The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

transit across the time zones.
    Paige gave Travis two thin reports, one for each of the entities that they’d brought along on the trip. The objects in the black carrying cases.
     
    QUICK REF REPORT—BREACH ENTITY 0118—“MEDIC”
     
    BREACH EGRESS: 1981 July 15—07:31 UTC
     
    PHYSICAL: Medic has a mass of 1.31 kg. Long dimension is 11.5 cm, height 8.1 cm, width 3.0 cm. It bears a strong superficial resemblance to a handgun. Its structure is simple: tube, grip, and trigger with guard. Black in color.
    FUNCTION: Localized, massively accelerated healing of biological damage. Sends a surge of radiation from its barrel, covering an area 30 cm wide at a distance of approx. 15 cm. Radiation is a complex mixture of various particles, most not identifiable or known to present science. Result is instant death of most deleterious microorganisms, as well as clotting of all air-exposed blood within less than one second. Extremely useful for combating infections and treating serious wounds, to a degree.
    Has been shown to work on humans, all tested mammals, and vertebrates in general. Has never worked on any tested invertebrate.
    THEORIES ON HOW ENTITY FUNCTIONS: None.
    LIMITATIONS OF USE: Many wounds are too severe for Medic’s effect to be of use in time to prevent mortality.
    QUICK REF REPORT—BREACH ENTITY 0353—“DOUBLER”
     
    BREACH EGRESS: 1991 January 24—14:50 UTC
     
    PHYSICAL: Doubler has a mass of 7.85 kg. Long dimension is 18.2 cm, height 5.1 cm, width 5.1 cm. It is black and yellow and resembles a large, square-shafted flashlight with two lenses, one on each end.
    FUNCTION: When switched on, Doubler projects a discrete cone of light from each end. Yellow light from the yellow end, UV light from the black end. Each light cone flares outward from the lens and terminates sharply at a distance of just over 1.5 m.
    Anything contained within the yellow light beam for more than 3.44 seconds is physically cloned, with the copy appearing inside the UV light beam. Creation of the copy is almost instantaneous, with time from start to finish not exceeding two frames of digital video, less than .066 seconds.
    The fidelity of the clone to its master is physically perfect, presumably to atomic detail. This was demonstrated by the doubling of a laptop computer, the clone of which functioned properly and contained all the same code as its master. Chemical compounds and processes may also be copied. Cloned bullets fire as normal. Cloned food ingested by test animals produced no ill effect. A lit “Zippo” lighter was reproduced with its flame still burning.
    THEORIES ON HOW ENTITY FUNCTIONS: None.
    LIMITATIONS OF USE: (1) Does not work on most Breach entities. As of [November 16, 2008—latest update] only [5] entity types have been successfully doubled: Entity 0001 (Heavy Rag), Entity 0004 (Shard), Entity 0012 (Bottle Cap), Entity 0028 (Drift Wire), Entity 0051 (Inertia Plank).
    (2) Living bodies may be cloned, but in all experiments so far, the clone has arrived dead. Autopsies have failed to reveal any specific cause of death. The master specimens (for ethical reasons, only mice and rats have been used) appear to suffer no harm. There is universal agreement within Tangent that no doubling of a human will ever be sanctioned.
    When Travis finished reading the reports, he saw that Paige had opened a laptop. She turned it to face him.
    “This is test footage of the last entity Pilgrim has,” she said. “It’s not quite unique. Four of them have come through over the years. He only has one. It’s no Whisper, but it’s powerful, in its way.”
    She opened a video frame on the screen and clicked PLAY. The video showed a stark white room containing a metal cage, no larger than a single-occupant drunk tank in some backwater police station. A man in his forties, balding, entered the frame holding an orange cube maybe four inches wide. There were markings on it, symbols etched in black, but they were too far from the camera to be discernible. It didn’t matter: Travis could see that the writing was different from the strange jumble he’d read on Paige’s wall. And it sure as hell wasn’t English.
    “October 4, 1986,” the balding man said. “Video demonstration of Entity Zero Two Zero Five: Ares.”
    He entered the cage with the cube, closed the door and locked it from inside. Then he manipulated something on the cube, moving the symbols on its surface, arranging them. Here the camera reframed to a wider field