Two hundred paces past their morning bivouac, the physical universe began to lose its continuity.
Lin Tao halted on a flat shelf of dark slate. Beside him, Tie Shan stood with his legs braced wide apart, his star-iron pry-bar planted firmly between his iron-toed boots. The giant’s broad chest was heaving with slow, deliberate breaths, fighting against the choking deadness of the unbuffered air.
Lin Tao unslung his land-mapper pack and set it down.
He reached to his belt, unhooked his clay canteen, and unscrewed the brass stopper. He tilted the canteen forward, allowing a small stream of water to pour toward the slate.
What followed looked nothing like flowing water.
Under normal world-size physics, water emerged as a nonstop, glistening stream governed by water’s skin, fluid dynamics, and nonstop gravity gaining speed. But here, the water separated into discrete, cubical droplets roughly the size of dice. The droplets fell in timed together, stepped increments. He dropped four inches per tick like glass beads sliding down an invisible counting frame.
When the water struck the slate, it didn’t splash or spread into a puddle.
The droplets snapped into an artificial, checkerboard pattern on the stone, forming small, square patches of moisture that didn’t touch one another.
