Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online

at first,” Stefan said. “Booth, take us through this thing.”
    Booth rubbed his hands on his thighs and started to stand. Then, thinking better of it, remained seated. “It’s not always in the same place, so we had trouble getting a lock on it. We finally got this result at the Ceres Platform,” he said, referring to another K-tunnel outpost. “The physics team says we’re bumping up against the membrane of another universe. Think of it like a bubble within a bubble, where reality is on the surface, or the brane. Sometimes the branes touch.”
    Helice rolled her eyes. To be lectured on brane theory by this guy . . .
    Booth noted her impatience and went on: “Anyway, at one of these brane interfaces we went in about nine hundred nanometers. We’ve consistently gotten in at least that far, proceeding a nanometer at a time, and recording the sights. We’re confident we can transfer in a mass, but we’re not to that point yet. We’re using ultra-high-energy quantum implosions, followed by an inflation to macroscopic size.” He shrugged. “If you want the gruesome details, we’ll bring in the physics guys. But for now, think of it as a simulation of the big bang. But instead of creating a universe, we’re punching through to one that already exists. Apparently exists.”
    Helice tried to keep her voice even. “We know this, Booth.”
    “Okay, then,” he said, “what you’re looking at is the picture so far.”
    “The picture of what?”
    “The other place.” Booth got the reaction he was hoping for. “I thought you’d be surprised.” As the board members leaned in to squint at the display, he added, “We’ve been busy, as I said.”
    Booth enlarged the sim until the center of the circle looked grayish, like a fried egg seen in negative. Vertical slashes appeared in the gray center. To Helice it looked like chromosomes in a nucleus. He enlarged the display again. Some of the vertical slashes were askew, or bent over. Booth pointed a wand at the display, changing angles of view, from the vector of the pointer. The scene began to look familiar, but not quite . . .
    “We’re not sure if the color spectrum is distorted, or how the transmission degrades through our interface.”
    Helice peered at the V-sim. “Are you saying that this is a visual ? Not just a graphic representation?”
    Booth coughed. “Yes. It’s the adjoining region. What we’ve seen so far.”
    Helice stared, and stared hard. They’d been talking about a mirror universe, a place, and until now—even as intriguing as those words were—it had just been talk. But here was a visual. It staggered her. The board members, silver and real, remained silent for a long while.
    Then, from down the table Suzene Gninenko asked, “So what exactly are we looking at?”
    Stefan made a sweeping gesture at Booth. “And the answer is?”
    Booth’s voice squeaked as he said, “Well, actually, our best guess is . . . that it’s grass.”
    It could not have been a more remarkable utterance if Booth had claimed to see angels dancing on the head of a pin.
    The board members exchanged glances. Suzene Gninenko peered at the V-sim like she’d never seen a blade of grass before.
    “Grass,” Helice said. Now that the suggestion was planted, the picture did look like blades of grass.
    Face beaming, Stefan looked at Helice. “Apparently the universe next door is not dark, barren, or chaotic. It has an atmosphere. It possesses life.”
    “The blades aren’t green,” Helice murmured, still strangely moved by the presence of those brave shoots of grass.
    “We don’t know what light is falling on it, or what the photosynthesis analog might be. Chlorophyll isn’t the only option.”
    “What are the chances that grass would look so similar—over there?” She controlled her elation with difficulty. She had believed in it before anyone else. It shouldn’t come as such a surprise. But the implications of grass, of life, were almost beyond