At the same time, the enemy launched an attack against us from the other side of the tunnel. In full pursuit of our agents, they emerged from the septum, laying down a heavy line of fire in order to recapture the two hostages we had just rescued. From high above, I directed the giant air-blower on them, allowing our people to get behind the plexi-shields. The air-blower hovered in the air, buffeting the aliens back into the tunnel mouth.

We had just found cover behind the plexi-shields before the Scientist's voice came through the command center loudspeakers, squawking that the air-blower had been taken out. The enemy was outside. Still breathing hard from the recent sprint, I held my wife and looked around at the hardened faces of the agents who had helped rescue us from the twin planet. They were staring at the door. I turned my gaze to see a dozen enemy soldiers open fire on the plexi-shields at point-blank range. Their projectiles made an unbelievable noise and left a growing pattern on the clear wall, but we were safe. We were home.

I would describe Harrison as one of our best agents, at least before he met Susan. We were friends from exploration missions in deep space, far from the womb of the home world. Now it seemed like Harrison wanted to forsake space and his career for another womb. He always had been anti-social, taking time for himself and a good book when the rest of the agents were getting their auras ripped at the local hallucino-pub, but still I lived at Harrison and Susan's house. After we found the egg, it was the only safe place to be.

The egg floated in the other room, about a foot off the cashmere rug. A testament to Harrison's former life as a space agent, it was as tall as me and several times wider in girth. Since I wouldn't be going out anymore, I had turned their study into my laboratory. I was quite bust working on the time-line fracture, trying to understand how the enemy planet had broken through the temporal-dimensional wall.

The alien tunnel had pierced our world, allowing two-way travel to a place we'd rather never go. All those years of travelling space, finding empty solar systems and deserted asteroids, only resulted in an unexpected invasion through our back-door. Needless to say, the war provided incentive for me to answer the paradox which was rapidly changing our world.

When I finally broke the code, I felt like anything could happen. Perhaps the same discovery on the other side of the universe was proof that anything would happen. With the time-line activated, I watched a tiny kitten turn in a matter of nanoseconds into a roaring lion. I would have lost my throat, as well as my tie, if I didn't jump out the door quicker than spit.

Asking Harrison to join me as an impartial observer, I wound back the chrono-counter in order to try the experiment again. He said he had seen this movie before, yet agreed. Little did I ponder the significance of this remark, but instead placed the kitten on the couch. Once again, I barely made it out of the room in one piece. The lion had an unbelievably quick pounce, but with the advantage of knowing what was going to happen, I was quicker.

When they brought me the clothes of two captured alien soldiers for analysis, I noted writing on the collar of one of the jackets. The letters matched our alphabet, more or less, but made no sense in the way they were written. I guessed that they were a code or abbreviation of some sort. Inside the fold of a small black garment, perhaps a cat costume for a baby's first Halloween, I discovered more letters. They matched the first, but with entire words. I immediately recognized them as German, to the surprise of the fellow agents. Even without my dictionary, I was able to decipher the sentence as referring to a common flower often used by alchemists. It made me think of entering the egg which was now floating in my living room.

As much as the other scientists had wanted to dissect it, we wouldn't allow them. Something deeper than any of us was living in there. After the ordinary observation period, when most of us expected it would crack, interest waned and we were allowed to take it home. After all, we were the ones who found it. And it had a way of speaking to us in our dreams. It wanted to be near us. I retired and planned more time with Susan. Never did I suspect that I would have so little.

We had just been to the opera and were returning to our comfortable apartment when Susan began whistling a familiar song. I couldn't quite place it, but began opening the door. Then she reminded me it was my birthday. She asked if I shouldn't straighten my tie. A surprise party! I groaned. My wife laughed as the door swung open and the lights and music all came up. But it had been a trick. Susan smiled and led me into the empty living room. By the giant floating egg, she pulled me closer for a kiss. Holding her there was the last thing I remember before being rescued from the other side.

After we got home, the Scientist asked me if I wanted to see his exciting new breakthrough. I had seen this movie before. It felt like the fiftieth time. It was lucky we didn't ignore the time-line experiments, he said. He had something to show me. He raced back to the room where a tiny kitten sat on the couch. He activated some controls on the mahogany desk and light spun around, enveloping the cat. It grew in a split instant into a roaring lion, which pounced where he had just been. He grinned, having joined me in the hall, triumphantly slamming the door behind him.

I ran from the command center to welcome my friends back to our side of the universe. The enemy soldiers had retreated when they couldn't get through the plexi-screens, but our men had managed to capture two of them. Harrison shook his head and said that he was done, he was going to retire. I wondered about my experiments with the time-line. It was possible that I had opened some kind of feedback loop. I gave Harrison some clothes of the captured aliens. After looking at the writing on the inside of the ragged folds, he surprised us by somehow being able to read their language. As he read me what it said, a wave of memories flooded my brain.

I had been home the night Harrison and Susan had been kidnapped by the aliens. Tired of working with equations, I was relaxing on the couch in my lab with the kitten. I heard the front door open, the stereo come on, and I rose to greet my friends. I saw them kissing in the living room, obviously glad to be alone. Their eyes were closed. What they did not see was the change in the egg. Its opaque skin was becoming transparent, lowering like a shaded limousine window into a clear amniotic world. Inside was a replica of Harrison and Susan, naked, with a tiny baby between them. I came running in to tell them the aliens were coming. I was too late. They were already gone.

Susan just wanted to be a mother, but ended up getting kidnapped the very night we would have conceived our dream child. The aliens had infiltrated our home, lying in wait to snatch the baby they never wanted to be born. Frozen for temporal-bilocation, I could only think that I didn't like this, having to go back inside this time machine, this egg thing. I had seen this movie before.

We were in space, the Scientist and I, looking at our home galaxy millions of light years away. We were on a mission to stop the war that had been going on since the beginning of history. Exactly what we were doing out here, perhaps the Scientist knew. I watched for alien ships when, all of a sudden, the lights went out. Literally. Every star and every mote of luminescence in the heavens suddenly ceased to be. A voice spoke in our heads, informing us that this would be the future, where love is the language of communication. You will have to be your own light, it said. And then the egg appeared. We got it in the ship, but actually it turned out that it was our ship. We got inside it and the lights came back on. The inside of the egg provided a vacuum of time, its skin a thin grace period within which we could operate before the entire universe shut down.

It was not long after our rescue that Susan learned that she was indeed pregnant. She was ecstatic. The egg was gone. Not only that, the enemy attacks had ceased, at least for the time being. The Scientist was quite busy, documenting his recent experiments. He believed that he had reached a monumental breakthrough which could bring the two twin worlds closer together. I was simply relieved that I could resume an ordinary life again, at least before the baby came. But then again, I pondered, perhaps this child had been the answer all along.