The captain was still looking at the three-dimensional image that Filipe was sending him.  His focus was on that black ring on the concrete floor of the basement.  As he looked at the “wrapped around” image—which, strangely, looked normal-line of sight simultaneously, much the same way that Tadosh’s identification card images did—telemetry in the form of icons and text were swarming around the “video.” 

     “Filipe,” the captain called out while his party was also searching Tage’s former house for N.E. personnel, “the data input informs upon me the area of scorching to be considerably grander than typical SCR carbon imprint.”

     Filipe, an image of him floating in a smaller, secondary video off to the side of Porfirio’s main message, was nodding his head in confirmation while the captain spoke. “That is correct, Captain…wherewith in size of 40 feet-marks in diameter.”

     “Mmm,” the captain wondered out loud, “which indicates usward that the radius factor approximates 20 feet-marks.  That would mean the size of that particular Receiver was 20 feet-marks in height!”

     Salesta, listening in on the communication pool from her station at Stefan’s former house, joined in.  Her image was also levitating to the side of the image-ring of the communiqué, like some avatar from a video game.  “My captain, even in our nascent century our Solar Converter Receivers were not much bigger than the ones of usage by this Dr. McClain.  For unknown reasons to us, he has increased the size of his Receivers…it is already happening, as we feared, Captain!”

     Now Porfirio was nervously stroking his strong jaw-line, his eyes spacing off to the side.  Finally, the First Americans were discovering something that Tadosh and Drogheda and his team had found out about time travel several months earlier.  “It is, as of pointed fact…somehow Dr. McClain is changing the past.  With such increase in size of his SCRs, Dr. McClain has ability to chronoport more people at each time trip.  That alone will alter the future!”

     “Such as chronoporting more Republik of America soldiers from our time,” Filipe pointed out.  “Is it not of truth that Dr. McClain’s politics are congruent to that of Old America, with such nonsense as race mixing?”

     “That of truth it is,” Salesta said.  “But remember who it was that initiated all of this:  the New Europe government.  Perhaps it is they—“

     The floating, rectangular space that Salesta’s portrait was in suddenly blanked out with the 23^rd century equivalent of when a TV set picks up static.  Only the “static” was a tri-dimensional jumble of bubbling colors.  Captain Hernandez could see that Filipe was also checking out his communicator to see if the interference was from their end.  Some of the other First American soldiers that were nearby the captain began to look on with concern.  He was going to order one of them to try to reconnect with Salesta’s team when a horrifying thought occurred to him.

     “Everyone…to your pods…now!”

     No sooner than some of the young troops had began scrambling to their flying chronopods yards away from Tage’s house, the flashes of ocher-colored light and flames pierced all around the house.  Those trajectories were a combination of lasers and fire, giving the impression of miniature comets being shot all through the house, especially in the night.  Unlike 21^st century guns with trajectories that exploded upon impact on the unfortunate victim or object, the laser-fire instantly melted the person or object it came in contact with.  Much the same way a piece of writing paper would burn from fire in an “eating away” manner, so, too, did the evil invention burn away the intended target.  Only the burning process went much faster than paper on fire.  It was an odd contraption, even by late 23^rd century standards.  Once hit, the person would not jerk or be pushed, like 21^st century guns.  Rather, the victim would simply ignite in a small fire and their bodies would magically be consumed on the spot, sometimes leaving inhumanly traces of what was a human being.  Sometimes the weapon made a forensics specialist job tough.  The peculiar guns were all too familiar to Captain Hernandez.  He knew to hit the floor, especially after seeing three of his troopers disintegrate right before his eyes. 

     The Captain nearly lost his own head in the fire gallery, as the spit-ball-sized tracers lanced in all direction around him and took out his communicator.