Leong-Lam picked up the crocodile clip shaped device and clipped it to the collar of his white shirt. Sensing his readiness, the eye overhead confirmed that he was alone, and Leong-Lam turned and with the practiced ability of a chimp, or a beach boy climbing a coconut tree in some now defunct Caribbean ideal, he shimmied hand over hand up the telephone pole, eventually grasping one of the fat telephone lines with one iron-fisted hand. In this position he hung in apparent comfort as he unclipped the black object from his collar and attached it to the line.

The feeling of the wire’s thick plastic coating was like a muffled opera to the tiny device, and it immediately reached out its microfiber probes to penetrate the wire’s coating, seeking the meat inside. As they found their purchase within, the connection was complete, and the coursing information within sung through the small device like a burst dam.

The device did not understand its purpose, only its mission, and it hung on to the wire as tightly as Leong-Lam and wirelessly informed the black bag below of the successful connection. The black bag was a repository for a host of devices of varying sizes, but its cylindrical central core was of singular purpose. The subspace tweeter was the only communication device its makers still truly used, and though its inner workings were complex, its purpose was simple. Via the creation of a microscopic gap in what we perceive as space, it was possible to physically affect the very fabric of the cosmos.

The effect possible was, in reality, no more than a tiny vibration, like a radio wave, and it was all but imperceptible. Though theorists and science fiction writers liked to posit that it would one day be possible to open holes like this large enough to allow people or spaceships to step instantly from one place to another, such a thing was, even to our guests, still a dream.

But the vibrations they could send through the tiny gaps could be felt instantly, by anyone equipped to listen, anywhere in the universe. All that the device had to do once it had opened the hole was make a vibration significant enough to cover the radius it needed to encompass. The part of the tweeters designed to make these vibrations were referred to as ‘hammers,’ and the only thing simple about the multi-dimensional esotericism of this incredible device was that the bigger the hammer that was used to make the vibration, the wider the device’s range.