The Mottled Disk

by Kat Beyer

Jordan watched the glass disk in the street very carefully. He was pretty sure it had not been there a couple of minutes before, and he was also sure that he hadn’t looked away from the pavement.

Finally he nudged it with a dirty sneaker. It looked awfully thin, and he was afraid to break it, but when he touched it with the edge of his shoe, it didn’t seem to budge. He squatted down and looked into it. It wasn’t glass like a windowpane. It looked more like that piece of volcanic glass that Mrs. Gubner had brought to school, except bluish, and with weird spots in it, that swirled and rippled even though he couldn’t see them move. He just knew they did.

After a while he remembered that he had to go to school, and realized that he was looking up at the houses along the street with great relief—they are still here, they aren’t rotted away and gone like in a time travel movie, came the thought. So he walked over to his skateboard and his backpack and kept going.

After a minute or two the glass disk rose as if someone underneath it were opening a hatch, which was pretty much the case; a man and a woman emerged, wearing orange business suits.

“Well, that was close,” said the man. The woman examined the street.

“Still using asphalt. We should go forward about a century,” she announced.

“You know best,” said the man, and they lifted the glass disk and climbed under it again.

A house finch swooping down to look at the shiny thing was rather startled to find it gone at swoop’s bottom.

As You Know, Professor

by Luc Reid

“As you know, professor,” said the earnest young man, “an Embry-dissipative microsingularity striking the earth would be drawn irresistably to its core, where it would cause a cataclysmic gravitational distortion, drawing all matter down into it until the earth collapsed in on itself like a rotten grapefruit.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said. “I study acoustics.”

“Professor,” he said, leaning in, whispering urgently, the mothy smell of his ill-fitting suit coat forcing me to fight a sneeze. “Please don’t ask me how I know about your top-secret government work, but understand that I have information of the greatest importance for you. A microsingularity is bearing down on Earth at this very moment, and the vector and velocity information I have for you–”

Top-secret government work? This fellow was a nut case!

“Just a minute,” I said, picking up the phone. I dialed security. “Hi, I have a special package for you to pick up on the second floor,” I said.

“Dr. Womack, is that you?” said Rob the security guard over the phone. “You’re saying there’s some kind of problem? What’s wrong?”

“Absolutely, and you have a nice day, too,” I said, smiling and nodding at the young man. I hung up, hoping Rob had gotten the idea.

The young man held out a thumb drive. “These are the coordinates–” he broke off as he heard the noise of feet pounding on the stairs down the hall. A moment later, Rob and the red-haired bodybuilder type, what’s-his-name, burst in and grabbed the young man by the arms.

“Stop!” he cried. “You’re making a terrible mistake! Please, professor, please!”

They dragged him away.

About ten minutes later, Dr. Fennelgrüb walked in with a latte and a chocolate pastry.

“You’re in my office again, Womack!” he bellowed, pastry crumbs flying from his lips. “So help me God, the next time you blunder in here, I’ll kick your ass!”

I looked around, and of course he was right: wrong office again. My mind had been on the impact of air currents on sound conductance in low-heat environments, and I just hadn’t noticed. I meekly scraped together my papers and left. On the way out, I wondered if Fennelgrüb needed to be told the young man’s news, but then I was struck with an idea about heat differentials that completely put the matter out of my mind.