Happy New Year!
Thank you, all of you, for reading.
I trust you made the most of your 2019 and are looking forward to sending it off in style.
Thank you, be merry, and have a delightful 2020!
-TheAmateur
Chapter One-Hundred-Six: One Last Breakfast
"I'm deploying the cruxtruder now," said Theo Gibbons's voice through Anna's phone. "Can you see it?"
From the stairs, Anna Carrero watched a bulky Sburb machine pop abruptly into existence, taking up most of the space of the cramped basement. "Yeah, I-"
The cruxtruder, floating several feet off the floor, careened suddenly to one side, crashing into the basement wall.
"Theo, what the fuck?!" exclaimed Anna, retreating partway up the stairs. "You could've hit me!"
"Sorry, my mouse sensitivity is way too high." Theo guided the cruxtruder away from the dented wall, allowing it to settle gently to the basement floor. "I was playing Team Fortress 2 earlier, and you can't do anything on TF2 with a sluggish mouse. TF2 is played at cocaine speed."
"We both know you haven't touched a molecule of cocaine in your life." Anna walked down the stairs into the basement, approaching the cruxtruder. "Or speed, for that matter."
The bulky Sburb machine consisted of a stout, sealed, upward-pointing metal cylinder mounted upon a solid square platform. A black metal wheel protruded from the side of the cylinder, and four dormant digital panels lined each side of the cylinder's base.
"Go ahead and open it for me," said Anna.
"Let's at least deploy the totem lathe and alchemiter first," recommended Theo. "Once you open the cruxtruder, your countdown starts, and there's no going back. And you still need your pre-punched card. Here…"
A punched captchalogue card appeared out of nowhere, floating several inches away from Anna's face. She snatched it out of the air, frowning at the image of a champagne bottle emblazoned on the card's surface. "I'm not expected to drink, am I?"
"No, that's just the shape your cruxite artifact will take after you get your dowel carved," replied Theo. "What is that, a wine bottle?"
"Please. It's very clearly a champagne bottle. Go ahead and open the cruxtruder for me." Anna took a deep breath. "I need to get back upstairs and check on the situation outside."
"Um, about that," said Theo. "I just tried zooming out, and I can actually see everything that's happening outside your apartment, and… Well, things seem pretty stable at the moment, but... Why is your apartment surrounded by police? You didn't say anything about cops. What did you do?"
"Is now really the best time? Campfire stories work best when there is a campfire, and I don't have time to make one."
"Look, Anna, if you've killed or hurt people-"
"The high school is gone," interrupted Anna, climbing onto the base platform of the cruxtruder. "One of the Sburb meteorites hit our school building, like, an hour and a half ago, and just about everyone died."
"Oh god."
"I was able to get Cass and Adam out, but then some racist cop showed up." Anna grabbed the black metal wheel mounted on the side of the cruxtruder's central cylinder, managing only to turn it less than an inch before something clunked against the underside of the cylinder's lid. "Accusations flew, I got blamed for blowing up the school, and the cop tried to arrest me." Lacking the strength to turn the metal wheel any further, Anna stepped away from the cruxtruder. "I can't get arrested by a racist cop while the world is ending, Theo, surely you can understand that."
"Fair enough," conceded Theo. "But… Um… I, uh… Oh."
"Hello? Theo?" Anna frowned at her phone, hearing Theo's voice trail away. "You alright there, bud? What's going on?"
"I, um…" Theo swallowed audibly. "I zoomed back in, a bit, and… I'm looking through the rest of your apartment, and…dead bodies? Why…? In your… Why are there dead people in your apartment? Since when do you have an identical twin?"
"Long story. You wouldn't believe me."
"Yeah, but, I'm really not comfortable letting you into our game session if you're a serial killer, so…"
"I'm a time traveler. The dead clone in my bedroom is my past self," explained Anna, losing patience as she forced herself to revisit unpleasant experiences. "She got waaay too drunk, passed out, and choked to death on her own vomit. The dead guy in the wheelchair was my great-uncle. He saw me with my past self, and I'm pretty sure it gave him a heart attack or something, because he fainted and never woke back up. Okay? Satisfied?"
"That's what you expect me to believe?" Theo was unconvinced."You're a time traveler?"
"Yep. And you're basically an airbender. You'll figure it out soon."
"If you're a time traveler, why didn't you stop 9/11?"
Anna furiously strangled her phone for several seconds before calmly returning it to her ear. "Theo, I need you to listen very carefully. You've already connected with me and deployed my cruxtruder, so, you're stuck with me whether you like it or not. If you don't help me into the game, who will rescue Cruz from the meteorites? He will die, like everyone else, and do you want that on your conscience? Are you ready to say goodbye to Cruz forever? If so, you'd better call him quickly, because he's running out of time, and I'm sure he'd like the opportunity to change your mind."
"Wow, you're cold."
"The Arctic is cold, Theo," said Anna. "I'm just trying to survive." After a moment, she added, "Well, the Arctic was cold. Bad example. Look, I'm sorry, okay? You're right. That was a fucked up thing to say, and I shouldn't have tried to manipulate you. I've had a shitty fuck of a weekend, Humanity is growing more extinct with each passing minute, and I'm getting really fucking desperate here with these cops. Will you please open the cruxtruder?"
"Thank you for apologizing," said Theo. "We're gonna have to hit the top of the cruxtruder with something heavy to get it open. That big metal box over there will probably work. I'd step back, if I were you."
With a lurch, Great Uncle Andrés's gun safe rose up from the floor, floating precariously through the air towards the cruxtruder, prompting Anna to retreat to the staircase. Bumping into the ceiling, the gun safe came to a halt, hovering directly over the cruxtruder. Somewhere in the multiverse, Theo unclicked his computer mouse, sending the floating gun safe plummeting onto the cruxtruder below, knocking the lid clean off.
Powerful, cyan light poured from the unlidded cruxtruder. The heavy metal lid, along with the gun safe, crashed noisily onto the floor, cracking one of the newly-dented cruxtruder's four digital panels. Blank up until this moment, the digital panels flickered suddenly to life, displaying the number 20:20 in bright green.
20:20 swiftly changed to 20:19, morphing a second later into 20:18.
"Are you sure that was loud enough?" remarked Anna, switching her phone to her other ear as she approached the cruxtruder once more. "Check outside again, see if the cops are making any moves."
"One sec."
A weightless sphere of cyan light rose slowly from the open cruxtruder, blazing like a basketball-sized sun.
"That's your kernelsprite," said Theo. "You need to prototype it. Kernelsprites will combine with the first object they touch, so make sure you prototype something useful."
"I know what prototyping is, thank you very much." Anna squinted, trying with great difficulty to look directly at the kernelsprite. Dancing within the intense cyan light, perpetually shifting epicycloid patterns mesmerized Anna, but only briefly, because within a few seconds her eyes began to tear up and she had to look away. "You're supposed to be making sure everything is fine outside."
"You're fine," replied Theo. "The cops aren't moving. They may not have heard the crash."
"How? I could've heard it if I was in Mumbai." Anna grabbed hold of the black metal wheel connected to the side of the cruxtruder's central cylinder. "When extraterrestrials find the Voyager probes and listen to the Golden Records, the sound of that fucking gun safe crashing to the floor is the next thing they'll hear if they wait around and listen closely. It just might help them find Earth." As Anna turned the wheel, a cyan cruxite dowel protruded from the top of the cruxtruder. "They're lucky extraterrestrials, too, because by the time they reach Earth, there won't be any humans left to try and shoot them out of the sky."
"You have less than twenty minutes before a meteorite crashes into your apartment," Theo reminded Anna. "You need to move. I can fit the alchemiter in your kitchen, but I'm not sure where to put the totem lathe. The roof isn't an option, and the upstairs hallway is too narrow."
"It doesn't have to be." Anna grabbed the crystalline dowel of cyan cruxite, tucking it under her arm as she returned upstairs. "Just delete the wall between the master bedroom and the upstairs bathroom. That should open more than enough space."
"Let's deploy the alchemiter first, then I'll give that a try."
Anna emerged from the basement staircase just in time to see another sizable Sburb machine appear in the kitchen, obstructing her path forward.
The alchemiter's large square base filled most of the kitchen, leaving only an uncomfortably narrow space for Anna to squeeze by. A broad, circular pedestal, engraved with the Skaianet logo, spanned most of the alchemiter's surface, complemented by a much smaller, frisbee-sized pedestal occupying one of the alchemiter's exposed corners. Mounted alongside the smaller pedestal was a folded-up mechanical arm, tipped with what looked like a wickedly sharp needle.
Anna squeezed past the alchemiter and hurried upstairs.
Stepping into her bedroom, Anna glanced through the shattered window to see if anything had changed outside. More than a dozen police cars filled Marchwood Road, blocking traffic from approaching in any direction. Police officers remained hunkered down behind parked vehicles and trees, weapons drawn, vigilant for any signs of movement.
Lightning flashed in the stormy sky overhead, followed by low, rumbling thunder. Anna's bedroom floor grew damper by the minute as the squirrelly wind blew rain in through her window.
Satisfied the police were not about to storm her apartment, Anna exited her bedroom and walked over to the upstairs bathroom, where the wall separating the bathroom from Great Uncle Andrés's bedroom had just been removed with several clicks of Theo's mouse.
"Take a step back," advised Theo. "I'm about to give you the totem lathe."
Anna backed into the hallway, allowing Theo to deploy the third and final Sburb machine necessary for completing the game's intro stage.
A sophisticated precision lathe, emblazoned with the Skaianet logo, appeared in the shared bathroom-bedroom space, hovering several inches above the floor. After a moment, the totem lathe dropped suddenly to the ground, cracking several of the floor tiles.
Anna glared at her phone.
"Sorry," apologized Theo. "Reflex. I unclicked."
"Try and leave my apartment intact."
"That's the last machine I need to give you," assured Theo. "And what does it even matter? It's not like you'll be living there anymore."
"Fair enough." Anna held her cyan cruxite dowel against the totem lathe's head stock. "Can you click on my dowel, here? Can you keep it floating for a hot sec?"
"Sure thing," replied Theo. "I have it, you can go ahead."
Anna let go, and instead of clattering to the floor, the cruxite dowel continued to hover in mid-air. "Don't unclick." Using the handwheel, she extended the lathe's tail stock until it touched the floating cruxite, pressing the dowel firmly into the head stock. She tightened the lathe's grip with one final turn of the handwheel, securing the dowel in place. "Okay, you can unclick."
"Um… Anna?"
"Hm?" Anna inserted her punched Sburb captchalogue card into the totem lathe's card slot. The lathe hummed to life, and the cruxite dowel began to spin around its core axis. "What?"
The totem lathe's carving blade descended towards the spinning cruxite dowel.
"An armored vehicle just arrived outside," reported Theo. "Looks like a SWAT team."
"Great." Anna watched the totem lathe carve a programmed series of grooves and contours into the previously smooth surface of the spinning cruxite dowel. "Just what we need." Within seconds, the process was complete, the carving blade withdrew, and the dowel's rapid spinning slowed gradually to a full stop. "Are they moving in? Do they have battering rams? What are they doing?"
"Doesn't look like they're moving in yet, but they're definitely SWAT," confirmed Theo. "Seven of them, heavily armed. Assault rifles, mostly. One has a sniper rifle, though, probably some variant of M14. Be very careful. I can see a woman with a megaphone. She's talking to the SWAT team, but I don't know what they're saying. I think they might be…um… Well, that's really weird…"
"Huh?" Anna loosened the grip of the totem lathe, extracting the carved cruxite dowel before heading for the stairs. "Words, Theo. Use your words."
"A cop just came out of the Exton Diner," reported Theo. "He's holding a big tray of breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast…that's way too much syrup… They're bringing it over towards your place. What's with that?"
"I may have threatened to shoot my great-uncle if they didn't bring me breakfast." Anna descended the stairs to the first floor, walking briskly into the kitchen. "I'm surprised they actually went ahead and did it. Can you see if they remembered the little Smuckers jelly packets? Fuck, I should've asked for orange juice."
"You really threatened to shoot him?"
"He was already dead." Anna placed her carved cruxite dowel onto the alchemiter's smaller, frisbee-sized pedestal. "I wasn't actually going to shoot him. I needed to buy time, and using a corpse as a hostage prop to force a siege was the best solution I could think of in a pinch." The alchemiter began to vibrate and hum. "They were about to storm my apartment. What would you have done?"
The alchemiter's mechanical arm unfolded, projecting a thin red laser from its needle-like tip. As the laser scanned the carved contours of the cruxite dowel, the surface of the broader pedestal began to shine with intense white light. When the light subsided, Anna looked back at the alchemiter, and resting on the larger pedestal was a gently glowing cyan cruxite champagne bottle.
"Anna?" asked a familiar megaphone-amplified voice, audible through the shattered window next to the front door. "This is Shannon Hodge speaking. We have what you asked for. Let's discuss our next step towards resolving this situation."
"God damn it." Anna snatched the cruxite champagne bottle. "Here goes nothing." She attempted to smash the champagne bottle against the side of the alchemiter, but succeeded only in jarring her wrist. The cruxite champagne bottle bounced harmlessly off the metal, completely unblemished.
"STOP!" exclaimed Theo. "Don't break that yet! You need to prototype your kernelsprite first!"
"Ah. Right." Anna glanced over at Great Uncle Andrés, sitting lifelessly in his wheelchair. "I guess I should bring him back. I owe him that much."
"Anna?" called the crisis negotiator, "Can you hear me?"
"Theo, I'm putting you on speaker." Placing her phone on the kitchen table, Anna headed for the front door, drawing her Smith & Wesson. "Hold on a sec."
"What are you doing?" Exasperated, Theo asked, "How can you be hungry at a time like this?"
"I don't get hungry anymore, but that doesn't stop food from tasting amazing."
"C'mon, you're down to thirteen minutes. Don't do this. You're playing with fire."
"Only thirteen minutes to break a bottle? I'm sweating." Anna wheeled Great Uncle Andrés over to the front door. Through the shattered window next to the door, she saw the crisis negotiator standing in the parking lot outside, accompanied by a police officer holding a tray laden with the breakfast items Anna had requested.
Six fully armored members of a SWAT team, each armed with an assault rifle, stood ominously behind the crisis negotiator, who raised her megaphone and started to say, "Anna, if you won't talk, I can't help-"
"Nice breakfast!" interrupted Anna, shouting through the shattered window. "I appreciate you, Shannon. I think we've really bonded, and I think I can trust you, so why don't you go ahead and grab that tray? Bring it over, leave it on the front porch, then back away. Do that, and you'll get an intact hostage for your trouble. Sound fair?"
"I will bring the tray over," replied the crisis negotiator. "But if you open fire, the SWAT team will not hesitate. Do you understand? No sudden movements."
"Sure thing!" Anna heard Theo's protesting voice from the kitchen, but could not make out what he was saying. "Just bring it over and back away. Simple."
The crisis negotiator put down her megaphone and grabbed Anna's breakfast tray. Cautiously, she crossed the grassy yard in front of Anna's apartment, leaving the tray on the front porch as requested. Without looking in through any of the windows, the negotiator turned around and returned to where she'd stood previously, picking up her megaphone.
Anna pressed her pistol to the back of Great Uncle Andrés's head, once again using the corpse as a meat-shield. With a deep breath, she opened the front door, salivating at the sight of one final breakfast on Earth. She pushed the wheelchair forward slightly, stepping outside.
As she reached for the tray, Anna felt a sudden impact on her forehead, dying before she could even hear the CRACK of the sniper rifle.
A medium-caliber bullet exited explosively through the back of Anna's head, painting the den with blood.
The cyan cruxite champagne bottle rolled slowly across the floor.
"And here we are," announced the waitress, placing on the table a steaming tray of eggs, bacon, rye toast, little Smuckers jelly packets, and a small lake of syrup. "I'll leave some extra syrup for you. Anything else?"
"No, it's perfect." Anna breathed in through her nose, savoring the breakfast aromas. "Everything is perfect. You're perfect. Thank you."
"That's very kind of you to say."
"Do I know you?" Anna stared at the waitress, feeling a glimmer of recognition. "You seem familiar. Have we met?"
The waitress smiled. "If you need anything else, just let me know." As the waitress walked away, Anna returned her focus to devouring breakfast.
Grabbing a fork, Anna shoveled a steaming glop of scrambled eggs into her mouth. "Meh." Reaching for the salt shaker, she applied a light dusting of salt to the eggs before taking another bite. "Fuck, that's good. Salt makes everything better." She chewed heartily, gulping down the eggs. "Except wounds. Don't salt any wounds. Or slugs. Or snails." Scooping up another golden forkful, she added, "Or drinking water."
Anna quickly devoured half of her eggs. She spooned several glops of scrambled eggs onto a piece of toast, adding the bacon afterwards. Then she heavily buttered a second piece of toast and placed it on top, creating a crude bacon egg sandwich. Dipping her sandwich into the small lake of syrup, Anna took a bite, closing her eyes to fully savor the experience.
How to describe the feeling of perfection when a really good breakfast hits the spot?
"It's like sunshine," explained Anna with a full mouth. Opening her eyes, she swallowed and took another bite. "Feels like sunshine is shining from every cell in my body. Good god, I fucking love breakfast!"
An old woman sitting at a nearby table turned around, asking, "Are you okay?"
Anna wrinkled her nose, scrutinizing the nosy woman. "Huh?"
"You've been talking to yourself," said the old woman. "It doesn't seem healthy to-"
"Shut the fuck up and mind your own breakfast, bitch." Anna waved a dismissive hand towards the woman, who immediately dissolved into thin air. "Fuck. What the fuck?" She blinked, staring at the empty table where the vanished woman had sat. Then she shrugged. "You know what? I don't care."
Anna returned to devouring her breakfast, but after a couple more bites of syrupy egg sandwich, she realized she was intensely thirsty. She reached for her water instinctively, only to discover that she must not have ordered any, because she had no water glass.
"What?" Frowning at herself, Anna blinked to see if her water glass would magically appear, but it did not. "That's bullshit. No one orders water, they just give you water. Where's my water?"
"I have it right here," said the waitress, standing next to Anna, holding a plastic pitcher.
"Tittyfucking Christ!" Anna nearly jumped out of the diner booth, startled by the waitress's sudden appearance. "Where the fuck did you come from?"
"If you mean just now, I was over there," replied the waitress, pointing towards the kitchen. "But if you're asking about my ultimate origin, that's not something anyone knows for sure." She placed a glass onto the table and filled it with water from the pitcher. "Are you feeling okay?"
"Oh great, you too?" Anna drained her entire glass in several massive gulps, belched loudly, and returned to her egg sandwich. "I'm fine. Don't sneak up on me again. Thanks for the water."
"Orange juice, you mean?" The waitress refilled Anna's glass with orange juice from her pitcher. "Sorry I forgot to pour you some earlier. I don't usually do this. I'm not really a waitress, you know."
"But…" A very puzzled Anna watched orange juice pour from the pitcher into her glass. "Water. That was water a moment ago. Are you, like, Jesus on a health kick? How did you do that?"
"Technically you're doing it," said the waitress, setting down her pitcher. "This is your reality. I'm only using what you give me. It is a skill, and I am improving." The waitress sat down opposite Anna, sharing the diner booth. "Do you know where you are?"
"Do you know where you are?"
"It helps to be reminded."
"Well," said Anna, rolling her eyes, "I'm pretty sure the Exton Diner is in Exton, so…"
The waitress gestured towards the diner booth's window. "Are you sure?"
Anna looked out the window and froze.
A bustling cobblestone street lay outside the window, winding into the distance. Prospitian civilians crowded the sidewalks, making their way along the street, entering and exiting the various gold-and-white stone buildings towering into the brilliant blue sky.
"Prospit…?" Anna looked back at the waitress, the glimmer of recognition returning. "Am I dead?"
"You seem alive to me," replied the waitress, standing up and inviting Anna to do the same. "Do you feel dead?"
"No," admitted Anna, rising to her feet and following the waitress towards the Exton Diner's entrance. "But feelings can't tell me everything."
"Fair enough. Feelings are never the truth." The waitress stepped outside onto the cobblestone street, mingling with the Prospitians. "Do you think you could have a conversation like this if you were dead?"
"Totally." Anna, disconcerted by the wave of memories reawakened by the familiar golden city, walked with the waitress down the cobblestone street, watching Prospitians pass her by. "I mean, why not? In my headcanon of the afterlife, the only limit is the reach of my imagination."
"I like that. Why don't you imagine waking up?"
Anna made eye contact with the waitress, noticing and recognizing her violet eyes. "Cass?"
"Go on." Cass smiled again. "Wake up."
Anna's eyes opened to the sounds of screaming and gunfire.
"Fucking shit." Anna bolted upright, reaching over and grabbing her Smith & Wesson from where it had fallen. "What the fuck?" Nausea clenched her stomach as she processed the grisly sight of her own blood splattered all over the living room. Instinctively, she touched her aching forehead, feeling for a bullet hole and finding none.
"FREEZE!" screamed a brusque voice from the front doorway behind Anna. "HANDS IN THE-"
Pistol raised, Anna turned and, without thinking, opened fire at the front door. Her bullet shattered the SWAT officer's faceplate, killing him instantly. "Oh god." Watching the dead SWAT officer's body crumple to the ground, Anna clasped her stomach. She doubled over and vomited a thin trail of bile onto the bloodied living room floor. "Oh, god, oh god. Fuck."
Straightening up, spitting out excess bile, Anna walked over to the front door and glanced at the carnage outside. The dead bodies of four more SWAT team members littered her apartment's front lawn. Three corpses had been crushed underneath an upside-down car, and a fourth body lay headless in the grass. All surviving police officers remained behind cover, firing their weapons towards an unseen target in the sky. Anna looked up and saw a blue pickup truck hovering more than fifty feet above the ground. Suddenly, the truck began to fall, plummeting down towards a handful of entrenched police officers.
Several of the officers scrambled away to safety in the nick of time, but two were not so lucky. The panicked shouts of the two slowest police officers were abruptly silenced when the falling pickup truck landed on them. Anna turned away before she could get a good look at all the blood. Taking a breath, she retrieved her phone from the kitchen table. "Hello? Theo? Still there?"
"Holy fucking shit!" exclaimed Theo. "Anna?! You were dead! Then there was a bright light, and you started glowing, and-"
"Theo, calm down!" said Anna, searching the living room for her cyan cruxite champagne bottle. "Thanks for massacring the SWAT team. I owe you one. Hell, I owe you a dozen."
"I… I mean…" Theo swallowed nervously. "I thought maybe I could use my server controls to prototype your sprite and break your artifact. But the police, they would've swarmed your place and messed it all up, and… I just wanted them to stay back, but they kept trying to get in. They wouldn't stop, and I only tried to knock them off their feet, but my mouse sensitivity is way too high, and-"
"It's fine, Theo, stop freaking out." Locating the cruxite champagne bottle underneath the couch, Anna retrieved it and hurried over to Great Uncle Andrés, untying the shoelaces binding him to the wheelchair. "Just pretend you're playing Grand Theft Auto IV."
"No, it's not fine!" protested Theo. "It's not GTA IV, it's murder! These are real people!"
"It's survival," reasoned Anna, pulling Great Uncle Andrés out of the wheelchair. "It's nature." Heaving her great-uncle's corpse over her shoulder, she made her way to the basement stairs. "You want to survive, don't you?"
"All I wanted was to play a fun game with my friends," sulked Theo. "Is that too much to ask?"
"Well, it won't be fun." Anna carried her dead great-uncle downstairs, where the bright cyan kernelsprite hovered near the ceiling lightbulb. The cruxtruder's digital panels displayed a countdown of less than two minutes. "But look on the bright side. You still get to play a game with your friends."
"Oh geez, your countdown! You need to hurry," urged Theo. "You're down to ninety seconds."
Anna frowned at the kernelsprite, which continued to hover shyly around the ceiling lightbulb, just out of reach. "I'm aware, Theo." She dumped Great Uncle Andrés onto the cruxtruder before hoisting herself up. "This game really sucks." She picked up the corpse of her great-uncle and chucked it at the kernelsprite.
Flitting to one side, the kernelsprite dodged Great Uncle Andrés's corpse, colliding with the ceiling lightbulb. A bright flash of light filled the basement, prompting Anna to blink and wipe the reactive tears from her smarting eyes.
A ghostly cyan lightbulb sprite emerged from the light, silently winking its inner filament on and off in a rhythm reminiscent of a heartbeat.
Anna rubbed her eyes, glaring at the lightbulb sprite. "Are you fucking kidding me?" She retrieved Great Uncle Andrés, dragging him back over to the cruxtruder. "Such bullshit."
"Forget the sprite, you can prototype it again later!" shouted Theo's voice. "You're down to a minute! Break your artifact!"
Ignoring Theo, Anna climbed back onto the cruxtruder, picked up her great-uncle's corpse, and threw it again at the lightbulb sprite. This time, she succeeded: Great Uncle Andrés's body collided with the lightbulb sprite, searing Anna's eyes with another blistering surge of light.
Great Uncle Andrés's shirtless corpse fell to the floor.
"I don't believe it." Anna stared, openmouthed, at the lightbulb sprite, which now wore a cozy cyan sprite-matter sweater. "God fucking damn it." She climbed down from the cruxtruder and stormed upstairs in a huff, unwilling to waste any more time gawking at her absurdly useless creation.
"Break that champagne bottle!" screeched Theo. "Twenty seconds! Break it now!"
Anna walked to her front door and looked up at the churning storm clouds, feeling the flecks of rain on her face. "I'll miss having a real sky." She breathed in through her nose, savoring one last deep breath of petrichor. "Okay, time to go."
Gripping the cruxite champagne bottle tightly, Anna whacked it against the doorframe, but the champagne bottle did not break. "C'mon, you." Against the doorframe, Anna again struck her cruxite artifact, but the doorframe was the only thing she managed to dent. The cruxite artifact remained unblemished. "Break." She tried to smash the bottle on the concrete of the front porch, to no avail. "Why won't you fucking break?"
"Ten fucking seconds, Anna!" screamed Theo. "Break the fucking bottle!"
"FUCK! THIS! FUCKING! BOTTLE!" thundered Anna, slamming the cruxite champagne bottle onto the concrete with each emphasized syllable. "It won't break!"
A deep, omnipresent rumbling began to shake Anna's apartment, rattling the surviving windows and causing Anna's ears to pop.
"You stupid fucking piece of shit!" Infuriated, Anna shook the unreasonable cruxite champagne bottle, strangling it the same way she'd strangled her phone. "I will not die because of a fucking bottle!"
The rumbling grew louder, and all of the remaining windows in Anna's apartment shattered.
Curiously enough, the cruxite champagne bottle, glowing much brighter than before, began to hum in Anna's hands. "Eureka!" she proclaimed. "Gotta treat you like a proper bottle of champagne."
"Five seconds!" warned Theo. "Four… Three…"
Anna vigorously shook the champagne bottle as if her life depended on it, which was not difficult, because her life did depend on it. "C'mon, you fuck!" The humming grew louder, and the cyan glow of the cruxite artifact intensified exponentially. "Here we go!"
As the storm clouds were torn away by the fiery wind of an oncoming meteorite, the cruxite champagne bottle popped its cork and shattered in Anna's hands.
Bright, searing light burst forth in lieu of champagne foam, and everything went white, forcing Anna to close her eyes.
END OF INTERMISSION III