Dark Energy Supernova - An Anthology of SF SD Shorts

Part 5 - Portal

Robin felt a thrill of fear dash through her as they were pushed ever closer to the portal.  She could feel the very air warp the closer they got to the portal.  And then they were on the threshold, feeling the hole in the dimensional barrier tugging at them, drawing them in like a quantum singularity.  She almost couldn't help digging in her heels.  Only to get a rifle muzzle in the small of her back for her troubles.

"In you go, clone," the guard tightly hissed, emphasizing his words with a jab of his weapon.

"Get stuffed, you bastard!" Joan bit out as she too resisted going in.

Then she was falling silent in awe as Tuck serenely stepped between them and without hesitation into the portal to disappear.

"Tuck!" Robin screamed, eyes wide in horror.  Then she was desperately diving in after her friend, Joan and Jill on her heels.

For a moment they hung in the darkness, in the space between dimensions as unimaginable forces buffeted them.  It was just long enough for Robin to wonder what they'd find on the other side, if there even was one.  Would it be a mirror of their own world, a different probability that they'd find?  Or some twisted alien landscape, filled with ravening creatures seeking their death?  Or would it be as the Illuminati hoped, a place with benevolent beings that would teach them the secrets of the universe?

And then they were through and Robin stumbled to a halt, eyes searching for Tuck.  There!  And not being ripped into pieces by some monster.  Instead, she was talking to what looked like a cloud of fairies, small, darting creatures with wings.  And, much to her delight, the broad shouldered and muscular Richard Plantagenet.

The colonial minister, lost for nearly a decade but looking no older than the day he had disappeared, turned to smile at Robin.

"Hello, Robin," he said in a low, powerful voice.  "I'm so glad you've come to join us.  My friends here wish me to bid you welcome.  Welcome to the realm of the Sidhe!"

As it turned out, the Sidhe weren't just the dancing fairies.  They were a broad collection of races, small and large, powerful and fragile, that inhabited the strange place they had discovered.  And each new race was more wondrous than the last.

As the representatives of many of those races thronged around them, speaking in steadily improving English, Joan turned to Robin.

"This is First Contact, isn't it," she quietly asked and Robin nodded.  "The first time Humanity has contacted a different species.  Bloody hell, I never thought I'd be involved in such an amazing thing."

"Me neither, old friend," Robin admitted, pausing to look around them.  "And I have to say, I'm glad it was us instead of Tarion and his Illuminati.  I'd hate to have those conniving bastards be the first people the Sidhe ever meet."

Joan chuckled.

"Amen," she agreed before sobering.  "Where do we go from here, Rob?  I mean, I have a feeling this is just the first step of many."

Robin smiled.

"That it is, Joan.  But I think the next step is rather obvious.  Let's get Richard home so we can throw that bastard John and his bootlicker Knottingham into a Prin cell!"  She paused to take yet another look around the colorful and amazing world they now found themselves in.

"Only then can we let our future truly unfold as it is supposed to.  And if these Sidhe are half of what they seem to be, that future will be very bright indeed!"