Tommy smiled and leaned close to her and thought, “Then let’s just see if we can repeat the experience.”
Cassie leaned in to him and kissed him. They both felt the shock again but it was worth it. They stayed in their embrace losing track of time.
The old watcher saw plumes of the black field exploding out of the nexus and thought, “It’s still getting hotter. I hope this doesn’t destroy the universe.”
The warrior flew toward the closest nexus in a galaxy close to his home galaxy. He noticed as he approached the nexus that there was a planet located in the middle of it that was advanced technologically and had space travel. As he approached more than four thousand ships jumped in front of his approach. The warrior contacted the first male, “I have found a nexus that has a technologically advance planet located on its edge. They have sent ships out to intercept me; what do you think I should do?”
The First Male thought and said, “I wonder if they could be the cause of the nexus’ heat. Destroy them.”
The warrior fired one of his small beams into the ships that were in his path totally disintegrating all four thousand. The inhabitants of the planet watched as a brightly glowing red ship more than two thousand miles wide approached and stopped a hundred thousand miles out from its atmosphere. The warrior fired his main beam into the planet and watched as the planets core exploded blowing the planet into huge pieces that flew out from the center of the blast. A living planet that was home to a thriving civilization perished in less than three seconds from the impact of the warrior’s beam. Nine hundred ships jumped into the system responding to the planet’s distress call to find debris moving away from the planet’s former location. The ships immediately began attacking the huge ship that had destroyed the planet. The warrior ignored their attacks and tried to take readings on the nexus to see if anything had changed after the destruction of the planet. The nine hundred ships attacking the giant red ship had no effect on it. One of the nine hundred actually flew directly into it and was totally destroyed when it contacted the screen surrounding the huge ship.
The warrior contacted the First Male and reported, “I can detect no change in the readings coming from the nexus. Perhaps if this planet was the cause it may require some time before the readings change.”
The First Male asked the old watcher, “Do you sense any change in the temperature of the nexus?”
“There has been no change.”
The First Male said, “It appears that the planet was not the cause of what is happening in the nexus. Continue your search.”
The huge captor ship turned and accelerated out of the system leaving the attacking ships behind. The warrior did not even think about the damage he had done or the billions he had just killed. They were too insignificant to warrant his attention. For the civilization he had just destroyed he had doomed all the colonies because of the destruction of their food source. The chance of survival for the survivors was less than one percent which for them was not insignificant.
The day after the wedding, Twig and Sprig contacted Tommy mentally and asked for him to meet them in the library and to please come alone. Tommy left his quarters and went to the elevator to take him to the lowest floor of the learning facility. He wondered why the two Algeans wanted him to come quickly and to come alone. He walked into library and said, “Is there a problem?”
Twig said, “Duke Gardner, we have undergone a strange metamorphosis and have had our storage reoriented which has changed the way we view the universe. One of the changes is that now I have a much broader understanding of how energy works. As you know, we have our readers connected to the observational equipment that records astronomical data in real time and downloads the recordings. I think it was done just to keep our pain to a minimum, however, I’ve noticed something that Sprig agrees should be discussed with you to see if our conclusions are in error.”
Tommy furrowed his brow and said, “Twig, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You might need to tell me what you want in simple terms.”
“I’m going to show you,” Twig said and entered his mind telepathically. “I have produced a new type of optical device that see’s energy fields. When I looked at the recordings from our observatories, I discovered that there are areas in the universe that appear to be, for lack of a better term, nerve centers. It appears that these nerve centers are connected to all the energy in our universe. Sprig is of the opinion that there is an energy space just like null space that connects all energy. It is also the size of an atom so one can actually read all of the universe’s energy.
“Atlas, are you getting this?”
“Yes, and that is probably how the captors saw us where ever we were. They saw our energy signature and then just looked into one of those nerve centers and saw where all of us were located.”
Twig said, “Well, I don’t think they can see you right now.”
Tommy thought, “Why is that, Twig?”
“I’ll explain in a moment but first I want to finish what we were discussing. Once I saw those nerve centers, I wanted to see what was going on in one of them. I sent a recorder into one and it was burned out. Sprig developed a field reader that allowed us to see the heat coming out of these centers. We immediately found that the heat was increasing. Obviously we wanted to know how long this had been taking place so we rewound the observatory tapes and looked at them with Sprig’s reader. We were surprised to see that it started two days ago.”
Tommy furrowed his brow and said, “Where is this going?”
“Duke Gardner, we rewound the tapes back to the moment the heat started and used the reader to tell us the exact moment the energy field’s heat rose. We then turned our consciousness to sift thru every observation we’ve seen during that time period to see if anything happened at the precise moment the heat rose. Nothing is the tapes showed anything astronomically but something close to home matched closely to one of the spikes in temperature. We would like to ask you some questions to see if what we saw was just a coincidence.”
Tommy was still confused but said, “Go ahead and ask.”
“One of the spikes in temperature started when you took Captain Dodd’s hand to dance last night and continued until you stepped away from her.”
Tommy looked at them and drew a blank. Sprig said, “We determined that the event began the day before the wedding immediately after the meeting in the auditorium. Did you within ten minutes after that meeting make any physical contact with Captain
Dodd?”
Tommy remembered that he had touched Cassie’s hand and had been severely shocked after the meeting ended. “Yes,” he answered.
Sprig and Twig stopped moving. “You did.”
“Yes, I did,” Tommy said.
Twig said, “Immediately after the ceremony, all of the Gardners, Tgon-Gee, and Captain Dodd left the celebration and went behind closed doors. Did you while you were behind those doors have any physical contact with Captain Dodd?”
“Yes, I did.”
Atlas said, “What are you trying to prove here?”
Sprig said, “One more question; Tommy when you and Captain Dodd left the celebration, did you have physical contact with her for a period of one hour four minutes and six seconds?”
Tommy remembered holding Cassie in the cafeteria for a long time. He shook his head and said, “I don’t know exactly how long but yes I was in physical contact with her for an extended period.”
Twig said, “I’ve just requested Captain Dodd to join us.”
Cassandra entered the room and saw everyone look at her with a funny kind of expression. “What’s wrong?”
Tommy started over to her when Twig said, “Stop! Do not touch her yet.”