The Glass Key

The Second Level of Reality.

Edel has made it. But, in a way, it had always been there waiting for him, buried away in spacetime, locked up in manifold knots. But Edel has found the key. He is the keymaker, all of the brilliant loop spinning around the hot blue star, his body the forge, smashing white hot particles over and over again, searching for the right combination. In celebration he conjures up his old form, a floating astronaut over a circle spanning across star system, his pride swelling. One thousand years in the making, give or take a few, one thousand orbits around the blue one, a trillion trillion trillion joules used, a million simulated lives.

The right combination is found suddenly, and the particles, all the countless trillions of them, surge through the keyhole, unlocking it from the other side, triggering a rapid localized phase change within the compactified foam. His old self, floating in space, then realizes the honor he is recieving. The emerging portal, the light in the fog, the small ring next to the large, is three meters across.