Free The Martian Ambassador by Alan K Baker

today?
    Blackwood flexed his fingers, typed on the keyboard PLEASE CONNECT ME TO THE ÆTHER and pressed the carriage return key.
    Almost immediately, the message in the scrying glass dissolved into mist again and then formed a new message:
    You are now connected to the Æther.
    Please type your next command.
    Blackwood typed: I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THE ADDRESS IN SOMERSET OF THE AMATEUR SCIENTIST MR ANDREW CROSSE.
    A moment later, more words appeared in the glass:
    Mr Andrew Crosse lives at Fyne Court,
    in the village of Broomfield, four miles north of Taunton.
    Would you care to view some photographs?
    Good idea , thought Blackwood. Won’t hurt to get a feel for the layout of the place . He typed: YES, PLEASE, pressed the carriage return key and sat back in his chair, thinking that cogitators weren’t such a bane after all. He certainly couldn’t deny the usefulness of this one.
    This time, however, the words remained in the scrying glass. Spoke too soon , Blackwood thought, and pressed the carriage return again. Oh, dash it all! Here we go again!
    He was about to press the HELP key, when the words abruptly vanished from the glass, and were replaced with another message in ugly, misshapen characters:
    Error … Error … Error
    Oh dear
    Something seems to have gone wrong
    ‘Oh, bugger it!’ shouted Blackwood. He reached for the HELP key again. ‘Where’s that little blighter? I’m going to have it out with him!’
    As he glanced into the scrying glass, he saw that the error message had vanished. In its place was a darkness that swirled and eddied strangely. Blackwood had the impression that he was looking into a bottomless pool of murky water, in which indistinct shapes writhed and twisted, flitting in and out of the depths.
    ‘What the deuce...?’
    Blackwood made to turn away but found that he could move neither his body nor his eyes, which remained locked upon the scrying glass. The malfunctioning cogitator began to hum; it shook and rattled upon its ornate brass gryphon’s feet.
    Again Blackwood tried to look away, but it was useless: whatever moved within the glass seemed to have reached out to his mind, defeating his volition, forcing him to remain where he was.
    Oh no , he thought, as another message began to flicker intermittently in the glass.
    This cogitator has been infected
    with an ætherial virus.
    You are advised to vacate the area immediately.
    Suddenly, a tendril of writhing darkness swept through the message, transforming it into a swirling mist, which quickly dissipated. In the next instant, the tendril thrust out from the scrying glass and lashed at Blackwood, knocking him backwards off his chair. As he landed on the floor, jarring his shoulder painfully, he felt the temperature in the room drop suddenly by at least ten degrees.
    Looking up at the cogitator, he saw more tendrils of darkness whipping back and forth in a horrible, unnatural silence. They appeared to be composed of filthy-looking smoke, in which pinpoints of lurid crimson light flashed and quivered obscenely. He tried to avert his horrified gaze, but it was held fast by the tentacle-like things emerging from the scrying glass.
    Blackwood gazed helplessly into the smoke-tendrils and felt the lightless depths of his own mind being laid bare, his darkest thoughts and fears, the black terrors that lurk at the heart of every human being, exposed and molested in revolting ways.
    He saw the lightless void of the Æther filled with gibbering stars; he saw spiked chains puncturing the flesh of screaming infants, their mouths filled with writhing maggots; he saw Precambrian oceans churning with the Earth’s first terrified consciousness, while Jesus Christ hung from the Cross, laughing hysterically; he saw columns of fire and whirling spheres of ice strung with pulsating vessels. He saw self-contemplating shadows whispering to each other across gulfs of Eternity, dreaming of the hole at the centre of the Universe, and a vast, lipless mouth