The white shimmer of the Kep Wave flashed through the Afterthought.
For a split-second, Daniel saw a wall of milky haze pass from the ship’s ceiling to the floor. Then it was gone, as if it had never existed.
But, even in a violently shaking cabin filled with floating litter, its effects were obvious.
The ship’s food forge, its programming completely warped by the Kep Wave, started producing slice after slice eggplant-and-tiny-wrenches pizza. Several two-foot high crystalline stalagmites grew from the shag carpet. The garbage floating about the cabin turned a brilliant navy blue, its cells now reflecting a different wavelength of light.
Daniel felt his chair moving underneath him and looked down just in time to see the seat change shape.
He didn’t know this, but the atoms that made up the chair were now ordered vertically from highest to lowest density.
With his fists still tightly gripping his seat belt—which was no longer attached to anything—Daniel found himself floating above an inverted pyramid of grayish chair substance.
Daniel had just enough time to look surprised, and then the gravity returned. With a thump, Daniel and Trak fell to the ceiling, along with a hail of azure garbage.
The Kep Wave had repaired the artificial gravity engine ... but with the settings inverted.
Daniel was unaware of some other oddities occurring throughout Afterthought.
- Water in the plumbing system came very close to absolute zero.
- The ship's repair cloud became 300,000 times smarter ... burning out every processor it had.
- A concentrated shower of gamma radiation converted Daniel's maintenance room locker into an iridescent gas.
- The clothing in Daniel’s quarters, which rested above the ship’s cabin, began shooting about the room, charged with kinetic energy.
All of this happened in less than five seconds.
