[ WP ] A man unwittingly commits a cosmic crime . Interesting characters come after him .

Alexander rubbed his temples, forehead pinched into a tight frown as he tried to massage the newly-forming headache away. 
 
 *Six years*, he thought, huffing out an annoyed sigh. *Six years and I'm no closer now than I was at the start*. He reached out with shaking fingers, pushing a few tattered, heavily-doodled pieces of paper under his desk lamp, looking over the symbols and diagrams that he had scribbled down frantically so long ago. He was certain at the time that they would offer a breakthrough, a perfect solution to his theorems at last, but in the late nights and countless whiskey bottles since, they had served only as a frustration. Each time he had reconsidered their content, tilting them at odd angles, even copying them down with the most minor of variations, he felt certain he was missing *something*. 
 
 `` Six **fucking** years!'' he yelled, jumping to stand as he swept both arms across the desk, sending pens and notes and the ( already badly battered ) lamp to crash into the wall, the bulb shattering with a pop as the room went dark. 
 
 `` One, two, three...'' He started his count to ten, a trick he learned in one of his court-mandated anger management courses. `` Four, five- fuck it,'' he mumbled, ending the count and taking a few careful steps to switch on the overhead light, ready to deal with the mess from his toddler-like outburst. It was n't his first, it would n't be his last, but this time he had actually done some damage; a large, fist-sized hole had been punched into the drywall where the lamp had collided, small chunks of sheetrock mingling in with the glass and paper below. *That's just my luck*, he thought. A few inches to the left and it would have flown harmlessly through the open doorway instead. 
 
 `` That's it,'' he whispered, freezing where he stood, eyes glazing over as his mind burst into motion. `` That's it!'' The man crouched, digging through the ruble, ignoring the pain that sprang into his finger as shards of bulb bit into them. He gathered his noted with frenzied excitement, and then burst quickly through the door and down the hall to reach the garage that held his makeshift workshop. 
 
 “ If you want to go from one room to the next, ” he said aloud to himself, “ you don ’ t try to break through the wall, you use the door! ” His bleeding fingers worked quickly at the machine, pulling wires and replacing them again in a new arrangement as he glanced back and forth between the notes and his creation. “ Wormholes already exist, why try to create a new one instead of *linking* the ones that are already there? ” A few quick keystrokes later and he was ready to try it at last. His entire body trembled as he pressed record on an old Canon, set crookedly on a tripod specifically for moments like this one. 
 
 “ Alexander Thorpe, July 12th, ” he said through the shake in his voice as he stepped into view of the camcorder. “ Test number six. ” He knew he should explain the changes he had just made, the new theory he was working with, but he couldn ’ t wait any longer. Without another word he leaned to reach his keyboard and hit enter, spinning to face his creation. 
 
 A deep, vibrating tone rang out, accompanied by a sudden glow that floated a few feet off the floor, becoming steadily larger as he stared. It took only a second for it to reach the size of a dinner plate, and only three more to become as large as a doorway, stopping as it met a metal frame designed specifically to halt such a portal ’ s growth. 
 Something happened then that Alexander had not expected: A higher, softer sound filled the air, and a second glowing began a yard away from the first, steadier and brighter, a light blue sparkle all around it. 
 “ Oh shit, ” he mumbled, hurrying to stop the lines of code that fluttered across the computer screen. He heard a light sizzling as the portal he had created collapse into itself, disappearing entirely in only an instant, but as he turned to check the second doorway, he found that not only did it still stand open, but a dark figure had appeared within, tall and slender, silhouetted into stark contrast against the glow. 
 
 He watched in awe as it stepped forward, long toes, tipped with claws coming to rest on the cement floor. A thin leg warped in shifting, silver fabric pushed through, the torso showing next, covered in the same shimmering cloth, all the way to its swan-like neck. Finally Alexander could see the face. Large eyes, set wide apart in the head, looked down at him, blue and purple and seemingly endless in their depth, black slits at each center. A long, narrow, perfectly straight nose began a few inches below the eyes and ended over wide, thin lips, the sharpened edges of a few pointed teeth exposed where they parted in a grin. There were no ears to frame the face, nor hair atop its head, adding eerily to the warped, stretched look of the creature that stood before him. 
 
 “ I ’ m afraid I ’ ll need you to come with me, ” a soft rumbling voice said, though the man was certain the creature ’ s lips had remained motionless. “ Earth is not yet permitted this technology. ” 

