‘I’m not lucky enough for the odd light to be a UFO with friendly aliens onboard.’  The hacker thought as he crossed to the window.  He pulled aside the drapes but the glass was in need of cleaning: his mother hadn’t washed them for several months before she died and he hadn’t since her death either.  Zane unlatched the sash and lifted up the pane for a clear view outside.  And there it hovered.  A ball of lightning was floating only about a car length from his house: it seemed of basketball size.

‘Meet your messenger.’  Again the phrase he often used on his computer insinuated itself into his mind.  Then the ball lightning moved deliberately towards him.  Zane Letterman stumbled back several steps in borderline panic.  ‘What if I don’t want to meet my messenger?’  His mental words went unheeded, as the ball lightning closed the gap between where it had hovered and the now open window.

‘Doesn’t a ball lightning phenomena move quicker than that?’  The hacker asked his mind but the specific information on ball lightning wasn’t housed there.  As the ball reached the windowsill, Zane’s legs struck the bed: his reversing momentum sent his back sprawling onto the mattress.  This was the bed where both his parents had so recently met their messengers and today seemingly, Zane would too.

‘Meet your messenger!’  The inner voice was a mental shout in the silent room.  The ball lightning phenomena stopped when it was over the hacker’s heaving chest.  ‘Meet your messenger!’  The phrase was a shriek drowning out all other thought: the ball lightning dropped into Zane Letterman’s ribcage and the hacker screamed.

In that instant in a material place occupying the same location but separated by a dimensional border, an identical scene was occurring. It featured a Zane Letterman character. But they were worlds apart in more than a dimensional sense.

‘MEET YOUR MESSENGER!  The noiseless sound was as louder than an exploding volcano.  The high-voltage ball lightning sent its energy into every cell of Zane’s body: instantly transforming his physical form into anti-matter.  And so it happened to Zane in the alternate universe as well.

Matter and anti-matter can’t coexist.  Even the inert material of the bed should’ve reacted with the incompatible body reposed on it—and violently exploded.  In a world composed of matter, anti-mater is the alien, but the reverse is also true.  The two Zane’s had instantaneously become foreign to their own existences so the great cosmic balancing intelligence had only one option: and the switch was flicked.

To be continued…

By Russell Twyce – Author of Shiva’s Messenger