Laser Light

Chapter 1

28th August 2032

"Mum. I think it's come back, or more correctly it was never gone."

Tracy Hammond looked around at her daughter who had just walked into the kitchen, apparently from her bedroom where she often spent hours on her computer. "What are you talking about, Grace?" she asked feeling slightly annoyed at Grace's habit of opening up a conversation without saying what she was talking about.

"Remember your little adventure to the secret basement laboratory when you had an encounter with a telepathic entity?"

"How did you find out about that?" Tracy asked, "That's Level One A security information."

Grace just looked at her mother.

"Oh, of course. Granddad told you. Did he also tell you not to say a word about it to anyone?"

"Mum, I know what Level One A means."

"Okay, okay," Tracy sighed. She looked at her sixteen year old daughter. She was slim and tall for her age with long blonde hair halfway down her back and very pretty features. Tracy was sure Grace would save the world one day. She was full of energy and enthusiasm, always asking questions, constantly reading up on scientific and world matters in online newspapers and journals. She breezed through her schoolwork with top marks in every subject. She had been allowed to jump a year at high school which meant she would finish her final year in a little over twelve months. She had a brilliant memory. If she asked you to explain something complicated to her she understood and remembered it all practically word for word and could recite it back to you weeks or months later. And she loved analysing and solving problems. She also loved mystery and intrigue.

Tracy carefully worded her question. "What do you mean by 'It has come back'? Are you referring to the thing that your grandfather and I destroyed down in Basement B3? That was fifteen years ago."

"Not 'thing', Mum, it was a telepathic entity because you heard it speaking to you in your mind."

"All right, whatever you want to call it, but there's no way it could be back. We destroyed it, and what was left was zapped out of existence in the laser incinerator."

"Mum, 'zapped' is a very unscientific word. You destroyed its home, the crystal cluster, but it was destroyed once before by those scientists Walker and Bolton, but the entity reconstructed it."
"Well, what makes you think this thing has somehow returned from the dead?"

"I've been talking to some of the staff about B2."

Grace had been doing work experience at the Silver Star Research Facility over the previous week. Tracy had placed her as an assistant with Professor John O'Brien who was a physicist working on the dynamics of future spacecraft to be constructed for the company. O'Brien was an irritable, cranky, difficult to get along with type, but he was brilliant in his field. She had half expected Grace to get into huge arguments with him and ask for a transfer, but surprisingly the opposite had happened. At the end of the week O'Brien had given Grace a glowing report saying how gifted and talented she was, she could think outside the square, she had a wonderful future ahead of her as a physicist. Off the record he had beamed at Tracy (she could rarely ever remembered having seen him smile) and told her that her daughter shared an interest in many of his theories in space dynamics. "When she starts working here in the complex I would love to have her working with me as a colleague. With her theories and input I am sure we could have our spacecraft travelling at close to the speed of light within a few years."
Tracy didn't doubt that for a moment. Grace never stopped surprising her.