“What can you offer me exactly? Are there some limits to the wish? Can I make infinite wishes?” Thomas asked, trying to remain unfazed by the presence of the extra-dimensional being.

He was already daydreaming about a variety of ultimate powers, such as the ability to conjure all kinds of ham sandwiches at will.

“You took too long to decide. You get nothing,” Zed replied in the same absurdly cheerful voice stolen from Lizz.

“W… what?!” the delivery man sputtered.

“Your role in the grand scheme of things could technically be filled by virtually any semi-intelligent bipedal specimen now wandering this world. You are merely slightly closer to me.”

“Closer?” Thomas blinked.

“Closer than the other human parties that have just stepped onto this planet,” Zed affirmed. “I’m afraid that your value to me is rapidly approaching zero.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m... worthless?” Thomas frowned, glancing at Zed.

“More or less.” The anomalous creature’s lithe body rippled with tendrils of utter nothingness.

“Why even bother asking me to be your emissary?” the delivery man asked, blinking away the migraine and looking away from the celestial planet-murderer.

“You are the first human I encountered that is still fully functional,” Zed said. “If you take any longer to become my emissary, others will get here, and they will be offered the position.

“It is also possible that I will be forced to erase them from existence if I find them... bothersome.”

Thomas sighed. “Wait a second. How do you even know about this? Are you omniscient or something?”

“There are four distinctive parties of bipeds on this world now, forty-six individuals in total. They communicate via pinhole gates with each other.

“I absorbed one of your gate transmitters and amplified its receiver mechanism, so I can hear their plans. Would you like to hear their words?”

“Sure,” Thomas replied, crossing his arms uncertainly.

“Excellent…” Zed suddenly hissed with a scruffy male voice. “Holy shit everything is…” a female voice replied to some cutoff segment of conversation. “God damn!” a third voice commented. “What happened here?!” a fourth voice cut in. “What is…?” a fifth voice overlaid itself atop of the others.

Thomas felt a migraine rising, trying to make sense of the mixture of forty-six people speaking all at once. It was impossible.

“There’s something on the scanner!” someone declared. “Here…” a girl replied.

“Please turn that off,” Thomas begged. “I can’t listen to this many voices at once.”

Zed fell silent.

“Can you summarize what they want?” Thomas inquired.

“Three parties are surprised by how this planet is now devoid of life. They are very eager to discover what happened here.

“One party is led by a three-star officer who knows what I am. He is seeking to contain me. He received a data transmission about me from the Portal Institute.

“If he locates me first, I will likely be forced to exterminate him and his party… along with you and the rest of the humans present on this world,” Zed summarized.

“Wait… why would you exterminate me?” Thomas demanded, not wishing to be exterminated. “What did I do?”

“They will attempt to contain me. I will resist. The shield-breaking neutrino pulse travels very far across this world,” Zed explained. “Once I unleash it, all present here will turn to dust.

“I suspect more of your kind will gate to this dead sphere to investigate… and when they do, I will ask them what I have asked you.”

Thomas frowned, feeling the pressure increasingly weighing him down.

If this were one of the RPG games that he used to play with Lizz before she got maximum-censored, he would likely see a blue window pop up:

[Quest: make sure extra-dimensional being Zed doesn’t get captured.

Reward: Being alive.]

The delivery man sighed, feeling the weight of his own existence and the lives of forty-six others on the scales of life and death.

“I accept your offer of… almost nothing,” he said with a woeful look. Perhaps he could arrange some kind of reward out of Zed later on. “I’ll be your emissary.”

“Excellent,” Zed replied with a cheerful tone.

Thomas wasn’t sure if the alien being was smiling, since it didn’t have a face.

They stood silently for a few moments. Thomas unmuted Lizz.

“Recipient not available,” he said. “Please gate me back to Europa!”

“Unable to comply,” Lizz said. “Unknown interference present in area. Please relocate a few hundred meters away from the interference.”

Thomas groaned, looking at the freaky void-static figure of Zed. He guessed the nature of the interference.

“The officer is almost upon us,” the stick figure said. “He is moving fast.”

“Can you hide…? Change your shape or stop interfering with my portal?” Thomas pleaded.

“I am unable to reduce white hole interference,” Zed replied. “I am, however, able to fold myself down to about a two by two centimeter cube to hide myself upon your person. From what I can sense, this is the safest spot on you.”

Zed pointed at the GLM bracelet on the mailman’s wrist.

Thomas quickly opened up the part of his bracelet that was holding Lizz’s processing core in place.

Thankfully, the access mechanism was only held together by some duct tape, since he’d been busy trying to hack Lizz into a relationship for months now.

He quickly shoved Lizz into his GUPS uniform pocket.

“Get in the bracelet. It’s radiation proof!” he told Zed. “Hurry!”

The stick figure began to fold into itself. The disturbing process that violated dimensional space in impossible ways nearly made Thomas throw up his lunch.

He snapped the thick bracelet shut just as a dark hovercraft became visible on the horizon.

Dust that had formerly been people and trees swirled all around, making Thomas choke and cough.

Ten men in black suits jumped out of the hovercraft and spread around the city square.

By the unnaturally fast way they moved, Thomas could tell that nine of them were Dex units—nearly invincible androids that the G-Corp employed all over the Milky Way Galactic Rim.

A man wearing a black helmet and full black armor set with three stars on the chest stepped towards Thomas.

“And who might you be?” a sharp, cold voice asked from the speaker on the armor’s helmet.

“Thomas Morell, GUPS delivery,” Thomas reported, blinking dust out of his eyes and trying very hard not to break out into another fit of coughing.

“Officer Drohiryak, division 14-161,” the officer said, tapping on his G-ID tag.

“Good tomorrow, officer.” Thomas nodded in compliance.

“Did you see anything unusual?” the three-star officer asked.

“No, sir,” Thomas lied. “I just got here five minutes ago… and now my portal back to Europa won’t open.”

“Yes. There has been a terrible accident here,” the officer said. “The idiot eggheads at the Portal Research let something loose.”

“‘Something’?” Thomas asked.

“Something exceptionally dangerous,” the helmeted man said. “The eggheads are calling it an extra-dimensional phantom.

“Hopefully, we can contain it before it can cause any more deaths. There were 45,000 people here on Sintash working in Portal Research town… all 45,000 turned to dust by that blasted thing.”

“What does it look like?” Thomas inquired.

“Like an emaciated human made from flickering black lines. One of the remaining traffic cameras got a good shot of it,” the officer said.

Thomas fought the urge to gulp.

“Here.” A holographic photograph of Zed came into existence over the officer’s bracelet. “Are you certain you haven’t seen anything like it nearby?”

Thomas stared at the hologram.

The delivery man saw that the officer had an AI GLM on his wrist, just like Lizz, but one that was likely far less lobotomized.

Thomas also knew that the officer’s AI was evaluating him right at this moment through its camera lens, looking for any sign that he was lying—dilated pupils, an odd tic, flickering eyes, and of course…

Excessive sweating.

As this thought crossed his mind, his upper lip began to itch, and he could feel the beads of sweat forming.

Thomas gulped.