Ralph's workshop is divided into three sections - garden tools and junk to the right, racks of shelving to the left, and his computer bench in the middle. He had hardware I'd never seen in the shops, but I wasn't too interested in his computer right now. No, what caught my attention was the pulsing light in the middle of the workshop. There was a stand in the centre of the floor, a chrome pole with a round base like the ones banks use to keep their customers in line. At first I thought Ralph had converted it into a novelty light stand, because there was a plasma ball on top of the pole, with thin tendrils of blue light dancing around a glowing core the colour of a dying star. It was only after I'd been watching for a while that I realised the light was not enclosed - it was a plasma ball without the ball.
"How did you do that?" I demanded.
Ralph launched into an explanation. After the second mention of inverted containment fields my eyes glazed over, and when he got to the bit about harnessing photons I just nodded.
"Yes, well, it is a bit complicated," he said. "Basically, it sucks in junk and disposes of it."
"Where?"
Ralph shrugged, and I got the picture. He was an inventor, a programmer. Someone else could handle debugging. "The point is, having turned it on, I can't switch it off."
I pointed to the electrical cord that snaked away from the base of the stand. "Can't you just yank the plug?"
"I just explained why not."
"You did?"
He frowned. "What do you think the containment field does?"
I took a wild stab in the dark. "Uh, it contains something?"
"Precisely. And if you turn off the containment field, what would happen then?"
I was on a roll now. "The something escapes!"
"Right. And do we want that something to escape?"
He was shaking his head, so I said no.
"You see that red ball?" Ralph gestured at the throbbing light. "Watch this." He picked a mouse mat off his computer bench and flicked it towards the stand. There was a sucking noise and the mat vanished in mid-air.
"Shit!" I retreated, not stopping until my back was pressed to the wall. "You didn't tell me it was that dangerous."
"Don't worry. The safety zone is at least a metre."
Suddenly there was a scraping sound. A shovel leaning against the wall moved, and I watched in horror as the blade slid along the floor towards the chrome stand. There was a whoop as it was sucked into the light and a sluuurp as it vanished.
"Make that two metres," said Ralph. "The field grows each time it swallows something."
I edged along the wall, and there was another whoop-sluuurp as a pair of gardening gloves vanished into the light. "D-do you think we should stay here?"
Ralph looked at me, surprised. "Of course. I've got to stop it."
"But you don't know how."
Whoop-slurp. A rusty old rake vanished.
"I'd better find out then, hadn't I?" Ralph whipped out a notepad and began to write, stopping now and then to think.
"What's that, your will?"
He shushed me and returned to his scribbling. I watched a couple of plant pots slide across the floor. Going, going ... whoop-whoop, slurp-slurp. Gone and gone.
Ralph gave the end of his pencil a right going over as he studied his notes, chomping on the fragile wood like it was a brain stimulant. I'd never seen him like this, and if he was nervous it was time for lesser men to panic. "Want me to get you some lunch?" I asked. "I can pop down to the deli. They might have some of those crispy rolls in."
He frowned at me, the red plasma reflected in his eyes like flames.
"It can wait," I said.
"No, it's what you said. Lunch. Food." He spat out a sliver of pencil. "I may be able to feed it something to reverse the growth."
"Like another one, you mean?"
"What?"
I nodded at the glowing ball. "Sling another one at it. They might cancel each other out."
"No, it would ..." he stopped. "I could ..." he stopped again.
WHOOP! SLUURP! Ralph had been trying to fix that lawn mower for years. Now he needn't bother.
"Worth a try," he said. "Grab another stand, will you? There's a couple more down the side of the workshop."