When we awoke, we found a great curtain of linked metal rungs had been lowered to earth from the sky. The chain mail drape connected land and sky and ran as far the eye could see, across the ocean in ... [+]
Jess was only ten when the first pods washed up on the shore. She'd been standing with her toes dug into the sand, letting the cold Atlantic Ocean swirl around her ankles, daring herself to venture in. Something knocked against her shin, and when the wave retreated, some thing tumbled onto the wet sand. The first pods, the originals, were the size of her fist, oblong, with a smooth but springy shell. They shimmered with swirling colors, like an oil slick, but bright. By the time she'd bent to pick it up, the next wave had brought more of them. A dozen. Then a dozen more. In minutes, hundreds