Journal Of Simon Herbert 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Right on the mark, the satellite compass registers my location. The Rip still exists. Hard to tell in a desert if a dust storm came through. If there is no evidence at the station, I will never know. I keep driving.

The station seems untouched. I brought containers to collect some food from greenhouse. But first I want to check the communication kiosk. It is in update mode. That could take hours. I can't send him a message, but I can queue one up for when the update finishes. I want to send him a message about Webby and my theories that there is something curious about his interest in people from Earth and maybe the other planets that don't exist on this side of The Rip, like ours. And tell him that I want to update the reports from the microbe detector to see if I can pick up any anomalies in the data for travellers from those planets. If a cat can sense something, then there must be something to detect.

I also want to mention the storm. Not just because I am intrigued by the possibility that a storm or some other natural phenomena could cross The Rip, but because I want him to know that there is a possibility that the station could be hit by a storm that our side of The Rip has never seen the likes of. Then I may not be able to communicate with him again. And that I won't be communicating for the three weeks I spend on Marvin's planet. But he will get a very long message when I return.

I queue up the message and I head to the greenhouse and load up on food. There is plenty on the other side for myself and Marvin, but I like to feel like I am contributing, and there are a few veggies at the greenhouse that Marvin doesn't have in his kitchen. I check the kiosk one more time. Still updating. Time to go back through The Rip.

As I get closer, I notice a dust storm near the horizon. Could it be the same one? It's past The Rip. It would have been behind me when came through. So I would not have seen it since I didn't look back. There has never been anything but the ground ahead of me as I passed through. So there was never really any change visually at the transition. I had never thought about what it would look like if there was something in front of me on this side. I keep my eye on the storm as I pass through. It simply vanishes like a switch was flipped to turn off a light. I am not sure why this surprises me. Or why the thought had never crossed my mind that we don't see into the The Rip. We don't see the other side until we pass through. Which happens in an instant, like a flip was switched.

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