Glass Houses and Thrown Stones
DePraeco saw the panic in Simon’s eyes before the boy even felt it. “He’s going to flee” he thought and determined to stop him for his own sake.
“Simon, you must not run away from this. There is only one way I can help you. You must give me the stone. Allow me to imprison it like I have these others.”
For a brief moment Simon thought about the offer. “What would happen if I do?”
“You would be free of the stone. But whatever part of you is inside it would be lost forever.”
The awful implications stabbed like a dagger into his heart. “There is a girl, she had part of my stone and it tried to kill her. She’s in a coma.”
This news was troubling to DePraeco and he lost some of the suave calm in his voice. “Do they know why she fell into the coma? Tell me!”
“N-no. Her room collapsed but they dug her out and couldn’t find any injuries.”
“It has taken her. You must let me have the stone Simon, before it harms anyone else.”
Fury rose in him like lava, “What about Ginni?! You mean to say she’d dead and there’s nothing I can do?”
“She is gone Simon. The stone will never release her.”
“Liar! There’s a way! I know there is!”
Simon was yelling so loud that his cries echoed through the catacombs. Soon a dozen monks had converged upon the room and started banging on the door. Their muffled cry mixed with Simon’s to create utter havoc. DePraeco reached out as if to grab the stone but Simon recoiled. DePraeco’s face had become terrible to behold and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke.
“I must imprison the thing. It is too powerful to be allowed free!”
Before Simon could even think of what to do, the Priest tried to force it from him. A blinding red light rose shield-like between the men and threw DePraeco back against the wall. There was a click and the bookcase behind Simon turned in to reveal a passageway. Simon dove for his escape just avoiding the priest’s grasp.
As he retreated down the dark tunnel, Simon first heard the priest screaming in fury to come back, then a mixture of sobs and heavy breaths. Finally through the tunnel came the faintest sound of him offering prayers that Simon would be strong and begging forgiveness of his own sin.
He had no idea of how much time had passed since entering the catacombs. Surely it was several hours though his fear made each second crawl. He ran though the long straight hall, the only light coming from within his hand.
He was becoming dizzy from the exertion when the path took a sharp turn and opened into a small rough-hewn chamber lit by the slimmest beam of moonlight that found its way in from above. There were torches in brackets on the wall and iron rings driven deep into the rock. The soft dripping of water from the roof gave this place a dungeon-like feel.
“A dead-end? There has to be a way out. Think.”
Simon tried every object in the chamber, pulling and twisting frantically but to no avail. Then he noticed a pair of shallow impressions worn into the granite floor. Everywhere was a layer of dust except leading to and in those marks. They looked like knee prints. He shuffled forward, always listening for pursuit, and gently knelt down into the troughs in an attitude of prayer. His face dropped into the moonlight which reflected off his forehead and onto a single gold ring set low on the wall. He hooked a finger on it and pulled gently. The grumble of something very heavy moving made him leap to his feet. The roof was collapsing! No, only a section, a square of rock dropped down followed by another and another forming a spiral staircase leading up and out. A fresh breeze blew in. carrying a thin fog down from the top of the stair.
Climbing as fast as he could, Simon came out in the garden’s stone dome at the front of the Monastery. The night was dark but obviously not very late judging by the traffic and pedestrians still out. He made a break for the fence and vaulted it with ease.
“Okay,” he said aloud, “What do I do now? Destroy it, just like I planned. But how? The priest says it can’t be done. But the priest doesn’t know about Grosskopf’s work.”
He ran diagonally across the intersection of Quincy and 14th and looked for his car. It was gone, stolen while he was with the priest. He glared at the stone as if it were to blame.
“Either this is all real or I’ve gone off my rocker”, he muttered. “I can’t get to the lab at school. Where else would they have one that powerful? One…that…powerful. Vitreous!”
Before enrolling at the University of Virginia, Simon had visited a number of other campuses. One of which was the Catholic University in Washington D.C. Their Vitreous Lab held the only other laser as powerful as the one he worked on with Grosskopf. His professor said so just a few months earlier. And it was only a mile or so away down Quincy.
Simon began to walk toward the school without any idea of how he was going to enter a high security area without a passcard and operate a machine he had never even seen.
“One problem at a time”, he thought.
Going by foot gave Simon plenty of time to think. Once again something was nagging at his brain, some miniscule fact that would change the entire paradigm. He just stepped onto the campus and turned to a map kiosk when it hit him, “Why isn’t this thing stopping me? It can read my mind. Why would it want me to zap it?”
Then all the pieces clunked into place. The stones are just using electrons and quarks for their power. Atoms may alter their charge through gain or loss of electrons but they mutate by altering their nucleus. The real intent must be concentrated in the Protons. The proton is made of three fundamental particles: two up quarks and one down quark. If any two of the three agree then they would have power over the other.
“If I follow Grosskopf’s method it would make the stone stronger, not weaker by changing the servant electrons into Master Protons. He said the process was self-sustaining. Once they got going the stone would consume everything.”
He stopped short in horror at the thought. It had been leading him to this his whole life. Now that he knew and wouldn’t go through with it, the stone would…
A deep tearing rose in every part of his body. It was like when DePraeco had held the black stone against his head but a hundred times worse. The image of Nachton flashed in his memory causing him to cast the stone away and run for his life.
A glance back showed the stone had rolled to a stop against a gnarled oak tree. Simon slowed, wondering if this was really happening. Then the stone rose in the air and exploded into a red cloud before beginning its pursuit.
Once again Simon fled with all he had but could not refrain from looking back to see what was going on. All havoc broke loose behind him. At first the cloud leapt from one item to another. Each time it would absorb into the mass and then emerge on the other side, growing larger with every host. Soon he could tell it was regaining its solidity, filling in the empty space inside from new atoms taken. It was also gaining on him.
Simon ducked into a crowd on the sidewalk, knowing that it would do him no good. The red mass was jumping from one person to another now. Whomever it touched acted out in the vilest manner. One man turned and smashed a lady near him face first into a plate glass window. A child began cursing uncontrollably. Two women stripped off their clothes and danced suggestively in the street. Yet whenever it passed the victims began to cry in shame or simply collapsed into a heap. One or two of its slaves chased Simon for a short distance before giving up the ghost.
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