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would he wake up again? He didn’t feel different, apart from some small aches. He decided that he was in no hurry to seek out another mishap.

Rodents

    Jonny had driven through the night and made it to Nairobi, Kenya. He couldn’t believe the news. Weird things had been happening to people all over the world. He’d thought about going to the hospital, but what was he going to say? Liquid sprayed out of his hands? No. It hadn’t happened again, and he didn’t have a shred of evidence. Even with the general strangeness that pervaded the world, his story was odd.
    He’d feel better, he decided, once he rode the local Elevator to his home in the Terra Rings.
    The Elevator was an unimpressive pair of cables spaced two hundred meters apart that ended a few dozen meters off the ground and stretched far into space. All of the Elevators maintained geostationary orbit at their various equatorial locations. They were the longest man-made structures ever constructed.
    Jonny stood back and looked at the terminal building. Elevators came down one cable; cargo was unloaded or people disembarked; then the empty Elevator would be attached to the upwards cable and loaded with new cargo or people.
    From the outside all one saw was a massive and multistoried room that had been designed with token gestures to aerodynamics. New Elevators came down the cable every hour. The complex and involved process of switching them from one cable to another was hidden from sight by the building.
    Ring Security was the usual banal drill. Jonny walked through a series of lines where biometric scanners verified his Secure Identity and screened for weapons or explosives. He was also required to use his Uplink to verify his booking. Next Jonny joined the group of people waiting for an Elevator.
    Elevators’ movement was slow when in the Earth’s atmosphere, but they sped up once air friction ceased to be an issue. Each of the Elevators was standard issue. Passenger areas ranged from coach to first class.
    Jonny grumbled at the expense of a first-class ticket as he paid his coach fare. He could justify the expense of a safari but not that of a more comfortable seat on the way home.
    He watched the news on his Uplink as the Elevator ascended. As far as the news stations were concerned, the only story worth reporting was about the Keystones that had sprung up everywhere.
    As he flipped through channels, the theme remained the same. Changing tactics, Jonny looked up some research that had been done on the Keystone phenomenon before it had become widespread.
    The excited chatter of other passengers interrupted his investigation. Looking around, Jonny saw that they were all pointing at the window. Tourists, thought Jonny. The first time up or down the Elevator, people were always excited by the view. Then the rat caught his eye.
    The Elevator was over two thousand kilometers into space, and there was a rat scurrying around on the outside of the smooth, zero-friction glass. It took one slow step after another while failing to do other more normal things, like fall or freeze.
    Jonny’s Uplink tumbled from his fingers. He looked around the cabin and asked, “Is anyone filming this?”
    People either continued to stare at the rat or ignored his question. That was fine with him. He predicted that this was going to be a profitable video.
    The rodent continued to make its way across the glass. It was a lean rat, perhaps ten centimeters long, with a reddish coat, and it appeared to be immune to the vacuum of space.
    He rummaged through his bags and found the camera that he had bought for his safari. Activating it, he zoomed in on the rat moving forward at a steady pace, though Jonny couldn’t figure out how it was holding on to zero-friction glass. He also didn’t care. He wasn’t going to question his good fortune. Once he had thirty seconds of footage, he sent out bid requests to every news agency he could reach.
    Bids took less than a minute to start coming in.