Excerpt
He came close and extended his right hand to greet the man who had traveled such a great distance. The stranger rose to shake it. Just as their fingers were about to make contact, the man visibly altered his appearance. The hands were no longer skin and bone, but displayed the traits of hard wood, as though his body was a personified tree extending a limb. The monitors later revealed that the face altered itself into a ,aterial that seemed to duplicate bark, even as the limbs attempted to grasp Egan's hand. Although the creature's movement was swift, sufficient to tax the camera's image-capture processing speed, it was not fast enough to deal with old man Egan.

In fact, the strange guest was startrled when he grasped nothing. The figure of Egan, from the moment it stood up until it walked to the visitor's chair, was actually a cunningly designed hologram, programmed as an action video. The speed of the visitor became superfluous. The entity was only temporarily puzzled when Egan's cheery countenance flickered and vanished. Soon he recognized his predicament and resigned himself to his fate. His plight was rapidly clarified when jets of hot flame surrounded him from the opening holes in the floor. The creature immolated quickly in the hypoer-intense fire. Scant minutes later its ashes and those of its luggage and chair were washed away and carried into a floor drain. Only then did human beings attempt to approach the spot.