The micro-scape was a watercolor blur of blue, green, and amber. There was no up or down. Joni closed her eyes, shutting off the dizzying vista and the vertigo that threatened to make her puke. She felt James’ arm pull her close, his right hand held firmly around her waist. She was spent, both physically and emotionally. He was now the only thing anchoring Joni, albeit tenuously, to time and space. Kaya was gone, her sweet soul and living brilliance extinguished in a moment of confusion and violence, and with them, Joni’s will to continue with the mission – with even the most rudimentary tasks of survival.
But survive they must, somehow…and do so without ship or crew, or the most basic shelter. Jas moved them forward, away from the aftermath of the battle, away from that unthinkable disaster that had pitted them against the strange indigenous sentients. The micro thrusters in his suit harnessed the water’s Brownian motion, directed excited molecules of H2O to move them deeper into the strange land of micro space.
Joni opened her eyes. Her pupils adjusted to the gloom. Ahead, in the distance she could see twinkling lights…and they came from inside a familiar shape, far away yet unimaginably huge. It was a bottle.
And then they where no longer alone. Figures appeared out of the micro haze…
First one, then a second, and finally a third of the aquatic seraphim materialized out of the watery gloom directly ahead. Each had wing-like membranes bound to gently waving cilia trailing from their pseudopodia, and down the ventral surface of head, neck, and torso. Joni wasn’t sure which was the greater revelation: that angels were real, or that angels were microorganisms.
The nightmare had unfolded as she had feared, then blossomed into tragic reality. The skirmish had followed the template of Joni’s quantum-transform premonition… right down to the last drop of spilled cytoplasm…and blood.
Eric Robert Russell 