A thin, bright white beam sprang from the egg that was Francis Forwarder to connect with Utilika's reaching arm, still extended. 

     A confused look crossed Utilika's features. In the end, he really was merely a newborn child. As filled with knowledge and his mission in life as he was, he still had no experience with anything in the real world, no experience with anything, really. 

     Which is to say, he had no idea what to do with the white brightness that traveled up his arm to his torso.

     It coated him like a salve, the bright white. Utilika could still move his head. He looked at each of his four parents in turn, at Technolica, at Mother Naturia, at Silveria floating overhead, at The Fours floating above her. There was a question in Utilika's eyes, and that question was this:

     Now what do I do?

     He received no response. 

     They, too, all four of them, were paralyzed.

     And then Utilika began to twitch. 

     Utilika was a big, thick guy who stood on two huge feet. Muscular as the leader of a tribe of gorillas. 

     Strong enough to stagger rather than immediately collapse. 

     He stayed on his feet as he swelled as if filling with helium. 

     He doubled, then tripled, his original size.

​     From his every orifice, bright white light emitted as if a blazing star within him struggled to break free. 

     When Utilika swelled to four times his original size, he held back his head and shrieked like a skewered walrus...

     and then he erupted. 

     Bright white went everywhere.

     Bright white hit Adama. 

     She dissolved within it. 

     Bright white enveloped Trevor, Niki and Cole.

     They dissolved within it. 

     The brightness hit Tindriss, and her body twisted as if it had, for an instant, become an ebony lightning bolt before she, too, dissolved. 

     Abby, Kathy, Alison, they all dissolved into the brightness. 

     A beam sprang from the egg to hit Skip, still lying blue on the ice. 

     Skip dissolved into the bright whiteness. 

     Gramps closed his eyes, at peace, as bright whiteness swept over him to take him away.

     Technolica and Mother Naturia dissolved into...you know.

     Bright white rose until it reached the cloud that was Silveria.

     She dissolved within...you know.

     The bright white rose until it reached the floating black shroud that was The Fours. 

     "NO!" the unholy creature roared. "YOU WILL NOT..."

     Its' final words before dissolving into the whiteness.

     The sphere, the egg, that, moments before, had been Francis Forwarder, too, swelled as it intensified. 

     It swelled until it became the size of a house...

     then a football stadium...

     then twice that size...

     then twice ​that size...

     all within seconds. 

     And still it continued to expand. 

     It expanded until its edge reached the black beam a hundred miles away.

     The brightest white met the deepest black. 

     The whiteness surrounded the portal that emitted the black beam...

     and then the whiteness surrounded the beam itself...

     and then it rose up the beam. 

​     There were no witnesses to this.  

     If there had been, however, if someone floated by in space, for instance, this would have looked like a black cylinder converting into a white cylinder from the base up. 

CONTINUE