By taking the Clip to its designated site, he’d move to a higher level of illegality.
Keeping the Clip was obviously bad. Opening the crystal was very bad. Operating the Clip to get information from it was really bad. But acting on that information was indescribably and horrendously bad.
He still could forget all of this, even try to put the crystal together again and convince the authorities he had nothing to do with opening it. He felt a nagging insufferable dread he was entering a trap, being set up to unleash the Apocalypse. His paranoia was out of control. He wondered if the authorities feared this too when working on Clips. So far all the results of the Airafane devices were benevolent technological gifts. They became history-changers and de-railers of progress, but they still were
