[Marvin Kosh]

No-strings stories? Hmmmm....

Pandora's Black Box

The dig was fairly routine. It was the same old story for Karamia and her team.... surveyor finds ruins of ancient civilisation, they got the call and were out here in a desolate wilderness.

Indications were that the previous inhabitants wiped themselves out in a mutually destructive thermo-nuclear war, something like twenty, maybe twenty one thousand years ago. The only things left standing were these ruins, and they had slowly weathered over time so that the symbols which might be taken as the language of these people, were barely legible.

"Something odd here, ma'am."

"Let me see, Phyl." Karamia looked over the data. Phyl, her composition expert on loan from the military, had briefly run a dating on the materials used in the construction of the ruins. They were, give or take a year or ten, just a little older than the holocaust that had destroyed all life here.

This would be the third such set of conspicuous ruins left on a 'suicided' world. The other digs, which Karamia had been involved in but never actually led, had turned up nothing of any real value. She was about to call the others in and set up a brif meeting to tell them what to expect, when the comm crackled to life.

[Got something down here, Doctor Karamia. You really want to take a look at this....]

"Okay I'm on my way." These kids would get excited over heiroglyphs. Her father, and some of the older archaeologists, had thrown in the shovel and gone to universities to lecture and tutor in climate-controlled conditions.

What she saw when she got below though, stole her breath away. The others were leaning over a balcony, silent in their appreciation of what was below.

Embedded in a huge metal portal, a warp point glowed and shimmered. It was darkened which as far as her eye could tell, meant that although it was there, it wasn't active. If it lit up blue that would be a different story.

Over many years, similarly darkened wormholes had been found in space, and any efforts to activate them had met with failure. This led scientists to believe that they had been deliberately sealed long ago.

The other two digs hadn't found anything like this, although one had found a fragment of what may have been this metal portal. Perhaps those ones had been buried or even destroyed, though what could damage material that could (apparently) withstand a nuclear bLast?

Maybe it was the location, deep underground, that had kept it safe. Maybe it had just never figured in the all-consuming crossfire. With a bit of luck they would find something here that would activate the portal, and then a survey drone could be sent through to report on what was on the other side.... she didn't fancy taking a ruinning leap into the unknown when there could be no gravity or atmosphere on the other end.

They found what they were looking for later that day, but with exhaustion setting in, Karamia and the others let the computers sift through the collated information on the control mechanism, while the team slept.

Around daybreak, things went crazy. Karamia woke on the middle of a panic, klaxons wailing as the earth shook beaneath her. She scrambled out of her caravan, grabbing the first person who ran by. "What the heck is going on?"

"It's Phyl.... he- he oepned the portal!" The frightened digger escaped her hold and ran on for dear life.

Without warning, the ruins shook apart and slowly parted as the rock and soil beneath them was parted like paper flaps. Karamia hadn't had any idea that the wormhole would have that sort of effect, else she would have parked a lot further away.

No.... it wasn't that....

Something else was pushing the ground apart, she could see it become visible, along with the furiously shimmering warp point. It was dark and hideous, and yet almost transparent to the eyes. almost as large as the warp point, it spread several 'wings' and circled the site of its re-entry into this universe, emanating a beam which bLasted away the rock surrounding the site. When it did this it became less transparent for a few moments at a time revealing its pitted and scaly hide.

Karamia stood there frozen in shock as yet another being emerged from the warp point, and another, until the light from the rising sun had been subdued almost to night.

They spoke to her telepathically. It was a soft and insinuating voice, but it had the warmth of evil which flowed into her mind. She resisted, but her will was nothing against that of these ancient beings.

*You have summoned us. What do you want?*

"I don't want anything. We.... we opened the warp point ro see where it would go."

*Yes. You have freed us. Tell us.... of your desires, your dreams, and we will make them reality.*

"I don't want your-" She was cut off as her mind was probed for those things which she kept locked away, secret hidden desires which she told nobody about.

*Excellent. We will begin immediately. You will not be forgotten, Doctor Karamia.*

As she lay there clutching her throbbing head, she realised with horror what they intended to do. "Noooo!! You can't!!!"

But it was too late, they slipped away into the sky like smoke, bent on their objective and on making sure that she would be remembered throughout recorded history, or what would be left of it....

It was she who would be infamously credited for freeing the ZomE'da'tH from their extra-dimensional captivity, and the destruction of countless planets and billions of lives.

It was all her fault.