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computer game. He tried again with “dimensional portal,” and found that Google suggested “dimensional portals,” as well as “how to open a dimensional portal.” The first brought up 171,000 responses, some of which appeared to be about government projects that dealt with the subject. That was intriguing, but he decided to look at “how to open a dimensional portal” first.
    To his surprise, there were 4.3 million hits on the topic. The first link was to a web page that described using prana energy, described as “the life-force that animates our existence… the purest, most basic form of energy before it is converted into molecular structure,” to open a portal on a surface such as a wall by spending 30 minutes a day visualizing it over a period of two weeks. He rolled his eyes. Clearly, this had little to do with what was out there on the hillside.
    He looked at a few more entries, but none seemed scientifically sound, so he returned to the “dimensional portals” search and scanned through several of the links. He found several that made references to a “Project Galileo” and a “Project Pegasus,” but no definitive information was listed.
    A search for “time portal,” once again, revealed mostly video game and science fiction references. He did find a page at the Stanford University website which appeared to be a serious discussion of the possibilities of time travel, but it was far over his head. There was also a page entitled “The Time Travel Institute,” but it didn’t seem to be a serious discussion of the matter. He read that the concept of multiple universes is mentioned many times in Puranic literature, and is part of the belief system in Hinduism. He also read interviews with Carl Sagan and Kip Thorne, but found himself no closer to understanding what he had experienced.
    He finally decided to go to bed. If the thing was still there in the morning, he’d decide what to do then. Perhaps it would be gone, and his decision would be made for him. At least he hadn’t seen any more Guardians, Mini- or otherwise.
     

Chapter 9
    The Saturday morning sunrise, filtering through the bedroom curtains, woke Steven up. He looked at the bedside clock and discovered it was nearly 8:30 am, and he generally got up at seven, even on the weekends. He sat up and looked at his wife, who was lying on her side, wrapped in blankets like a sexy burrito. He smiled and decided to let her sleep a little longer.
    He went to the computer and checked his e-mail, then the news feeds; the national and world news from CNN.com and the local news on the state’s major newspaper’s site. No mention of strange green interdimensional portals having been sighted. Maybe he had dreamed the entire thing?
    He stepped to the living room window and saw that the deep gouge across the yard was still there. That much, at least, had been real. He drank two cups of strong coffee, and ate a piece of toast with some butter and jelly. He went back to the computer and did a few more searches for terms related to the vortex but found nothing of interest.
    In the meantime, his wife and kids had gotten up and begun to ask what his plans were. “Are you going back into that thing?” Samuel wanted to know.
    “We don’t even know if it’s still there,” he replied. He explained to them how he had been unable to move while in the vortex, and that he was at a loss as to how to propel himself around inside it. He explained again how he had more or less fallen out of the other vortex into the Arctic landscape. “If I hadn’t more or less bumped into it, I’d have never seen that there are vortexes that open into other locations, and for all I know, other times.” He explained again about the people and objects he had seen that were clearly from other periods of history. “I just wish I could find a way to maneuver inside there.”
    “Could you move your fingers at all?” his son asked.
    “Yes, but that’s about all I could do,” he