  Let's get
rid of it before the cops find it.  They've had enough inexplicable things for
one day."  He teleported the body to a remote desert and brought back an equal
volume of air to take its place.  Only a slight shifting of the leaves showed
that anything had happened.

   "We're wasting time," Kendall continued.  "Get in contact with as many of
the Teletrix as you can find all over the world; use my files to look them up.
We need to find out where that school was sent.  It would have made quite a
flash when it appeared; I'll see if any military satellites picked it up.
While I'm at it I'll get the army to control this.  That should effectively
silence the media."

   "We have people that high in the military?"  Henry sounded surprised.

   "We have people everywhere," Kendall said without emotion.  "Wait here for
the help I asked for to arrive, and get them to help you look.  There's a
couple thousand very confused people somewhere right now, most of them
schoolchildren.  We need to find out where they went."

   Henry nodded.  "I'll meet you at the Academy in an hour, whether I have
news or not."

   Kendall finished climbing out of the basement, headed for a small
outbuilding, stepped behind it and vanished.


   Two hours later three people gathered in Kendall's office.  The third was a
young woman of about twenty-five, an accomplished Teletrix and major
instructor at the Academy.

   "The army is currently guarding the school," Kendall commented. "And
there's not going to be any mention in the media.  But this is going to be
hard to gloss over.

   "Worse, the school still hasn't been located.  None of the weather or
military satellites registered a flash that hasn't been otherwise explained.
And the students and teachers haven't phoned."

   "Sounds bad," Emily Westlane said.  "We have to assume they're dead.  The
odds appear that they weren't teleported anywhere on Earth, and even if they
were the school building would probably have collapsed in it's new setting."

   Henry nodded.  "An extra-terrestrial destination seems likely.  But who
would want to send a school into outer space?"

   Emily shrugged.  "A student who didn't want to attend classes.  We know
that this was an amateur teleportation, possibly even a first manifestation of
power.  A child seems likely."  She paused.  "If it was their first time, it's
unlikely that they would have known enough to take themselves along."

   "So someone outside the school building, probably a student who didn't want
to go to school, or a staff member that didn't want to go to work."  Henry
considered.  "It was after school normally started, so there would be a
relatively small number of people not in attendance.  But I don't know how we
could check every child and teacher in St.  Williams."

   The group became silent for a few moments.  Then Kendall snapped his
fingers.

   "We don't have to.  Just check the hospitals and morgue."

   "Huh?"  Henry looked confused.

   Kendall smiled briefly.  "This teleportation was amateur; the vacuum almost
assures that.  Only a tiny portion of them learn to use a grid for energy
before we find them."

   Henry's befuddled expression vanished.  "So our Shifter must have been
using his own energy."

   "That school had a huge volume; quite an effort for an amateur.  The strain
must have been enormous."  Emily sighed.  "The morgue seems more likely."

   "Check it," Kendall said.  "Henry, you check the hospitals."

   "There's only one," Henry said.  "I'll be back in ten minutes. "  He
vanished.

   "Me, too," Emily said, and Kendall was suddenly alone.


   Three people who were not doctors exited a broom closet of the St.  Martin
city hospital wearing doctors' gowns.  Henry had checked this hall only
moments before, determined it to be relatively unused; no one was around to
wonder what important medical conference had been held in the closet.

   Henry set off at a brisk pace, Kendall and Emily at his heels.

   "His name is William Goldwin, or 'Billy.'  He's eight years old, starting
second grade.  He was late to school; his mother was driving him in.  She says
she saw the school simply vanish, felt a strong wind and heard thunder, then
the car was lifted and thrown and she woke up in the hospital."  Henry paused
for breath.  "She was treated for minor bruises and released, but Billy is in
a coma.  They're in there."  He pointed to a door.

   Kendall glanced at his watch.  "My wife should be getting home right about
now.  Go get her, and tell her to bring her kit."

   Henry nodded once, briefly, and then was not there.  Kendall pushed open
the door and stepped into the room.  Emily followed.

   Billy lay on a bed, various pieces of machinery attached to his face and
chest.  On the other side of the room a crying woman sat in a plush chair.  A
doctor stood over the bed, fiddling with one of the dials and consulting a
clipboard.  He looked up as Kendall and Emily entered.

   The doctor looked up as they entered.  "You're not doctors," he said
simply.

   Emily smiled broadly, but not without a hint of malice.  "We need to talk,
outside."

   The doctor looked uncertain, glancing between her and the door.  Kendall
casually placed himself in the line of retreat.

   "I don't know who you are, but this patient needs my attention now, and I
don't have time for you.  You'll have to wait outside."

   Kendall gave Emily a sideways glance and shrugged.  She pulled a wallet
from a coat pocket, flipped it open toward the doctor.  "You don't understand.
I'm agent Smith of the FBI, and we need to talk outside right now."

   The doctor's agitation increased considerably, but he held his ground.
"No, you don't understand.  I can't leave him right now."

   Emily snapped the wallet closed and put it back in her pocket.  "I think
we're failing to communicate."  She turned toward Billy's mother, who had
looked up during the exchange.  "Mrs.  Goldwin, if you'll excuse us?"

   An instant later Emily and the doctor were gone.

   Mrs.  Goldwin flew to her feet like she'd been stung.  Kendall held up his
hand in a restraining gesture, and smiled.

   "Don't worry, ma'am.  We're not really with the FBI, but we can help your
son, I hope."

   "How did they just disappear?"  She was still standing, every muscle tensed
as though she were about to run.

   "I'll explain everything once we've gotten your son revived.  Has he been
thrashing around, like he's been having nightmares?  Sweating?"

   "No."  She looked as though it took considerable effort to get the word
out.

   Kendall frowned.  The energy drain usually caused terrible nightmares,
except in the most extreme cases when the body was too deeply drained.  He had
never seen an extreme case survive.

   "Mrs. Goldwin," he said slowly, "I need to ask you a couple questions, and
the answers are extremely important.  Your son has a very special ability, one
that only a few people possess.  He can make things move using only his mind.
That's what happened to the school; he apparently sent it somewhere else."

   "Billy would never do that!"

   "He almost certainly did it by accident.  Most people do, their first time.
He was probably wishing the school would go away, and 'poof', it did.  But
it's very important to know where he sent it.  Did he say anything just before
the accident that might give us a clue?"

   She considered.  "No.  He wasn't speaking at all.  We'd had an argument
about his going to school."

   Kendall grimaced inwardly.

   There was a slight movement behind him, and Mrs. Goldwin started.

   "You rang?"  June Kendall had a smile on her face.  She lost it almost as
soon as she realized her surroundings.  She joined her husband at the bed,
looked down into the boy's face.  Carefully, she set her briefcase on the edge
of the bed and opened it.  Henry, who had teleported the two of them here,
silently took a chair.

   "Wake him up," Kendall said.

   June frowned.  "The only thing that might wake him is..."  She trailed off,
looked across the bed at Mrs. Goldwin.  "You the boy's mother?"

   "Yes, I am."  She looked very pale.

   Behind the cover of her open briefcase, June pressed a vial into Kendall's
hand.  "About half," she said aloud.

   Kendall teleported about half the vial's contents into Mrs. Goldwin's lungs
and chest, then teleported himself across the bed to catch her as she slumped.
Carefully, he dragged her to the chair.

   "That will keep her out for about twenty minutes.  We'll tell her she
fainted.  She certainly looked bad enough."

   Kendall nodded.  "Can you wake him up?"

   "Not safely.  There's some stuff here that might work, but it's damn
potent.  It might wake him, on the other hand it might cause massive heart
failure, too."

   Kendall considered.  "He's dead for sure if we don't wake him.  But we'll
need the doctor just in case.  I hope Emily's done intimidating him.  Henry,
will you go get them?  I suspect they're on the roof."

   June shuddered.  "Don't you folks have any less drastic intimidation
techniques?  Have you ever tried just talking to resolve your differences?  Or
maybe something just a trifle more subtle?"

   Henry grinned slightly.  "Subtlety isn't exactly the point we're trying to
make.  I'll go get them."

   He vanished.


				   Midnight



A sharp slap brought Billy back to awareness.  He could only barely get his
eyes open, but he spread his lids carefully and tried to focus on his
surroundings through the resulting haze.

   Kendall sat on the edge of the bed with an intent look on his face.  Behind
him, beyond the range on which Billy could focus stood the doctor, Henry,
Emily, and June.  Billy's mother still dozed in her chair on the other side of
the bed.

   "Billy, can you hear me?"  Kendall's voice was very low, almost a whisper.
June prodded him in the back and he repeated the question a bit more loudly.

   "Yes."  It took several attempts to get the word out.  Billy remembered a
time he had almost drowned, the foggy feeling that would not go away.  He felt
like that now.

   "Do you know what a grid is?"

   Billy's brain refused to yield a definition.  He shook his head slowly.

   Kendall unfolded a large piece of paper, held it close to him.  It was
glossy black, with yellow lines at about three inch intervals forming squares.

   "Can you close your eyes and imagine this?"

   Billy tried, and sleep overcame him almost at once.  Another slap brought
him back.

   "Billy, it's very important that you stay awake.  Try to imagine this
picture in your mind.  Keep your eyes open."

   Billy studied the grid intently for a few moments, formed an image of it in
his mind.  "Ok"

   "Good.  Now pretend that those yellow lines are all over the room,
connecting everything with each other.  Try to imagine a whole bunch of yellow
lines."

   Billy nodded.  Kendall smiled slightly, pulled a coin from his pocket.

   "Now here's the hard part.  Look at this coin, and pretend that there's a
yellow line connecting it with the blanket right here."  Kendall patted the
bed slightly.  "Okay?"

   "Okay."

   "Now, imagine the coin moving along the yellow line to the bed."

   There was a soft pop, and simultaneously a flash of brilliant light from
the bed.  The coin now sat on the blanket.

   Billy's fatigue vanished, energy flowing through his body as though some
internal dam had burst.

   Kendall stood up, the coin vanishing as he did so.  "Good, he'll be okay
now.  He's tapped the grid enough to get his energy back.  Doctor, I don't
think we'll be needing your services any more.  June, see if you can wake his
mother."

   The doctor fled the room.  Emily watched him go with a slight grin.  June
gently shook Billy's mother, awakening her easily.

   "We all need to have a talk," Kendall said.  "And this isn't the place to
have it.  I'm going to take us all to my office.  Mrs.  Goldwin, Billy, this
may make you slightly uncomfortable.  Everything around you is going to change
suddenly, but you won't be hurt in any way.  Are you ready?"

   Mrs. Goldwin's eyes clearly said no, but she softly said, "Yeah."

   Kendall smiled, nodded curtly, and the whole world changed.


   Safely seated a half mile below the surface of a Colorado mountain, Kendall
turned at once to business.

   "Billy, when you were in the car with your mother, you sent the school away
somewhere.  It's very important that you tell us where you sent it so we can
rescue the people who were in it."

   Billy looked at his mother, back at Kendall.  "I didn't do anything, it
just went away."

   Kendall's smile widened imperceptibly.  "I know you didn't try to make it
go anywhere, it was an accident.  What were you thinking at the time?"

   The glance at his mother was longer this time.  "I just wanted the school
to disappear," he admitted finally.  His mother gasped softly.

   "Disappear to where?  It's very important."

   Billy thought about it for a while.  "Just disappear.  I didn't want it to
go somewhere else, I just wanted it not to be there."  He burst into tears.

   June came and caught his hand.  "That's okay, now.  Let's go get you
something to eat, okay?"  She winked at Billy's mother, led the child slowly
from the room.  Mrs. Goldwin rose to follow, but a gesture from Kendall made
her sit back down.  Emily and Henry silently left the room,
uncharacteristically using the door rather than teleporting away.

   "I've got to tell you a little bit more about your son, Mrs.  Goldwin."

   Mrs. Goldwin nodded slowly.

   "Every now and then someone's born with the ability your son has.  We call
it teleportation; the ability to move things from one place to another without
touching it or moving it through any of the space in between.  About one
person in a thousand is able to do it.  Of those, about one person in one
hundred ever discovers this ability on their own.

   "But now and then something happens such as with Billy.  For some reason or
another, they think about an object in a different way than they have before,
and `poof', it moves.  It's very draining on your energy, in a way more than
just simple fatigue.  It causes bad dreams and frequently even death.  Many
`crib death' children are just latent teleporters who teleported something too
large to handle in a dream, and died as a result.

   "We call these people Shifters.  They can teleport, but only with some
danger and a lot of fatigue.  The larger the volume of matter they wish to
move, the more energy it takes to move it.  Your son was very lucky; most
children would have died teleporting a structure as large as that school
building.

   "Now, even ten percent of one in a thousand human beings makes for a fairly
large number of people with this ability.  When someone manifests this
ability, they are usually noticed by one of our people, and brought here.

   "This place you're in is called the Teletrix Academy, and its graduates are
referred to as Teletrix.  Billy will be one of those graduates eventually."

   "Billy has to come here?"

   "Yes, for a year or so, to learn how to use his gift well.  There are
techniques that allow a Teletrix to teleport things without using his or her
own energy to do it.  Also, the terrible side effects, light and thunder, can
be avoided by some other tricks.  But most importantly, we teach him to use
his gift in an ethical fashion.  A Teletrix out for personal gain would be a
devastating force in the world.  There have been a few who we might only call
`evil.'  They are very dangerous people, and extremely difficult to stop.
We'd just as soon make ourselves responsible for his moral training as well."

   "But he has school to attend, and ..."

   "Many of our students do; and classes are provided here.  You will be
allowed to visit at any time.  In fact, you may live here if you wish.  You
might want to take our tests --- you may be a latent Teletrix yourself,
although it's not particularly likely."

   "But..."

   "And, Mrs. Goldwin, I'm afraid I must insist.  You see, he doesn't have a
grasp on his abilities, and he's dangerous to others as well as himself.  It's
quite likely that he killed everyone in that school by teleporting them into
outer space, or into the sun, or some other such `accident' merely by
ignorance.  We can't allow that to happen again.  In one year, perhaps less,
he may return to the outside world and lead a productive life there.  It is
never easy to let your son go, but I assure you that it it necessary.  I have
had this conversation with hundreds of parents over the years, and always
reach the same conclusion.

   "I'm sorry that this had to happen like this.  Usually Shifters manifest
their powers in some small manner that allows us some time to break the news
gently.  It wasn't so this time, and training should begin at once before he
decides to try again on his own.  I am certain that another such attempt would
result in his death."

   Mrs. Goldwin was silent for a long moment.  "It appears I have no choice.
I'll have to discuss it with my husband, of course."

   Kendall nodded.  "I'll help you if you like.  June will make sure that
Billy is settled in here.  My wife's a very pleasant lady, I'm sure he'll get
along with her just fine for a while."

   "Your wife... is she a..."

   "Teletrix?  No, she just had the misfortune of marrying one.  I expect her
to come to her senses any day."  Kendall grinned.  "Shall we go?"


   Five hours later Emily dropped into one of Kendall's office chairs with
something halfway between a sigh and a snore.  The others in the office had
fared little better; Henry was pacing to keep himself alert, Kendall himself
was sipping on his fourth cup of coffee in as many hours.  June alone looked
fresh; somehow she always did.

   "Nothing," Emily said flatly.  "But I suspect you already knew that.  There
are fifteen thousand Teletrix all over the world looking for that school
building."

   "I've still got them looking," Kendall acknowledged, "But I can't see that
there's much chance we'll find anything any more.  The flash was our best
hope, but I've been over all the satellite photos a hundred times.  I've been
teleporting all over this planet so much I'm developing permanent jet lag."

   "The army's fairly nervous about this, but the press is still in the dark.
By the time it leaks, I think it will be old enough news that no one will
believe it."  Henry paused for a few moments.  "Of course, somebody's
eventually going to put all of these little stories together and draw some
fairly dangerous conclusions, for us."

   "They already have," Kendall commented.  "But nobody believes them, either.
I doubt the Academy is in any real danger for the time being."  He looked
toward his wife.

   June shrugged.  "I've been talking to Billy for hours.  He continues to
insist that he sent the school `nowhere.'  I even tried hypnosis.  Any memory
he has of where he sent it is locked up so tight that he can't get at it
either consciously or subconsciously."

   Henry tossed his wallet in the air.  It vanished, appeared on Kendall's
desk.  With a slight frown, he teleported it across the room again.  The rest
of the room's occupants ignored him.

   "So we're back at a dead end again," Kendall said.  "I suppose we're going
to have to get some sleep sometime, and I'm beginning to suspect that the
school is permanently beyond our reach."

   There was a soft sound of thunder, and Henry's wallet appeared on Kendall's
desk in a brilliant flash of light.

   "I'd almost forgotten how hard it was to teleport on your own power," Henry
said.  He stared at the wallet again, wrinkled his head in concentration.  The
wallet vanished with the customary pop.  There was no corresponding flash of
light.

   "Eureka!" Henry shouted, and leapt to his feet.  Everyone else in the room
had been staring at him for several seconds, and flinched at the sudden flurry
of motion.

   "The wallet!"  Henry said.  "Where is it?"

   "How should I know?" Kendall said slowly.  "You teleported it, didn't you?"

   "Yes."

   "Then where did you send it?"

   "Nowhere."

   There was a slight pause as the words settled.

   "Nowhere?"

   "I blanked my mind just as I sent it, failed to specify a destination.
It's doesn't drain as much energy as a full teleport, either.  That's how
Billy managed to survive!"

   Kendall looked him straight in the eye.  "Can you bring it back?"

   Henry closed his eyes, nodded slowly.  "Yes, I think I can."

   Light was suddenly everywhere.  When the flash faded, Henry's wallet was in
his hand.

   "Yes, it can be done.  But it's as fatiguing to bring it back as to send
it.  And I think that it's going to have to be Billy who recalls the school."

   Kendall turned his attention to June.  "What are the chances he'd survive
that?"

   She shook her head.  "Almost zero.  He'll need a couple of weeks at least
to recuperate first, and even then it's dangerous.  And probably not worth it.
Wherever this `nowhere' is, there's not likely to be any air there, is there?"

   Henry shook his head.  "No probably not."

   Emily looked at him for a long moment, then teleported the wallet from his
hands.  It appeared in her lap in a soft flash of light.  Scowling, she tried
again.  This time, the wallet remained missing.

   "Bring it back, Henry."  Her voice was soft.

   Henry closed his eyes for almost a full minute.  "I can't," he said simply.

   There was a flash.  "But I can, easily.  So only the person who sends it
can get it back."  Emily shook her head.  "It just seems a shame to leave all
those people hanging in limbo, even if they are dead."

   "Any chance that it will just pop back of it's own accord?"  Kendall asked.

   Both Henry and Emily shrugged.

   "I think that it's definitely time to get some sleep then.  We will all
think about this better when we're awake."

   Emily nodded, looked at her watch.  Suddenly, she pulled the watch from her
wrist, glanced at it briefly, and sent it nowhere.  Everyone looked up at the
pop.

   Emily grinned theatrically, waited almost a full minute, then recalled the
watch.  She stared at it as though seeing it for the first time.

   "They're still alive," she said quietly.  "Teleportation allows you move
from place to place skipping the intervening space.  It appears you also skip
the intervening time.  My watch didn't gain so much as a second while it was
gone.  So no time is passing for the people in the school."

   The mood of the room brightened noticeably for the first time in several
hours.

   "Good thinking, Emily," Kendall said.  "We have a chance of rescuing them.
We just wait for Billy to recover, get him to bring the school back.  With
luck we'll even find a way to do it on a grid and he won't have to use his own
energy."

   June looked skeptical, Emily contemplative.  Henry gave a sudden, strangled
gasp.  "That half a man we found going down the stairs..."

   Kendall sobered instantly.  "Yes.  He doesn't even know he's dead."


				     Dawn



   Kendall shifted the unfamiliar army uniform on his shoulders, seeking
without success to make it more comfortable.  Henry stood nearby with a
practiced ease; it was not the first time he has worn such a uniform.  Both
men were carefully scrutinizing the school foundations.

   "There's a lot of damage to the structure," Henry said.  "I rather doubt
that the school would continue to stand for more than a couple seconds after
being brought back."

   "Which would injure or kill most of the occupants," Kendall finished for
him.  "Clearly unacceptable.  So what do we do?"

   Henry shook his head.  "If we knew exactly where the people were, we could
probably teleport them out before the building collapsed.  But there's no way
to know that I can see."

   "Could we rebuild the foundation so that the school would stand?"

   "I thought of that," Henry replied.  "But we don't know how.  The
blueprints were destroyed in a fire some years ago, and in any case we don't
know exactly how much of the school was taken and how much left.  I'm not sure
that it would work in any case; the sudden weight on the foundations would be
likely to break them."

   "Any chance that there are any blueprints left somewhere?  Interior
drawings or photographs?  If we knew the complete structure of the building we
could drop a teleport shield on it, immobilize it in one place long enough for
the people to get out."

   Henry considered for several seconds.  "That sounds awfully dangerous.
There aren't any blueprints, but we could probably find photographs of the
interior.  But even if we could completely reconstruct the inside it would
probably take several Teletrix working together to keep the geometry straight,
and if we weren't perfectly synchronized we'd probably just accelerate the
destruction."

   Kendall's spun suddenly toward Henry.  "Of course!  You're a genius,
Henry!"

   "Of course.  But my brilliance is such that escapes even me at the moment.
What did I say?"

   "Never mind, I need to think about it some more.  But we've probably got a
solution to that problem.  The next question is, how do we cover this all up?"

   Henry smiled slowly.  "Emily and I had a discussion about that last night.
She had an idea that's so outrageous it can't fail."

   Kendall snorted.  "I can't wait.  Let's get back to the office."


   Henry spread his map out on Kendall's desk.  Emily stood at his side;
Kendall sat in his usual chair.  Each grabbed a corner to prevent the paper
from rerolling itself.

   "Here's the major camp, and the latrines," Henry said, pointing.  "Everyone
not on duty will be there.  They've erected a tent over the school foundations
to keep the gawkers away; the on-duty patrols will be right around the tent to
keep away suspicious people.  Nevertheless, there will probably be a crowd of
worried parents over here, in the compound."

   "Any chance there will be stragglers?"

   "It's always possible, but not likely.  I've been watching them for a week
now, and they've been relatively invariant in their routine.  But if there
are, the others know what to do with them, so it won't be a big deal."

   "Good," Kendall said, glancing at his watch.  "We have about ten minutes.
I'll take the parents, Henry, you get the tent and the patrols, Emily, the
main camp is yours.  Then start looking for anyone we missed.  Meet me here
when you're done."  He tapped the map.  "Any questions?"

   "I question your sanity," Emily said.  "Other than that, no."

   "That's what you're there for," Kendall said.  "If something goes wrong
with this plan, get that school back into the nether as fast as you can."

   "Understood."

   Kendall checked his watch again.  "Nine and a half minutes exactly.  Let's
go!"

   The office was replaced with starry darkness.  Kendall slid across the
night toward the small rope-enclosed compound.  Perhaps sixty people were in
it, despite the hour; tents and sleeping bags were omnipresent.

   Kendall closed his eyes, brought forth an image of the yellow grid that was
so much a part of his talent.  Normally he would have required neither
concentration nor the closed eyes, but the task he performed now was still
relatively new, and there was little room for error.

   He mentally cut away half of the grid, imagining the lines fading to
nothing in one direction, opened his eyes.  Superimposing the grid upon the
enclosure and the public latrines beyond, he concentrated on the nothing
beyond his grid and gave a short mental push.

   Usually he would have pulled air from the other end of the grid to fill the
space, but tonight he just performed a second teleport a few moments later,
sucking air from over an ocean hundreds of miles away.

   There was just the slightest rumble, a gentle breeze, then silence.  The
compound and its occupants were gone.

   A crash of thunder from beyond the trees told him that Henry had been less
successful, but it no longer mattered.  Kendall smiled to himself, and
flickered to the meeting place.

   The army and the tent were gone, sent into an empty nowhere, out of space
and time.  The school foundation was barely visible in the near-complete
darkness.

   Henry and Emily were already there.  A few moments later they were joined
by June and Billy, who had been hiding nearby for several minutes.

   "So far, so good," Kendall said.  He kept his voice at a whisper despite
the fact that there was no one to hear except the five people gathered in the
clearing.  "Now the fun begins.  Emily, you should probably sit in that tree
over there to give you a better view.  If you think something's wrong, you
know what to do."

   Emily nodded, and vanished.

   June carried two large briefcases.  She handed one to Henry, the other to
Kendall.  "It took myself and about fifty academy folks all day to get this
stuff into two thousand containers.  Don't drop those cases or the whole
county will go to sleep.  And not wake up."

   "No problem," Henry said.  "We'll try not to break them."

   He hefted his case and vanished.

   Darkness prevailed for a few seconds longer.

   There was a sudden flurry of activity.  Four helicopters appeared silently
in the air, dropped slightly as they adjusted to the pressure change from
their source.  Moments later the whirring of their blades filled the night.
Everywhere men and women were materializing, filling the schoolyard with
humanity.  These people turned and ran for the edge of the concrete
playground, only to be replaced fifteen seconds later with a new batch.  And
so it continued, again and again, until fully two thousand people stood
waiting.

   Equipment began appearing, transferred fully constructed from a storeroom
beneath the Colorado Rockies.  Wooden towers, bleachers, ladders, and other
paraphernalia were quickly set up.  Seventeen huge searchlights illuminated
the air over the school foundations.

   Kendall strode to the playground as the activity slowly settled into an
expectant silence.  His wife and Billy followed slowly.  Two thousand Teletrix
had arranged themselves about the school, where they could view it from every
angle.  They stood silently, waiting.

   Kendall summoned a megaphone, spoke into it.

   "Thank you all for coming this evening.  I apologize for any inconvenience
this may have caused you, but we could think of no other way of resolving this
problem without your aid.

   "You have all been instructed in what to do.  Please remember that time
will be very short; you may have as long as ten seconds, but four is a more
likely guess.  At this time you should arrange yourself so that each of you
can see where the school will appear."

   There was a slight shifting of the crowd.

   Kendall opened the briefcase he held.  On the other side of the empty
foundation, Henry did the same.  Within, hundreds of vials of a white powder
glimmered.

   "Each of you should take one of these.  Be very careful with it; do not
breath it or break it."

   The briefcase emptied rapidly.

   Kendall looked at June expectantly.  She nodded once, placed her hand on
Billy's shoulder.

   "Do you remember our lessons?  It's time to bring the school back.  But you
must be very careful to do it the way Henry showed you.  Don't make any
light."

   Billy smiled.  "I can do it."  He closed his eyes, opened them, then closed
them again.  Finally, he opened them and turned toward June.

   "It didn't work."

   Kendall swore silently.

   June was more gentle.  "Just try again, Billy."

   Billy nodded skeptically, turned toward the hole in the ground, and closed
his eyes.

   Without a whisper, the school flickered back into existence.

   Almost immediately, the ceiling of the top floor vanished, the walls
following a fraction of a second later as a thousand Teletrix teleported bits
and pieces of the building away.  People within became visible, frozen by a
shock that had not yet had time to fully register.  The remaining Teletrix
teleported them into the playground as quickly as they became visible.  Inside
of a second, none remained on the top floor.

   The school began to tilt crazily to one side.  The low rumbling only drove
the Teletrix to faster speeds.  The middle floor was eaten away, it's people
pulled out and added to the collection in the playground as they became
appeared.  When none remained, the bottom floor, too, began to disappear like
sand in a strong wind.

   The walls now began to collapse, but it was far to late to make any
difference.  Even as they fell, the walls vanished, the students and teachers
flickered to safety The bottom floor collapsed inward, but there was no one
left on it.

   Kendall watched the school vanish piecemeal until he was sure everyone who
could be rescued was out.  But there was still an occupant of the building.

   Kendall met Henry in the ruins of the basement, seeking half a man.  They
found him without too much trouble, his body just beginning to realize it was
in pain.  Henry and Kendall had discussed this for hours in the preceeding
days, but their decision pleased neither of them.

   With a flash of his mind, Kendall sent the man almost a hundred million
miles away.  His body was consumed instantly and painlessly by the fusion
furnace of the sun.

   "I'm sorry," Kendall said quietly.  "But this is the only thing we could do
for you."

   Henry and Kendall stared at the empty place where he had been for several
long minutes, silently, then teleported back to the playground.

   In the time they had been gone, the equipment had vanished.  Each of the
Teletrix had chosen a single resident of the school and taken him or her home.
The drug June had distributed created a sleep laced with enough dreams to blur
the line between reality and nightmare.  The events of the night would be
pieced together vaguely, if at all.  For the people in the school, day would
have become night, their minds disoriented.  The school would still be gone
when they awoke, but with luck they would not remember being in it.

   At the end of it all, only Henry, Emily, and Kendall remained.  One of the
Teletrix had taken June and Billy back to the Colorado office.

   "It's not a perfect success," Emily said.  "We had a couple of bumps and
bruises from falling bricks, but nothing that a little time won't cure.  Plus,
of course, it will be impossible to hide the signs of all those people here,
but that will be only a minor mystery.  The tabloids will probably pass us off
as space aliens."

   Kendall nodded.  "That and the fact that every soldier and parent here
tonight is going to find their watch a few minutes slow."

   "Speaking of which," Henry said, "it's been almost ten minutes since we
took out the natives.  We'd best get them back before they get too much out of
kilter.  Keeps the mystery count low."

   "Agreed."

   The three of them separated to their former positions.

   Returning the parents' compound was easier.  Kendall merely superimposed a
whole grid over the empty scene, and bled the energy of transport into it.
Silently and lightlessly the compound reappeared, the air it replaced ending
up somewhere over the Pacific.


   Five minutes later, wine glasses clinked over Martin Kendall's desk.

   "Well, we did it.  Only one casualty, and little disruption.  When the
missing people reappear tomorrow morning, this whole thing should pass.
Eventually, the army will get tired of guarding that now-useless hole in the
ground and go home."  Kendall raised his glass.  "I'd like to thank all of you
for your help, especially Billy here."

   Billy took a sip from his glass.  "It's good!"  he said.

   "Indeed," Kendall said.  "Best lemonade I've ever tasted."


______________________________________________________________________________

Christopher Kempke is a dangerous, psychopathic Computer Science graduate
student with too much time on his hands.  Attempts to lock him up have
resulted only in a temporary confinement at Oregon State University, where he
can be reached as kempkec@cs.orst.edu on good days, and not at all on bad.

Editor's note: `Popping Up' is actually the third story Chris has written set
in the Teletrix `universe'.  The first, `Going Places', was published in
October of 1989 (Volume 1, Issue 1), and the second, `Being There', was
published in April of 1990 (Volume 2, Issue 2).
______________________________________________________________________________


			  If you enjoy Quanta,  you may
			  want to check out these other
			  magazines,  also produced and
			  distributed electronically:


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	    I   N  NN   T   E     R  R   T   E       XX X    T
	  IIIII N   N   T   EEEEE R   R T   EEEEE   X    X  T

      An Electronic Fiction Digest               Contact: jsnell@ucsd.edu

      InterText, like its predecessor, Athene, is  devoted to  publishing
      amateur writing in all genres of fiction. It will be published on a
      bi-monthly basis, hopefully alternating with Quanta (so subscribers
      to both will  get  one   netmagazine every month).  The  magazine's
      editor is Jason Snell,  and associate editors  are Geoff Duncan and
      Phil Nolte, all  of whom  have been seen  in the pages of Athene or
      Quanta (or both).

      InterText is published in both ASCII and PostScript formats (though
      the PostScript laser-printer version is the version of choice). Its
      first  issue will appear  next month. For a  subscription  (specify
      ASCII or PostScript), information, or submissions  of stories to be
      published in InterText, contact Jason Snell at jsnell@ucsd.edu.




								  /
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	D     D A  A R  R G    O  O N N N     Z   I N N N E    ||
      -========================================================+<OOOOO>|)
	D    D  AAAA RRR  G GG O  O N N N   Z     I N N N E    ||
	DDDDD   A  A R  R GGGG OOOO N  NN  ZZZZZZ I N  NN EEEE ||
								\\
								  \

      The Magazine of the `Dargon' Project      Editor: white@duvm.BITNET

      DargonZine  is an electronic  magazine printing stories written for
      the Dargon  Project, a    shared-world anthology similar    to (and
      inspired by) Robert Asprin's Thieves' World anthologies, created by
      David "Orny"  Liscomb in his  now   retired magazine,  FSFNet.  The
      Dargon Project centers around a  medieval-style duchy called Dargon
      in the far  reaches of  the Kingdom of  Baranur on  the world named
      Makdiar, and as such contains stories  with a fantasy fiction/sword
      and sorcery flavor.

      DargonZine is (at this time) only available in flat-file, text-only
      format. For a subscription,  please send a request via  MAIL to the
      editor, Dafydd, at   the userid   white@duvm.BITNET. This   request
      should  contain  your   full userid (logonid and  node,  or a valid
      internet   address)  as well as  your   full    name. InterNet (all
      non-BITNET sites)  subscribers will receive   their issues in  Mail
      format.   BitNet users  have   the option   of specifying  the file
      transfer   format   you prefer (either DISK   DUMP,  PUNCH/MAIL, or
      SENDFILE/NETDATA).  Note: all electronic subscriptions are Free!




	   ______           ()  ,        _
	     /   /          /`-'|       //   /
	  --/   /_  _      /   / . . o // __/ _   ______  __.  ____
	 (_/   / /_</_    /__-<_(_/_<_</_(_/_/_)_/ / / <_(_/|_/ / <_

      The Journal of the Gamers' Guild of UCR
					    Contact: jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu
						 ucsd!ucrmath!jimv (uucp)

      The  Guildsman is  an electronic  magazine devoted  to role-playing
      games  and amateur fantasy/SF fiction. At  this time, the Guildsman
      is  available in  LaTeX (.tex)  source and  PostScript  formats via
      both email and anonymous ftp without charge  to the reader. Printed
      copies  are also  available for  a  nominal  charge  which   covers
      printing   and postal    costs.   For  more    information,   email
      jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu (internet), ucsd!ucrmath!jimv (uucp)



		       (thank you, thank you very much)
