Hearing a faint clunk, Taylor stopped what she was doing with Emma and Amy and turned to look into the darkness under her bed. "Hey, Bob, what was that?" she asked curiously. All three girls peered into the void, out of which a moment later a pen rolled. Reaching out Taylor picked it up and looked at it with a furrowed brow.
"That's weird," the young girl commented, rubbing it with her thumb. "Where did you come from?"
"Same place that one did?" Emma suggested, pointing at the second pen that had just followed the first one. Taylor picked that up too in her free hand and looked between them, frowning.
"Two. I have two pens."
"Ha ha ha?" Amy put in with a grin, getting both her sister and her friend to giggle.
"Yeah, but seriously, where did these come from? Bob uses a pencil, everyone knows that. Hey, Bob, any idea about these things?"
They listened for a second, then exchanged glances. "That's really strange," Taylor finally said. "We better ask Mom." Hopping to her feet without using her hands, which still had a pen in each one, the girl ran out of the room with the others at her heels. "Hey, Mom? Bob says an unexpected rupture in four-space allowed interdimensional detritus to filter through into objective reality. And that it smelled funny. That's the third time this month, but it's only a couple of pens this time."
Annette looked around as they all came into her workroom, putting the book she was reading down and taking the pens her biological daughter handed her. She examined them carefully, moving a finger down the writing implements and provoking a brief eldritch glow. All three girls watched with interest. "How odd," she commented with a small smile. "I do believe someone didn't quite get their dimensionally orthogonal operation correct."
"Can we keep them?" Amy asked. "They look lonely."
Her mother smiled gently at her. "I think it would be best if we sent them on their way, Amy," she replied calmly. "Someone might be missing them and we wouldn't want to worry them, would we?"
"No," the little girl said after thinking it over carefully. "Guess not."
"Well, then, off you go," Annette said to the pens, holding them flat on her hand. Both lifted into the air, spun about an axis which was at right angles to all the usual ones, and winked out.
"Oooh, that looked cool," Emma breathed, sounding impressed. Annette ruffled her hair with a laugh.
"You'll learn to do it soon enough, dear. Now, why don't we find a nice healthy snack to compensate for all those chips you girls ate?"
Standing, she gestured for the gaggle of seven year olds to precede her out of the room, glancing back with a secretive smile before following.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Hey!" Taylor snapped her hand out, dropping the cloth she'd been polishing Mr Death with, and snagged two items out of the air as they dropped past her head. She inspected them. "Huh."
Popping the cap off one of the pens, which were rather nice fountain ones, she experimentally tried it on a piece of scrap paper. "Not bad." Then she produced a heavily modified piece of UAC sensor equipment and scanned both implements. "Ah. That's interesting." Fiddling with the device she scanned them again, then waved it around carefully, eventually stopping with it pointing at an area in space just over her head. "There you are. Right, then, if I do this, and this…" She changed settings on the small machine, glancing up every now and then, before nodding in satisfaction. "That'll do it." Prodding a control she smiled a little as a dim pink glow appeared around an eye twisting point in space that went around a corner that didn't exist.
Picking the pens up, she tossed both of them through the hole in reality, watching as they vanished as quickly as they'd appeared, the hole disappearing a moment afterwards. Pleased, she put the widget away again and picked up her polishing cloth. Mr Death really preferred to be shiny, it was more intimidating.
Moments later she had resumed her task and kept at it until her dad knocked on the door and inquired if she fancied a quick trip to Europe to deal with some more Nazis, which of course she did.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
As an alarm on her computer sounded, Taylor leaned sideways to look at a monitor and the complex display showing on it, before glancing at the pinprick of silver light hanging over Admin's optronic array. "Interesting," she commented. Symbols came and went on another monitor, causing her to nod. "Yeah, I know. Any second now…" She held out her hand, moving it around a little, then grinned when a couple of pens dropped into it from nowhere. "Neat. Now, let's see how that was done…"
Grabbing her latest phone she tapped icons, scrolled through a couple of screens and adjusted some parameters, then waved it over the pens. "Huh. Variant quantum signature, traces of exotic radiation suggesting a quark-gluon plasma interaction with sixth-level reality… Oh, right. That is a neat trick. I'll have to remember that one." She picked up a notebook, popped the cap off one of the pens, and used it to scribble some notes. When she was done she put the cap back on, before getting out of her chair and moving to a piece of equipment she'd designed a while ago after a long session discussing certain ideas with Admin. Flipping the power switch she heard a deep hum rise from almost subsonic to a brief whistle that ascended past her hearing, before a small sphere of luminescent green light formed above the device.
Referring to her phone's screen, she adjusted a couple of things, while behind her reams of code grew in the editor window on her main computer. After thirty seconds or so she tapped a control, waited briefly for the program to compile and download, and watched the faint green glow change in a subtle manner.
"There you go," she said to the pens as she picked them up and smiled at the things. "Have a good trip. Say hi when you get home." She poked them into the glowing immaterial sphere and let go, the pens vanishing. Checking the readings she nodded to herself, shut the device down, and sat again to finish her Geography homework.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Incoming wormhole, Commander."
Kenny's voice made Taylor look up from her dinner, her parents doing the same.
"Location?" she said.
"Ten degrees up, forty degrees left from your current position."
Everyone looked to the side, Taylor neatly grabbing the items that appeared out of nowhere in a brief display of special effects. "Ooh, nice pens from nowhere," she laughed. "Cool."
"Where did those come from, Kenny?" her dad asked curiously, eyeing the pens in Taylor's hand.
"A rather odd variation of hyperspace as far as I can determine, Danny. I believe the method used to send them was attracted to Taylor's quantum signature, and it allowed the wormhole to lock onto her approximate position."
"How odd," her mother remarked.
"It's certainly an unusual event, I am forced to agree," the ancient machine replied with a chuckle. "From the sub-quantum signature emitted by the two items, I infer that they do not arise from a local source. In fact there are a number of fascinating exotic effects detectable which suggest several rather intriguing lines of research. That said, I suspect it would be best to send them on their way, as clearly someone, or multiple someones, had a goal in mind and I feel it would be remiss of us not to help."
"How do we do that?" Taylor asked.
"I have fabricated a device to allow this to take place, Commander," he replied. "Sending now."
A glittering machine the size of an orange appeared in front of her next to her plate. It hummed slightly and a cone of light flowered from the top, extending a few centimeters above it but appearing when she peered into it to extend to infinity and beyond. "Please deposit the items into the transmission zone," Kenny requested. She held the pens out over the funnel and let go, everyone watching as they shrank in a very strange way as if they were receding into the distance from any angle one observed from. Moments later they were gone and the device switched off, before also vanishing again.
"I shall ponder the implications of this event and let you know my conclusions," Kenny said. "Apologies for interrupting your meal."
"Don't worry about it, Kenny," Taylor's father said with a smile. "You're always welcome to join in."
"Thank you, Danny, that means a lot to me."
All four of them spent the rest of the meal discussing the current progress of various plans and the schedules involved.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor coughed, then, somewhat taken aback, stuck her tongue out about six inches, the forked end wrapped around a pair of quite high quality fountain pens. "What the hell?" she mumbled, dropping them into her hand and staring at them. "Where on earth did those come from? I don't remember eating a pen shop."
"I don't believe you have, Brain," the Varga commented from where he was sitting on the desk, his small draconic head tilted as he examined the things she was holding. "Observe the equations determining the spatial location."
Taylor squinted at them, then nodded slowly. "OK, that's neat, I have to admit." She sniffed one of the pens, then the other, her eyes widening a little. "And that is bizarre. Even for us."
"Indeed," the demon noted, nodding. He grinned a little. "It suggests some rather interesting possibilities, does it not?"
"Oh, it does, yes indeed it does," she agreed happily. They conferred for a couple of minutes, then Taylor reached out with one hand and pushed it through what most people would consider normal reality, dropped the pens on the other side, and pulled her hand back. She thought for a moment, glancing at the Varga, who nodded with a smirk.
"Might as well," she replied to the unsaid comment and flipped a whole handful of her own design of EDM pen into nothingness. "Just to be friendly."
"Agreed," her demon smiled.
Pleased with the odd little interlude Taylor went back to planning out the next stage in bringing R'yleh to Earth Bet, which was something she was really looking forward to…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Another incoming wormhole, Commander," Kenny announced, making all three Heberts pause their game of Risk! "Directly in front of you over the table."
A number of pens dropped to the table with a solid clunk even as he spoke. "The wormhole is… highly unusual," he added, sounding confused. "I am unable to determine the mechanism involved at the moment."
"These things are much too heavy to be normal," Taylor's mother remarked, studying one of the writing implements. She peered at the small gold logo on the end, then experimentally clicked the nib out and tried writing with it on the pad they'd been using to keep score. "But they're extremely good pens."
"The material is… impossible, Annette," Kenny said after several seconds, which for the giant AI was a very long time indeed. He sounded completely baffled. "I have absolutely no idea how it can possibly exist. Or why I seem to keep thinking about lizards when I look at them."
The family exchanged glances, shook their heads, and after a little while got back to the game. Kenny puzzled over the whole thing for a while longer but eventually put it to one side in favor of helping Taylor absolutely destroy her parents.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
A different alarm sounded, causing Taylor to once more look at the screen. "Well, now," she muttered, holding out a hand. Several oddly heavy pens landed in it. She lifted one to her eyes, studied the little gold logo with interest, then weighed it thoughtfully. A couple of minutes later she was getting extremely interested in the absolutely fascinating data an examination of the anomalous material the pens were made of provided, as was Admin.
They were also really good pens, she discovered some time after that. Her father, Amy, and Vicky all agreed when she gave each of them one.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Snapping her hand out too fast to see, Taylor grabbed the pens that appeared next to her head, spun one in her fingers, and flicked it neatly through the left eye of the Nazi cape who had just aimed some sort of low end knockoff Mr Death at her. The pen went in and came out the other side, sticking half its length into the concrete wall. When she and her dad had finished, she pulled it out and clicked the mechanism a couple of times.
"That is one tough pen," she commented, handing him one and putting the rest away in her armor.
"Useful too," he replied, nodding, then both Heberts headed up to the next level, following the sounds of screaming...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor watched with Amy as Granny Mallie turned the weirdly heavy gray metal pen over in her hands, stopping when she spotted the little gold logo at the top. An odd smile crossed her face. "Ah," she said quietly.
"Where did they come from, Granny?" Taylor asked curiously. "Bob says he has no idea."
"I believe these are meant as a gift for you and your sister, as well as Emma and Victoria," the much older woman said, still smiling slightly in a sort of wistful manner at the pen she was holding. "A gift from a very old friend. They will serve you well, I suspect." She handed the pen back to Taylor, who took it and stared at it with interest. Next to her, Amy was holding the rest and peering at them. Her mother and father were watching from the sofa, the same odd smile as Granny had on their faces.
"Come on, Amy, let's go tell Bob what Granny said," Taylor said cheerfully to her sister, the other girl grinning and following as she charged out of the room. "Hey, Bob! Granny says they're presents for us!" she added at the top of her lungs as they ran up the stairs.
Mal picked up her teacup, meeting her daughter's eyes with a smile. "Ah, the exuberance of youth," she commented calmly. "Always a joy to hear. At times, from several hundred yards away…"
All three laughed before going back to what they'd been discussing.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor frowned as she reached beneath, rooting around for a moment then extracting two pens. She stared at them for several seconds, puzzled, before wandering off to her dad's study. "I found your pens," she said as he turned around. Holding them out she added, "But I have absolutely no idea how."
"Strange," he remarked, taking them from her and looking at them with a raised eyebrow.
They heard a thump on his desk and both looked to see several more pens lying there. Both looked at each other, then as one looked up at the ceiling, before simultaneously shrugging. Her dad put the two he was holding down and picked up one of the newly arrived ones, played with it for a moment, then handed it to her. "Have a pen?" he said in a rather confused voice.
They exchanged baffled looks before deciding that a pizza was called for.
That was, after all, the U.N.I.O.N. way.
) of this ability is that sooner or later she'll basically end up the Zelretch of her dimensional cluster.
