Chương 2: THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

George tapped the button another 2, 000 times, but the expected level-up didn't come. He pressed it a few more times, watched the click counter rise past 4, 500—and still, no achievement notification appeared. So he kept clicking. New Achievement: Level Four +1 gold +1 skill point"Yes," he said. George glanced at the store options and noticed that the price of a memory had increased by one gold. The first level-up came at 1, 000 clicks.

He had hit level three at 2, 500 clicks, which was 1, 000 for the first level and another 1, 500 for the next level. He had thought he'd hit level four at 4, 500 clicks, which would mean that the threshold for each level was increasing by 500 clicks per level. But the next level hadn't come until 4, 800 clicks, which was 300 clicks more than he'd estimated. Were the thresholds increasing randomly or was there some formula?

And then there were those two other "milestone" achievements at 100 and 500 when he had gotten the click counter and the bonus skill point. Would there be other achievements at milestones? He was still at 4, 800 clicks, so he quickly pressed the button another 200 times, and, sure enough, another milestone achievement appeared. New Milestone Achievement: You've reached 5, 000. Bonus unlocked: +5 gold Six gold. He could buy another memory. But first, he needed the store.

He kept clicking the button until he had over 8, 000 clicks and a notification popped up. New Achievement: Level Five +1 gold +1 skill point Would you like to buy anything in the store? Yes or No?

"Yes," George said. The store menu reappeared, and George thought about his options. He didn't feel hungry, and he couldn't imagine anything that was called a food pellet actually being appetizing, so he ignored it. His eye was drawn to the automatic-click button upgrade and the memory. He said, "I'd like to buy a random memory and the button upgrade." Purchased. Random memory. When the memory began, he was in bed. George woke to the sound of hail against the windows. It was the middle of the night.

He stumbled to the bathroom to pee. This was after he'd moved to Chicago. He was in that small apartment. It was just when things were falling apart but before the real panic started. This night had been the tipping point, though. The hail rattled against the window, waking him. He was about to climb back into bed when he saw a faint yellow glow coming in through the window in the living room. He leaned over the back of the couch to peer down at the street.

The glow was coming from the tree in the center of the apartment courtyard. It looked like a sickly luminescent web was crawling up the tree from the ground. The web pulsed slowly with dull light. George realized that whatever was happening to the tree was also happening in a few other patches on the brick in the courtyard. Every few seconds, the glowing web pulsed and grew a bit larger. The patches of yellow seemed to be slowly crawling up the face of the apartment building.

The steady tattoo of hail continued against the glass. One piece hit the window near George's head so hard that he flinched. In the dim light, he could see the hail was not just bouncing off the glass; it was sticking to the window. George dug a flashlight out of a drawer in the kitchen and pointed it at the hailstone on the window and saw that it wasn't hail at all. And it wasn't stuck. It was crawling.

The metallic bits that George had mistaken for hail looked like tiny silver ants that were unfurling and slowly creeping over the glass. George moved the beam of his flashlight across the window and saw that all of the panes were swarming with the metallic ants. He leaned close to the glass and watched one convulse and spew a thin, glowing goo out onto the window. The goo was pulsing with light in time with the tree in the courtyard.

The bug continued to vomit the pale yellow stuff onto the window and then, its task done, it dropped off of the window and fell to the ground outside. The streaks pooled together and glowed in time with the tree outside. Then, the web of vomit on the window started to grow. One of his windows rattled, and George saw a tiny yellow tendril force its way in through a sliver of space between the window and the frame. Its tip waved in the air like an inchworm searching for purchase and then latched onto the window sill.

It slowly extended itself further into the apartment. The tip forked into two tendrils that stretched themselves and divided into four. George tried to push the top of the window down and pinch it off, but it wouldn't budge. He ran to the kitchen thinking that he would put a glass on top of it like it was a spider. His hands fumbled the first glass he grabbed and dropped it. It shattered on the kitchen tile.

He leaned around the corner of the kitchen wall without moving his feet in the broken glass and saw that the tendrils were still making their way across the inside of the window. The tree outside was totally covered now, the whole thing glowing with lurid yellow light. Some of the tendrils at the base of the tree had grown thick and ropy like vines. The metallic tinkling of the little bugs continued to clatter outside.

Instead of a glass, George took a knife from the drawer and gingerly stepped over the broken shards on the ground. He walked to the window and tapped the tip of the knife on the web on the window sill. It was springy like the flesh of a mushroom. He pushed the blade into the thin tendril and neatly severed it. The growing web along the window immediately fell dark. George jabbed the knife at the bits of the web that still clung to the glass, and they peeled away.

At the same time, he saw the glowing tip of another tendril pushing its way inside where George had cut the first one. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. He cut the tendril a few more times, and each time it grew back and started to divide and spread on the window sill. After he had done it five or six times, the tendril that grew out of the stump didn't cling to the window, but instead stretched away from the window toward George.

It gently swayed as it extended itself over the back of the couch. George found himself taking involuntary steps back. The tip of the tendril began to swell and inflate until a bright sphere the size of a grapefruit hung down from the end of the thin, fibrous strand. Then the ball at the end of the tendril popped and left a cloud of glowing motes floating in the room next to the window. The cloud pulsed in sync with the rest of the web. Some particles settled on the couch.

Others floated upward, drifting toward the ceiling like glowing ash.

"Not good," George said. Outside, the yellow web now completely covered the courtyard. The tree had gone dark. It no longer pulsed with light like the rest of the web. Its silhouette was black against the backdrop of the now-glowing brick of the courtyard. Beyond the courtyard, he could see the other trees and buildings and streets glowing with the same light up and down his street. Even the low ceiling of clouds seemed to be pulsing in time with the light on the ground. It's everywhere, George realized.

He imagined the yellow web crawling over the whole city, and it terrified him. He heard a scream from the apartment upstairs followed by heavy footfalls. He wasn't the only one awake in the building. George ran out of the living room and opened the door to his bedroom. The tendrils had already covered one wall. The spreading web looked like it was coming through the vents of the air conditioning unit in the window. He shut the door to the bedroom and pulled open the closet door.

He threw things aside until he found an old box of matches and a can of aerosolized bug spray. He came back into the living room, edging around the cloud of spores that still floated in the air, emitting the rhythmic light. It took several tries to light a match, but he got one lit and held it close to the yellow web on the window. He raised the spray can and pressed the button. A gout of flame shot out as the bug spray contacted the lit match. The yellow web reacted immediately.

It shot out a tendril and ripped the spray can out of George's hand, wrapping it in coils like a snake attacking its prey. The tendrils enveloped it until the can completely disappeared beneath them. Then a contraction passed through the tendril as it squeezed, and the can popped with a flash and muffled explosion. The coils that had snatched it from his hand turned black and fell to the ground, revealing the mangled remains of the can. George backed out of the living room and into the bathroom.

None of the web had made it into the bathroom yet. He locked the door and stuffed a towel into the crack. His apartment was totally silent, but George could imagine the veins of yellow crawling across all of his things. He heard more muffled shouting from upstairs. Sirens wailed in the distance. Suddenly the sound of a muted boom came from somewhere else in the city, and George felt the walls rattle. He stood up on the rim of the bathtub and opened the small window near the ceiling.

There was an orange ball of fire rolling up into the sky a mile or so away. Near the cemetery, George thought. A car accident or something else? The tall orange tongues of a different fire rose steadily above the trees a few streets down. He heard a faint shuffling coming from the floor. He turned and watched the crack at the bottom of the door. The towel wiggled a bit. Then there was a harder pull at the towel, and it made the door rattle in its frame.

"You're kidding me," George whispered. The corner of the towel disappeared beneath the bottom of the door as something pulled it out into the living room. A small tendril appeared in the exposed crack in the door. It slithered beneath the door like a worm.

"You're kidding me!" George said again. He swept his toiletries off of his sink, and they clattered ineffectually to the floor at the bottom of the door. The tendril wiggled its way around the flotsam as it pushed into the bathroom. He backed up until his calves hit the side of the bathtub. Then he had an idea. He stepped into the bathtub and turned the water on. He plugged the drain and the cold water spread across the bottom of the tub.

George didn't know if this was a good idea, but he didn't want that stuff touching his body. It was already spreading across the floor and the bathroom door. It was moving faster now. When the water had almost filled the tub, George shut it off and waited. He hugged his arms around his chest and tried not to get near any of the walls. He could only watch as the web spread inside the bathroom. It crawled up the side of the bathtub and over the rim.

George's eyes were locked on the first tendril to come close to the water. It touched the surface of the water and sent a ripple across the bath. The wet tendril turned aside and continued growing along the inside rim of the bathtub just above the water. Several other tendrils tested the water and turned aside until the entire tub above the waterline was covered. George stood in the middle of the bathtub and watched as his bathroom was taken over.

He thought about trying to use the shower to spray the floor and walls in the bathroom, but he doubted that would work. The yellow web clearly didn't like the water, but it wasn't as if the water had melted it like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. Then the pulsing light stopped. The web of tendrils suddenly went dark the way the tree in the courtyard had gone dark. George kept waiting, and in a few minutes, he saw the veins that now covered everything seemed to be deflating, like they were being sucked dry.

In five minutes, the tendrils in the bathroom looked more like yellow lines that had been painted onto the walls than the ropy webs they had been. Five minutes later, they had faded into the walls altogether, like butter being absorbed into hot toast. When he couldn't see any sign of the tendrils anywhere, George made himself count to 500, and then he stepped out of the bathtub. He touched the wall and felt no residue. He opened the door just a crack.

There was no yellow light, and it seemed that the tendrils in the living room had evaporated or been absorbed just like in the bathroom. He opened the door the rest of the way and walked out into the living room. The sounds of shouting from upstairs had stopped, and George wondered if the tendrils were gone up there as well. He looked in his bedroom, and it looked just like it always did; a bit messy but no weird tendrils and no pulsing yellow light.

Across the courtyard, he could see a few yellow bits in patches on the brick, but even that was rapidly disappearing. The same thing was happening up and down the street. Dawn was just starting to pale the sky, and he could see a few plumes of smoke rising elsewhere in the city. He went to the bathroom and let the water out of the bath. His body acted automatically as his mind slowly puzzled over the events of the last twenty minutes.

He leaned around the kitchen wall, careful not to step on the broken glass, and put two Pop-Tarts in the toaster. He wondered briefly if they'd been touched by the tendrils and decided that they'd been safe in their foil wrappers. He made coffee and swept up the broken glass. He called Sonya, but she didn't pick up. His mind ticked through possible explanations of what had just happened, but he could make no sense of it. It was just one more bizarre event unfolding in an increasingly strange autumn.

He left his coffee on the table and crawled into bed. He tried not to think about the weird web that had crawled its way across his mattress an hour ago. In a few minutes, he was asleep. As memory-George fell asleep, the vision faded—and George found himself back in the egg-shaped room. Click. GEORGE. SCARY. TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT! IT SEEMED LIKE YOU WERE IN REAL TROUBLE THERE.

"What was that?" George said. Click. I'M NO EXPERT, BUT IT SURE LOOKED LIKE A SEMI-AUTONOMOUS SWARM OF NANOBOTS TO ME, GEORGE. WOW. YOU COULD REALLY ALTER THE STRUCTURE OF THE MATERIAL WORLD WITH THAT STUFF.

"Where did they come from?" Click. TIME WILL TELL, BUDDY. TIME WILL TELL.