Torn and Frayed

How it began?

No-one remembers now. Now, it is as though it has always been this way. Now it seems there could be no other way.

Back then, though, it was different.

It was, at first, dismissed as an anomaly, a fluke, a mere oddity in the results. The scientists dismissed it as a mere statistical quirk, probably an error in one of the machines.

At least, until it happened again.

And again.

Then it kept on happening, and it got worse.

What had begun as a mere wobble in the data grew and grew until the whole edifice of sub-atomic physics teetered on the edge and then collapsed. Especially when the unicorn appeared at CERN.

Apparently the scientists were there in the meeting room discussing the latest aberrations in the data and how it contradicted everything.

Then one of them glanced up at the screen showing the live feed from the collider and pointed, mouth open, speechless.

One by one the rest of the gathering noticed what was amiss and all turned to see the unicorn wandering around inside the torus.

Most thought it was a practical joke, some white horse with a glued-on horn... at least until they found it wasn't.

After someone revised the equations, they discovered if they didn't shut down the collider after repairing the rip in the fabric of space time they had less than a week before the dragons came... more likely than not, breathing fire.

Their spokesman explained the urgency to the politicians.

Twice.

Then a committee of the leading scientists tried explaining it to the politicians, this time with diagrams.

Eventually, with only a day to go the scientist got the permission to stitch up the rip in the continuum. However, by then it was too late as the elves and the faeries poured through the tear into our universe, and the orcs and dwarves following behind.

All fleeing from the dragons and all terrified of whatever it was the dragons themselves were fleeing from.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]