Tesla's record for man-made lightning, recorded at nearly a kilometer inlength. A clap of thunder accompanies it, louder than any sound I have everheard, and it its wake I am perfectly deaf, submerged in silence.
The finger of lightning crawls through space like a broken-back rattler, and myhair rises from my shoulders. In the presence of so much current, I should bepetrified, but it is magnificent. The finger seeks and seeks, then contacts oneof the saucers and literally blasts it out of the sky. It plummets inslow-motion, and as it does, the building's top descends even further, and I_swear_ I see the chair falling from the building's edge, and the man strappedinside it had not aged a day in all the lifetimes gone by.
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Chet's comm died somewhere in the lightning strike, but the emergency crews thattook him away and looked in his ears and poked him in the chest and gave himpills take him back to the Royal York in a saucer, bridging the distance in afew minutes, touching down on Front Street. The Royal York's doorman doesn't batan eye as he gets the door for him.
The elevator ride is fine. He is still wrapped in the silence of his deafness,but it's a comforting, _centering_ silence.
Once Chet is back in his room, he fires up the vid and starts writing a letterto The Amazing Robotron.
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