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| Image credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / Gordan Ugarkovic |
Treasure felt bad about holing herself up in her train car, and not doing
even a little bit to help them all escape this place, or at least find out
where they were. She had all this power, and she should have thought to use
it. It just didn’t occur to her that she could do any bit of good for their
situation. She was sixteen years old, and had yet to figure out what she
wanted to do with her life. Explorer was the best that she could figure,
because of her bulk traveling abilities, but that wasn’t a job; not really.
“I’m sorry,” she felt compelled to say, as they were all making the trek to
the front of the train, where the main engines were.
“I hope you’re not worried about it,” Azura said. “You couldn’t have known
you would magically be able to activate the computer systems. If anyone
should have realized that, it should have been me. Now I realize that the
reason the computers worked sometimes is because of residual bulk energy
that my body has absorbed. It also explains why it gets less and less
reliable each time, as the energy dissolves like nitrogen. You, on the other
hand, probably produce bulk energy, which is why you’re able to
spontaneously open shatter portals. I’m sure your father does as well.”
“Does that mean I don’t actually need to scream to make it happen? Could I
just do it on my own, maybe by punching?”
“It’s possible. I’m no expert, I just have experience. It’s also entirely
possible that producing bulk energy isn’t enough, that you need some way to
harness it. It could be like visual processing and interpretation. Your
brain is the thing that’s capable of processing the light it receives from
external sources, but you still need eyes to receive that light. The brain
wouldn’t be able to do it on its own. My guess is that your scream is like
the organ that can actually use the energy in your body.”
“What’s wrong with my voice now? My neck is healed, but I can’t speak louder
than a whisper, let alone scream.”
“You suffer from vocal cord paresis. I patched you up, and your body is
healing, but I don’t have the skills or tools to make a sufficient
prognosis. So...you might continue to improve. I’m sure there are exercises
you can do with your throat that aid recovery, but I’m not cognizant of
them, so for now, keep using that tiara, and rest.”
“It’s weird that this tiara was in the medkit,” Treasure pointed out. “Do
people get shot in the throat a lot?”
Azura laughed. “That’s not designed for people who can’t speak. Vertean is
the primary language in their universe during that time period, but there
are a few planets who developed mostly independently, and created their own
languages. That tiara lets Olkan communicate with others. It reads
brainwaves, instead of translating voices.”
“Who’s Olkan?” Treasure asked.
“That guy right there.” Azura gestured towards one of the men behind them.
He didn’t speak English but he recognized his own name, and knew they were
talking about him.
“Oh. I should give it back,” Treasure said, hoping to not actually have to
do that.
“It’s fine. He knows a little Vertean, and is getting by. He knows you need
it more. They’re good people, once you get to know them. We were on the
opposite sides of a war that should never have begun, but their cause is not
without its merits. I even agree with them on principle, just not with their
methods.”
They were finally in engineering. The systems, including the engines,
finally booted up, and Treasure could feel the sense of relief in the room.
They had been working on this for so long, and now we had hope. They all
went their separate ways, and started working at their respective stations.
Apparently, Azura taught the Verteans some Maramon, so they could get going.
They were all clearly getting stuck, though.
“Okay,” Azura said. “I could use your tiara just temporarily, though. If we
interface it with the computer, it will be able to—”
“Translate to their native tongue,” Treasure finished. “Of course.” She
removed it from her head, and handed it over. Then she stood in silence, and
watched them work. It was then that she realized that one young man was
still back by the entrance, not doing anything. He was just watching
everyone, like she was. She was about to introduce herself, which she
realized she could neither speak, nor understand him. It had only been a few
minutes, and it was already getting to be too frustrating. Azura said that
it would be about fifteen more minutes before she figured out how to connect
the tiara with the computer, so Treasure decided to go grab some water from
the dining car. As soon as she crossed the threshold to the next car down,
everything shut off. She could hear the cries of irritation in the others.
She immediately hopped back in, which powered the systems back up.
“Apparently, you can’t leave if we want to keep these on,” Azura realized.
“I was not aware of this either. What did you need?”
Treasure mimed drinking water from a glass.
Azura said something to the boy who wasn’t doing anything, prompting him to
leave. Treasure waved her hands in front of her chest. “It’s okay,” Azura
said. “That’s what he’s there for. He’s like a roadie, but for soldiers. He
carries extra weapons and ammo, and sends messages to other units. The
closest thing to it on your world would probably be the quartermaster, but I
think I would translate it to Valet, because Quino garners a lot less
respect than a quartermaster. He was born on a fairly poor planet, so he
doesn’t have all that much education, and he’s meant to just feel lucky he
has a purpose in life. Only a couple people here are actual engineers, but
the rest are decades old, and have studied lots of different things. He’s
closer to your age.”
Treasure frowned. That didn’t sound very fair.
“He’s getting refreshments for all of us,” Azura clarified.
A little while later, another soldier got Azura’s attention, and showed her
something on the screen. They exchanged words in their language, and
everyone else started listening. Azura sighed, and prepared to explain it
all in English. “Okay, so you’re constantly emitting low levels of bulk
energy. You, at all times, straddle the dimensional membrane, and let energy
pass through freely. Don’t worry, I doubt it’ll cause you any problems, or
cause anyone else any problems. Microscopic tears in the membrane form and
heal all the time. Most worlds call it dark energy or vacuum energy, and
it’s what causes the expansion of their respective universes. It just so
happens that your tear never heals. The Transit was designed to run on
multiple power systems, and apparently, the guy who stole it removed almost
all of them. He couldn’t remove any of the bulk transistors, though, or he
would have just destroyed the whole thing. I don’t know why he chose not to
do that, but perhaps he knew we would be coming? It would explain why he
left the dining car with the food synthesizers intact.”
Treasure tried to ask what that meant for her, but the gestures weren’t
conveying the information clearly. Azura noticed that the tiara was done
syncing, so she handed it back. “What does this mean?” she asked. “What does
it mean for me?”
“It means that we can take this thing wherever we want to go,” Azura said,
“as long as you’re with us. To free us from our reliance on you, we would
need to replace the other power systems, like the antimatter drives, fusion
reactors, and fuel cells. The good news is that that’s totally doable. I can
think of three universes off the top of my head that could accommodate our
needs.”
“What are you, uhh...what are you gonna do with this thing?” Treasure
questioned. She knew what The Transit was. Her parents spoke of it. It was
her mother’s intention when she first left her friends to find The Transit,
and use it in the oncoming fight against the Ochivari. She and her partner
at the time, Zektene switched gears by joining a crew that planned to stop
the Ochivari from existing in the first place. This was where they met her
dad, Limerick. When their mission failed, they got sidetracked from having
to raise their daughter. Surely they would still want this, and surely
Treasure had a high claim to it since this was her universe. The problem was
that Azura had a higher claim, since it originated in her universe, and that
could create some conflict.
Azura was very good at reading people, and understanding subtext. “I’m going
to get these people home, and then I’m going to take you home, so your
mother and I can fight over who maintains control over it. Yes, I know what
her mission was. Yes, I know that this vessel is crucial in the Darning
Wars. No, nobody really knows who’s in charge of The Transit Army. It might
be her...but it might be me.” She looked next to her at one of the soldiers.
“It might be this guy right here.”
“I’m sure it’s not me,” that guy said.
Both Treasure and Azura were surprised by this. “Whoa. Hadron, you speak
English? How is that possible?”
“I speak every language in Vertea,” Hadron answered. “I’ve always been very
good at picking new ones up quickly. I’ve been studying English and Maramon
since we got here, since I’m not good at much else.”
“How, though?” Azura pressed. “I can’t get anything to stay on for more than
a few minutes at a time.”
“I’ve been sleeping in the car next to hers.” Hadron pointed to Treasure.
“Before you get huffy, I didn’t know that that was why. I figured that
particular car happened to have its own power source. I looked through it,
though. It only contains entertainment and cultural research. It has no
information about the ship itself, so it wouldn’t have done us any good.”
Now someone else got Azura’s attention, and showed her something on her
screen. They talked a little bit. The others weren’t that fascinated.
“Hyperion,” Azura said. “It’s a moon around Saturn, and has an orbital
period of about twenty-one days, that checks out. It’s very small, and we
are presently seven thousand years before the common era. That makes sense
too, because the man who put this here didn’t want to have to worry about
someone stumbling upon it. Not even a trotter would think to come to a place
like this in a time like this.”
Treasure was concerned. “What about communications? If the Maramon computer
can tell where we are, does that mean we’re connected to some kind of
network?”
“Nah, that’s all gone,” Azura promised. “That’s the first thing we checked.
The comms array has been utterly removed. The thieves likely left it in
Ansutah, because they wouldn’t have wanted to be tracked either.”
Quino returned with a cart full of drinks and snacks. Everyone took a break
to eat. Everyone...but one. The woman who figured out they were on Hyperion
chose to keep working at her station. She seemed very determined to figure
something else out. Curious, Treasure looked over her shoulder. The woman
didn’t seem to mind it. Some of it appeared in Vertean, but it was also
still in Maramon. Treasure spoke Maramon quite fluently, but she didn’t read
all that well, and the data on the screens was all very technical. It
contained a lot of words that Miss Collins wouldn’t have thought to teach
her, so she had to make a few assumptions based on her intuition.
“Treasure, what are you seeing over there?” Azura asked after a few minutes.
“She can explain it better,” Treasure replied, “but I think we have to spend
another twenty-one days here.”
Azura thought about it. “There’s a little bit of logic to that. You can only
enter or leave at a particular moment, and it’s the moment that the time
loop first began. That’s why the grenade brought us here exactly when it
did.” She translated the explanation into Vertean, so everyone else would
understand. They all seemed fine with it. Three weeks wasn’t that long, and
they knew that it didn’t matter how long they spent outside of their
universe, they could return to any moment, including the one right after the
one they left. Of course, they could die before ever making it back, but it
didn’t look like that was going to happen. As long as the synthesizers kept
producing food, they should be safe here.
So they waited. Treasure’s role on the ship was wildly different than it was
during the first half of their vacation. Where once she was isolated and
unhelpful, now she was vital to the mission. She was getting a lot of
exercise, running back and forth from the front of the ship, to the middle,
to the back. It felt like punishment, but at least it was keeping her fit.
Did this thing have to be so long, though? Most of the cars were designed to
accommodate soldiers and their cargo, but three of them were used to keep
the ship running. It was modular, as one might expect. Each car was capable
of traveling through space on its own, but only the first and last could
pierce a portal through the universal membrane. They needed to both be in
operational order, to maximize their chances of escaping this universe, and
accumulating the right resources. Treasure tried to expand the breadth of
her power, but was only ever able to power systems from one car over. One of
the crew was a medic, and was able to help her come up with some recovery
exercises. She still couldn’t scream, but she was eventually able to speak
at a very low volume, which was enough to allow her to return the tiara to
Olkan.
When they weren’t maintaining the engines, the crew was taking a page out of
Hadron’s book, and learning English. They didn’t do it for Treasure’s
benefit alone. Though they were supposedly going back to where they were,
they wanted to know the dominant language in the bulkverse, in case
something like this ever happened again. While they weren’t all particularly
adept at learning languages, most of them were a couple centuries old, and
had a lot of experience with gathering new skills. Lifelong education was
kind of the defining characteristic of their galaxy. That didn’t mean
everyone had access to it, but the longer someone was alive, the more
chances they found to add to their repertoire. By the time they left
Hyperion, all of them had a working proficiency, and were speaking English
exclusively for practice.
When their forty-two days were up, they gathered in the engine car again,
and took off.
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