Cast from the light by an exquisite hand, it stuck against this wolfish world and came to rest in darkness. Slow aeons passed until it was found. When brought up from the depths to face the flashbulbs bright, formless speculations crowded in by the mouthful.

– It’s an egg!

What it was no test revealed, for no MRI could penetrate the shell and no sample could be taken for further analysis, not by scraping, not with solvents. The vague unearthly texture was all that could be reported for certain.

– An alien egg!

The time slips began in the second week after it was discovered. Technicians who touched it began mistaking the present for a moment before, the past for the future, their lab notebooks ever more scattered.

A post-doc found that when held close with feminine warmth a song exhaled from its interior in crimped radio waves. Since then it has been tended constantly. A stray knife of jealousy piercing each as she hands it to the next.

We monitor the egg’s signal, but though the daily variations are expressed in heartbeats we cannot count them.

This entry is part of my journal, published January 17, 2013, in New York.