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The team transported the Sixth Key delegates, the Primus, and her assistant
to the Executive Bunker on the other side of the world. From there, they
watched the battle that the Transit and the Cormanu were fighting against
the onslaught of Ochivari ships. The local squadrons watched from orbit, but
did not participate. The public watched as well through minimal satellite
feeds, though most of the cameras that were pointed away from Earth
were limited to military and governmental use. After only about fifteen
minutes of the shooting, they all disappeared through a technicolor portal.
No friend or foe was left on the battlefield. The theory was that the
Transit was trying to spare the locals by moving the fighting to another
universe, but it could have just as easily been more like the other way
around. No one sent them a message, and when the team returned a year later,
they still hadn’t heard from anyone, but a lot had changed. Carlin was now a
folk hero.
In all this time, they never got a chance to find out what his time powers
were, which appeared to run in the family. Apparently, he was kind of like a
walking homestone, but with fewer limitations. He could send anyone back to
any point in their life just after they departed from that moment using
teleportation or time travel; not only the first instance. He was able to
return all of the delegates to where they were when the Tree of Life first
pulled them to the nucleus. Leona respectfully asked why he didn’t do that
before, and he said that he wasn’t certain of the extent of his abilities.
He didn’t know that he could relapse across universes, but Thack was able to
check to make sure that everyone was back to where they belonged as if they
had never left.
“Are you sure you want to use that word?” Mateo asked.
“I like it,” Carlin insisted.
“Well, it’s just that it has negative—”
“I understand. I like it,” he repeated.
“Okay.”
“I could relapse you too,” Carlin offered, “now that I know that I can even
do it from all the way out here.”
“Can you do it to yourself?” Mateo asked him.
“No.”
“Then it’s a no for me too. We’re not gonna leave you behind. Though,
perhaps Thack would like to go home?”
“She says that she must remain here for a certain amount of time,” Carlin
explained. “I offer a way out to her every day.”
“Does it drain you of energy, doing what you do?” Mateo went on.
“It’s invigorating,” Carlin revealed. Even though the orbital battle last
year was fought against an armada of ships, it wasn’t like they were the
only Ochivari in the universe. More kept coming through smaller breaches on
the surface of this planet. Whenever a new arrival was detected, the
government would fly Carlin to that location to have him dispatch of the
threat. They actually gave him a special hypersonic jet to accomplish this.
He might need to travel anywhere in the world to complete his missions, and
he was beloved by all for his efforts. Many were coming out of the bunkers,
and trying to return to their normal lives as a result. Though, the
government wasn’t sure whether that was the right call. One thing that
helped them know when an Ochivar had snuck in was because there were fewer
humans around for them to blend in with. They had yet to figure out how to
detect the portals themselves, and were hoping that the team could help
them. “I love all the sudden travel, though I know that the natives are
hoping that you can make that simpler.”
“Are you up for that?” Leona asked Ramses.
“What, me? Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you almost died from equilibrium exposure,” she reminded him.
“Well, I had to test what it was like to be exposed in the equilibrium,”
Ramses explained. “And now I know...it’s worse than a vacuum.”
“Next time, wear a helmet,” Leona suggested.
“Aye aye, Captain.” He was trying to keep it light, but Leona wanted to be a
little more serious, so he nodded, and added, “I really will. I need to get
the Ambassador back up to the surface, and re-embigify it, so I can start
working on the detector in my lab.”
“Go ahead,” she allowed.
“I’ll go with you,” Angela offered. They both jumped away.
Soon after they were gone, Thack Natalie Collins entered the room. They were
in the executive bunker situation room, where the military usually planned
and led the war efforts. It was originally designed to support the
continuity of government in the event of a total collapse of civilization,
which hadn’t happened yet. However, they were always on the cusp of complete
failure, which was why most of Primus Mihajlović’s supporters kept begging
recently for her to begin operating out of here fulltime. The second major
tactical assault was all the reason they needed to basically force her
to finally accept that, so she and Kineret had been down here for the last
year, as was Thack, who was presently serving as a cultural advisor.
“Welcome back to reality.”
“We weren’t sure that we would jump at all,” Leona told her. “Being in other
universes makes it complicated.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thack claimed.
“Would you know about the Transit, and the Cormanu?” Mateo pressed. “Where
did they go when they left here?”
Thack smiled in a way that made it seem like she was about to school them on
the subject. “Psychic abilities are interesting. For the most part, we’re
not talking about knowing things without learning them, though that’s
definitely part of it. The majority of psychics are limited by their
connection to others. That’s what it is; the links that bind us together.
Now, you would think that this means I should be able to find our friends
wherever they are, especially since I have formed close personal
relationships with the Hawthornes, however, I believe that they have
traveled beyond my scope. They have gone to a universe where no one else
lives. Yes, I’m connected to the people that I already know, but not to
anyone else there, because they don’t exist. You’ve been to a handful of
branes yourselves, and you’ve always found people to already be living
there, such as the one we’re in right now. But most aren’t like that. Most
are dead, or lifeless anyway. In the infinity, I think most can’t even
harbor life at all, meaning that you can’t go to them, or you’ll just
straight up die. I can tell you for a fact that our friends did not end up
in one of those extreme scenarios, because I see their futures. But there
are plenty of others out there where life is safe, but never evolved. And
again, I can’t see them. If you were in the middle of a fight with the
Ochivari, you would probably try to go to one of these places, so the
conflict did not endanger the lives of innocents.”
“I would if I could, yes,” Mateo agreed. “But just to clarify, you can’t
watch them remotely, even when you concentrate, and you can’t guess when
they’ll return, if ever?”
Thack shook her head. “I’m saying that I don’t know where they went when
they left,” she explained, quite careful with her language. It probably
wasn’t safe for them to know too much about the future. She faced Carlin.
“Mister McIver, I will be leaving today. Please prepare to relapse me back
to Voldisilaverse.”
“I’m ready, we can go right now,” Carlin replied.
“No, no. Mister Abdulrashid needs time to build his little device. When
we’ll go, he’ll take measurements of the bulk energy that you’ll be tapping
into. That data will be vital for the goal of detecting arrivals as they
happen.”
The Primus walked into the room with Kineret, having heard enough from the
hallway. “Will we ever be able to predict them, so we can dispatch a team
ahead of time? We’re always worried that some remain...somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thack repeated herself from earlier.
Naraschone seemed to be used to having to allow Thack her secrets. “Anyway,
the military requires this room for a battle exercise for one of their new
fighter jets.”
This was where the team happened to be last year when their proverbial
hourglass ran out, and they were sent forward in time a year. They weren’t
entirely sure when it would happen, since their original pattern was tied to
midnight central in Salmonverse. This was a version of Earth, and the bunker
was located in Colorado, so their best guess was that it would be the same,
using the local time zone borders, but it happened at 22:00 instead, when it
was only 23:00 in Kansas. They did not know why.
“We were just leaving,” Thack said respectfully.
As they were exiting, Mateo pulled Thack aside since this was evidently his
last time to talk to her. “When I was being possessed by Amber and Sanaa,
two others managed to sneak into my mind. One was Meredarchos, I’m sure
you’ve heard of him.”
“I have,” Thack said, nodding.
“The other; they were crying for help. Would you have any idea who that
could be, or would you not know anything about that?” Hopefully that didn’t
come off as harsh.
“It could be a number of people,” Thack answered. “It could be me. It could
be one of the people on any of the bulk traveling machines that were here
last year, or of the people who travel using other means. It could be you,
from your future.” She looked away from him as if her own words had given
her an idea. “Or from your past.”
“No, I would remember that,” Mateo insisted.
“Aren’t you missing some personal time? Think back.”
Mateo winced, not knowing what she was talking about, but then he realized
that she might be onto something. He did disappear once, from the Third
Rail, in the Russian mine where they were looking for timonite to rescue
Trina. When he came back, they thought that he had only jumped forward in
time a couple of days, but he had always secretly had the feeling that he
had actually been detoured somewhere in the meantime, and had since lost his
memories of it. He never really talked about that with the others, but it
was super weird that he just happened to swallow the one rock that they had
been searching for. “Maybe you’re right. You really think that it was just
me?”
“Oh, it’s only an idea. You have an opportunity to investigate that you
didn’t have before, though. If you don’t have anything else going on, you
could talk to Carlin.”
That was an interesting recommendation, one which he should probably take.
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