“I just thought… if we stepped out — I mean, the balcony is still here — and we could see what exactly — ”
Another of the volunteers reached over and slapped the optimist’s hand down.
“And what if there literally is nothing out there? Thought about that, genius?”
“It worked fine on Doctor Who!” said the first volunteer defensively. “Didn’t someone snatch up a hospital and slap it down on the moon — and they could still open up the windows and go out on balconies and stuff? There was a force field or something…”
“That’s science fiction, you moron!”
“And this is….?”
“Okay, enough!” Andie Mae yelped, silencing everyone. “So where is he, now, your guy, Dave? I mean, if he said he could explain, why isn’t he here right now?”
“I have no frakking idea. You think I looked to see if he was following me?”
“Come to think of it I think I saw him,” Andie Mae said, tapping her chin with her forefinger thoughtfully. “Sounds like someone who vaguely matched the ‘silver man’ description, assuming we aren’t talking about Vince. He was out there in the foyer, before…”
“Wait,” Libby said. “Wait. Just… wait. There was someone up here, earlier — in the Green Room — but it was chaos, I was trying to find itineraries for the pros, and it was a zoo, but I think I saw someone who looked rather a lot like… but… unh… maybe I’m just making things up, now, because I thought it was a girl…”
“You sure about that one?”
“No, actually, like I just said — I think I remember seeing someone but it might have been a girl and dammit we have a robot — themed convention swirling all around us and for all I know there may be an army of them crawling around the place, it might be a new fad, or they might have heard about Brent Spiner coming and they wanted to be Data, or they…”
“Wait, are you saying there’s more than one of them?” Xander said. “Er… just how many…
“Well, do I open the door or not?” the volunteer at the sliding door said practically. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“We all die,” Xander said, crossing his eyes and then sticking his tongue out in an overblown grimace while wrapping both hands around his own neck. “Seriously, people. Seriously. Occam’s Razor. Are we looking for zebras in a horse herd? Face it, this is a room of science fiction geeks. We might all be just reading our favorite comic book scenario into all this. And Dave… dammit… you can’t know…”
The volunteer at the sliding door scowled at Xander. “I’m a science PhD in real life!” he barked. “I live my life by empirical evidence!”
“When you aren’t partying with Space Babes and Chewbacca at a con bar,” Xander muttered.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing! I’m a science geek myself, remember? But I still don’t know…”
The PhD volunteer responded by slipping the catch on the sliding door and theatrically yanking on the door handle.
“Well, then. Only one way to find out!”
It seemed like time slid into slow motion as the door began to move, and everyone in the room, in a shared delusion of it maybe being a helpful thing to try, literally held their breath. Nobody was quite clear on what precisely they were expecting to happen next — there may have been images that flashed through various minds of explosive decompression resembling the Hollywood CGI idea of what one looked like when an airlock opened to the vacuum of outer space, but if there were, nobody shared them or even owned up to them. And then the PhD candidate, finding himself still alive after the first breathless instant, released his own pent — up breath and took a cautious sniff through the open door.
“Smells fine to me,” he said at length, after a small hesitation. “Okay, then. In the interests of science, here goes. Call me the sacrificial monkey, if you like. If I go splat, tell Monica I love her.”
Before anybody could stop him he stepped sideways, and out onto the balcony.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened for so long that Andie Mae finally called out, sounding very much like a little girl she hadn’t been for many years, “Are you okay…?”
“I… uh…” The response from outside was soft, and slow in coming, but it was definitely there, and Andie Mae clutched at her temples with both hands in a gesture that was eloquent of the release of the fear she’d been holding in. “I think you’d better come out here,” the voice from the balcony said faintly.
There was a concerted movement towards the balcony by every warm body in the room, but Andie Mae raised an arm in an imperial gesture.
“The terrace won’t hold everybody,” she said peremptorily.
Dave stepped forward anyway. “Is it what I thought I felt… what I saw…?”
“Dave, come on,” Andie Mae said, reaching out for his arm and pulling him forward. “Xander. You, too. The rest of you, wait.”
Dave and Andie Mae stepped outside onto the terrace at the same moment, crowding one another through the door; Xander followed a step behind. And then they stood there, the four of them, clutching the railing of the balcony or one another, whichever closer, with a white — knuckled grip, and staring open — mouthed at the view that lay before them.
The hotel appeared to be marooned on a piece of ground that looked like it had been torn from the earth as a great chunk of rock — it stretched out a little way beyond the edge of the building, but not by much. Most of the parking lot had completely disappeared — instead, a long way below them, there were twinkling lights of what might have been the city whose zip code they had recently been a part of, and then, beyond that, a spill of shadow that was the ocean with a shimmer of moonlight glittering upon it. And they — the four people watching this, the balcony they were standing on, the building the balcony was part of, the narrowest piece of skirting land around the foundations of that building — they were all floating above it all. Somewhere up in the sky. Hanging there, defying common sense, science, and gravity.
“Houston,” Xander said quietly, “I think we have a problem.”
“Right,” said Andie Mae after a beat. “Right, then.”
She turned smartly and marched back into the room, starting to fire orders as she went.
“Libby, don’t I remember you saying that a nice young manager type came trotting up here to give us the hotel’s regards? Remember his name? Never mind. Just find whoever is in charge. I would think at this point it would be a very good thing if they shut the doors — at least for tonight — and didn’t let people wander out there and fall off the edge.”
“On my way,” Libby said.
“I’d think that would be unlikely, given that we have air,” Xander said, following her in. “Obviously something is keeping the air in. That same something might serve to stop people doing a Wile E Coyote and walking off the cliff. Holy freaking cow, that may be an honest — to — God real force field out there. Like, for real. I might walk out there myself, just to see if I can…”
“Xander. Please.”
Xander lost his goofy grin and blinked back into serious mode. “Right. Sure. Sorry. Anything I can do?”
“Dave, where the hell did you leave this silver freak that you think did this?”
“No clue, just left him behind when I ran into the hotel to look for you. He may have…”
“Well, if you’re telling the truth and he said he is going to explain, I suggest it’s time he did that. Go back to where you lost him and see if you can run him to ground. Xander, call in Sim and Security — tell them to keep an eye out for… for…”