Once Ramses was safe and sound in the Garden Dimension with the rest of the
team, the Horticulturalists decided that it was time to kick everyone out.
Even though the Memory Magnolia had apparently made its own decision about
sending Marie to rescue their last remaining member, she was the one who
partook in the fruit in the first place. She made that decision, and these
were the consequences of it. Everyone else was being kicked out just for
being associated with her, and they had no problem with this, because they
needed to stay together, and as pleasant as the garden was, it was time to
get back to work. Before they left, they warned the Horticulturalists that
Bronach Oaksent and the Exin Empire were seemingly trying to get into the
garden themselves. Nothing else made sense to explain why Ramses blowing a
hole through the hull of Ex-42 would send them down the river towards the
Magnolia conflux. If they wanted to protect their specimens from those who
would truly harm it, they needed to seriously rethink their defensive
strategies.
The Team was now back on Earth. They asked to be returned to the Vellani
Ambassador, which was parked and invisible in the Goldilocks Corridor, but
no one in the garden was capable of accommodating them. Whatever was indeed
responsible for this detour in the first place was located at that end of
it. They could try to investigate it themselves, whether the
Horticulturalists wanted them to or not, but first, they had to figure out
how to get back there. Their first thought was to seek help from Team
Keshida on the Jameela Jamil, which could get them to that region of space
in under five hours, but they didn’t respond directly. A voicemail message
from an apparent quantum autoresponder informed Leona that the JJ was on a
mission in the Miridir Galaxy, which was where Dardius was located. Quantum
communication allowed FTL signals to reach vast distances, but the
technology still had its limits. If they were in Andromeda XXI, they were
too far away to talk to in realtime, and once they did receive the message,
it would take them a month to return to help, assuming they weren’t too busy
there to return at all. They were surely that far away for good reason.
Leona popped her lips several times. “Welp, back to the Nexus?”
“Yeah, the Nexus seems like the right call,” Mateo agreed.
Everyone else seemed amenable, so they teleported to the Pacific Ocean
Nexus, directly inside the building, which was still neutrally buoyant just
under the surface. “Venus Opsocor, are you there?”
No one responded.
“Venus, can you hear me?” Leona reiterated.
Still no response.
“You two on the outs?” Ramses asked.
“I’m sure she’s a very busy superintelligent god,” Leona presumed. She
walked up the steps, and tried to enter the control room, but the door was
locked. She tried to just teleport to the other side of it, but it didn’t
work either. Venus was icing her out. She must have wanted her to stay here
for some reason. She let out a frustrated sigh, and banged on the door
before turning around to go back down the stairs.
A man opened it from the control room, bleary eyed, and trying to block the
lights from hitting him. “Can I help you? It’s a little early.”
“Do you live here?” Leona questioned.
“Yeah,” he answered, like he had every right. He blinked a lot, and looked
around. “Wait, do I? Where the hell am I? Why am I inside?” He jerked his
head around to look back into the control room. “Where is my apartment? Who
are you people? What did you do to me!”
“Please try to relax, sir. We did nothing to you. We did not expect to find
you here. What is the last thing you remember?”
“Uh, I fell asleep on the couch. My couch, in my home. Now I’m
suddenly here. I could have sworn that when I heard you banging, I woke up
on my couch too. It was here a second ago. Could someone please tell me
what’s going on?”
“I’m going to ask you a few questions, sir, and they may sound weird, but
trust me, they’re important. Just answer them honestly. We are not going to
harm you, or use anything against you. We’re here to help. What year is it?”
“It’s 2024, dumbass.”
“Sir.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t assume that you’re the bad guy here. I’ve seen this
move a million times. A group of people wake up in a cube, or on an island,
or a weird building in the woods with a giant window-slash-mirror, where
monsters watch you for fun. Or it’s a torture chamber, or a shower stall, or
a spaceship, or a lobby in heaven—”
“Sir,” Leona had to repeat yet again. “You’re talking about the You Wake Up
in a Room trope. I don’t think that’s really what’s happening. We came here
on purpose, we just didn’t expect to find anyone else, and there is a
way out. Let’s keep going. We know the year. Where is your apartment? What
city?”
“Silver Shade. Silver Shade, Kansas.”
Leona nodded. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s in Mineral County,” the man added.
There was no such place as Mineral County as far as she knew. “I should have
asked this before, what’s your name, friend?”
“Baylor. Baylor Alexanderson.”
Leona proceeded to introduce herself, and the rest of the team.
“Those are some interesting names you got there,” Baylor mused. “Do you have
any more questions for me, or are we gonna be able to get out of here?”
Leona consulted her watch, even though she had already looked at it as soon
as they left the Garden Dimension. “I have some bad news, Baylor, it’s not
2024. It’s 2448, and given the fact that you’re from a city and county that
doesn’t exist here, I can only assume that you’re in the wrong world. Given
your description of answering what you thought to be your own door, my guess
is that you went through the Westfall, though it’s not supposed to take you
somewhere this altered. You’re supposed to think that you’re still on the
same world. At least that’s how it was explained to me.”
Baylor stared at her for a moment. “What the shit are you goin’ on about?”
“I know it’s disorienting, but I’m still going to do all I can to help you,
if Venus would just kindly respond to me!” she increased the volume of her
voice, as she looked up towards the Nexus drum. She could never quite tell
where Venus’ voice was ever coming from, but it always sounded like it was
from above. “Hello?”
“Wait, is this one of those—wadya call it—Voldisil things?” Baylor asked.
“Are you a fabled Voldisil?”
“I’ve never heard of that either,” Leona admitted.
“I don’t believe in ‘em,” Baylor explained. “They say that this kid out east
can heal people, but I don’t put stock into such rumors. I’m sure it’s all a
big hoax. I mean, he charges rich people a ton of money, and then he
gives his poor patients some of that money, in addition to healing
them? Does that sound right to you?”
“I don’t know, sir, that’s not my world, as I said.”
“Well, if I’ve been sent through the dimensional planes, or whatever, how do
I get back? Tell me what to do.”
“You could...try to...close the door?” Leona suggested. She didn’t know how
it worked, or whether it could ever be undone.
“Is that a question?”
“I’m not an expert.”
Baylor sighed, tipped an imaginary hat at her, and then closed the door.
She tried to open it again right away, and was able to this time.
Baylor was nowhere to be seen, and the lights inside the control room were
starting to come on. “Guys, I think it worked. Or it sent him somewhere
totally different.”
“I’m here, Leona,” Venus’ voice answered.
“Venus, how long ago did I ask for you?”
“It has currently been eight point seven seconds.”
“L-O-L.” Mateo laughed at the coincidence.
“It’s been longer than that for me,” Leona told her. “We’ve been interacting
with a man we believe to have come through Westfall.”
“I did not register his appearance, but that’s the one thing that could
have interfered with my temporal association, and my response,” Venus said.
“That’s okay, I think he’s back home. We were wondering if you could do the
same for us. We left our ship in the Goldilocks Corridor, around a planet
called Ex-659. Have you heard of that? It’s about 16,000 light years away.”
“I never have,” Venus answered.
“There may or may not be a working Nexus on a planet called Ex-371. You and
I spoke while I was there sixteen years ago.”
“I have no recollection of that. Either my memory was purged, or it has
not happened to me yet.”
“Okay.” Leona thought about it. “Can you take us to the Dardius Nexus? I
have the term sequence.”
“I’m afraid that the Dardius Nexus is presently offline at this point in
history.”
“That’s disturbing.” Leona took a deep breath, and centered herself. “Then
we have one last option. Could you please send us to the Nucleus?”
“Captain, that’s not safe,” Marie warned.
“It’s the only place I know that can travel such distances, unless you can
put us in touch with one of the Al-Amins?”
Marie put her tail between her legs.
“Venus?” Leona went on.
“I have heard of that,” Venus said. “I can send you there, but there is no Nexus there in 2448, so you will
not necessarily be in control of where you go next.”
“We rarely are,” Leona responded.
“Step into the cavity, please.”
“We appreciate your support,” Leona said genuinely as she was taking up the
rear.
The light rained down from above, and dispatched them to purported the
center of the universe. They did not exit to another Nexus, as Venus had
explained. They were in the same expansive room that Marie had come to while
she was searching for Angela, which they both confirmed. It was mostly empty
now. A man started to jog over when he noticed them, but then he suddenly
stopped, and continued more slowly. “You came here on purpose,” he said to
them, almost accusatorily.
“Yes, it’s only a pit stop,” Leona answered. “We’re trying to get to the
Goldilocks Corridor.”
“I’m afraid we don’t take requests here,” he tried to explain. “My name is
Intake Coordinator Pontus Flagger. Our only job here is to keep you healthy,
fed, and comfortable, until the universe decides where to put you.”
“The universe doesn’t decide anything,” Leona argued. “There must be
someone in charge, even if it’s an intelligence beyond our comprehension.”
“Like I said, the universe,” Pontus repeated, as if they were talking about
the exact same thing.
Leona sighed. “Have you recorded any patterns? What kind of people come
here, where they go, where they’re standing when it happens; that sort of
thing.”
“No pattern detected,” Pontus said apologetically. “We’ve been looking for
one.”
“How long have you been measuring?” Leona asked.
He acted like that was an impossible question to answer.
“Right. Time.” She looked over at her crew, who were waiting patiently for
her guidance. “So, you got a suite for us, or something?”
“Right this way, sir.” Pontus spun around, and began to walk away.
“That won’t be necessary,” came an electronic voice behind all of them. His
identity was being masked by an actual mask, as well as a sound distorter.
He wasn’t alone either. Thousands of black-clothed stormtrooper types were
standing behind him, all pointing their space rifles at the crew. They
looked exactly the same, in the same positions, as if there was only one of
them, and he had copy-pasted himself over and over again. Maybe that was the
truth.
“Funny, I didn’t hear you come in,” Leona said.
“Um, they didn’t,” Pontus replied. “We have alarms for mass arrivals.”
Leona nodded, and lifted a hand. She sent a ripple of light towards the
crowd, using her own holo-powers to disrupt and fade the image of the
holographic army.
“Shit,” the only enemy there said. He reached over to his wrist, and
switched off the ruse. Leona wasn’t quite right. There were actually still
two of them, rather than only the one. “I need to regain the higher ground.”
He shot Leona right in the chest.
The thing about these special suits being bulletproof was that they
prevented most projectiles and energy blasts from piercing the layers. They
couldn’t protect the wearer from everything, but they were extremely
advanced, and Ramses had already bolstered their strength with a little bit
of tinkering. And anyway, Leona fell to her back, and slid across the floor,
because the concussive force was still strong, and she wasn’t magnetizing
her boots at the time, not that that would have been the safer option.
“You are all now conscripted into the Resonant Parallel Coalition, whether
you like it or not,” the shooter demanded in his weird little voice.
Leona stood back up, almost entirely unhurt, and arched her back to get the
kinks out. She looked back with the confidence befitting a captain of her
calibre. “Oh, no thank you.”
