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What they didn’t know before was that Kineret had a young daughter. She had
been living in a remote bunker in the south with a nanny, but her mother’s
relocation request finally went through. Kineret and Primus Mihajlović were
busy with work off-site today, so Olimpia had agreed to babysit. Shay was
sitting on the floor right now, playing with the model-sized Vellani
Ambassador. Ramses was actually inside of it, in the middle of testing the
habitability of the dimensional miniaturization technology that he had
reverse-engineered from the box in the Goldilocks Corridor. The air was
breathable, and the inertial dampeners were reportedly working okay.
Propulsion was another thing, but given that it was literally a million
times smaller than it would be in full form, that probably wasn’t necessary
anyway.
Olimpia was sitting on an undersized chair in the playroom, elbow on her
knee, and chin in her palm, watching the little girl play. But there was
another reason for this game. “How you doin’ in there, bud?”
Communications were tricky too. It was garbled and weak, but they could
still hear each other, and that was better than nothing. “Little nausea, but the dampeners are compensating. They don’t work
perfectly great for any ship while it’s in gravity, so I’m not surprised.
Nothing has fallen off my desk yet. Is she still swirling it around?”
“Jzhhoooooo! Jzhhoom!” Shay was exploring space with the toy ship.
“Sure is,” Olimpia replied.
“Great,” he said.
“Listen, I’m hoping that you can make a replica of the VA for her to keep.
She seems to like it quite a bit.”
“That will not be difficult,” he answered.
There were three doors in this room. One led to the hallway, one to the
bathroom, and the last to a closet. All of these opened at exactly the same
time. A different man was on each side, and they were all very confused.
Olimpia instinctively grabbed little Shay, and pulled her to the only wall
that didn’t have any doors attached to it. She dropped the Ambassador as a
result.
“What just happened?” Ramses questioned.
“Get out here immediately,” she demanded. Olimpia didn’t know everyone who
lived in this bunker, so maybe someone might open the entrance, but not the
bathroom door, and not the closet. Those were both empty. She had checked
them, because she was a good babysitter who knew that Shay was in particular
danger of a political attack.
Ramses appeared, and spun around when Olimpia pointed. “Who the hell are you
people?”
The one who somehow ended up in the bathroom tightened the towel around his
waist, held his hands up nonconfrontationally, and took a step forward.
“Don’t move,” Ramses insisted.
“Okay.” He breathed deeply. “I believe that you and I have met. My name is
Elder Caverness, and I am currently training under the Transit Army. Is this
a test?”
Ramses held up a finger. “Stay there.” He swung around so the other two men
could see the finger. “All of you.” He then reached into his pocket to
retrieve his handheld device. He was looking through the little database
that the team had curated over the years, detailing everyone they could
remember meeting, even before becoming time travelers. “Elder Caverness.
Right, yes. I saw you get on the train, I was there.”
“You’re Mateo’s friend.”
Ramses was still suspicious. He held the device up to his ear after dialing
a number. “Yes, this is Ramses Abdulrashid?” He waited for a response.
“Yeah, one of the visiting alien people. Listen, did a giant spacetrain
appear anywhere? Today, I mean?” Short pause. “Okay, thank you.” He hung up.
“The Transit didn’t show up today. How are you here?”
“I don’t know.” Elder looked over his own shoulder. “I was in
a bathroom, but not this bathroom.”
“I know you as well,” said the man standing in the closet doorway. “You were
both there the first time this happened to me. It was just a minute ago, but
we were somewhere else.”
Ramses eyed him. “Of course. You were in the Nexus. “You’re a long way from
home too, unless this is your universe. Was the world ending when you left?”
“No.”
“Then maybe not. What about you? I don’t know you.”
The third man, the one by the main door, was also holding his hands up.
“Hey, man, I’m just a gardener. I work at a nursery. I don’t know what
you’re talkin’ about, with the Nexus, and the universes, and all that.”
“This sounds like Westfall,” Olimpia pointed out.
“Yeah, you called it that last time,” closet guy said.
“Is that a band, errr...?” the guy they had never met at all before asked.
Maybe he too was from Salmonverse, but just didn’t know about time travel.
“Okay. Elder Caverness, and...Bay...”
“Baylor Alexanderson,” he reminded him.
“Yeah. Baylor Alexanderson. And you are?”
“Late for work.”
“What is your name, sir?” Ramses was not in the mood to joke at the moment.
“I’m Dutch Haines.”
“Dutch Haines,” Ramses began, “you’re from another world. I don’t know why
you’re here, or who brought you, but you can’t go home unless whoever it was
decides to send you. I’m sorry. We have zero control over it.”
Dutch looked down the hallway that he decidedly had not come from. He
looked back at Ramses and shrugged. “Okay, cool.”
Ramses looked over at Olimpia. “I don’t think these guys mean us any harm,
but your job is to protect the girl, so go somewhere else to do it. This
room has been compromised. Take the ship, please.”
Olimpia knelt down to retrieve the Ambassador. She handed it back to Shay,
then lifted her up against her hip, and teleported away.
“Whoa, shit!” Dutch exclaimed. Baylor was surprised too, but Elder wasn’t.
“Yeah. We can do that.” Ramses tried to think about what to do next.
Protecting the girls was as far as he could figure out, but without Leona to
make decisions, the decisions fell upon his shoulders. He wasn’t sure that
he was up to the task. Ochivari were bad guys, this much was clear. He knew
to fight them off if they ever showed up, but humans? How would he deal with
this? What would the Captain do? He tilted his head to think, acutely aware
that the men were still watching him, awaiting the answer to that question.
What would she do? She would test them. He pointed. “Stand in a line, facing
me.”
The three of them looked amongst each other, and agreed in their respective
heads that Ramses was indeed the man in charge. Even if he wasn’t qualified,
they didn’t know that. So they got in the line, and stood there patiently.
Ramses cleared his throat, and stared at them, focusing on their eyes. He
wasn’t trained to study microexpressions, but maybe his intuition would show
him the light. “Ochivari,” he stated plainly.
Elder furrowed his brow, disgusted by the name of their enemy. This was not
surprising as the last time they saw him, he was going off to learn how to
fight them. Plus, he even said that he was supposed to be training with the
Transit Army. The other two didn’t react at all. He may as well have spouted
a nonsense word to them. Either that, or they were sociopaths who he
couldn’t read. Olimpia had confided in him that the Ochivari were using
human allies to infiltrate this world so their plans could be carried out
undetected. It felt wrong that this should be the case with these other two
men. The way they showed up here, it probably was Westfall. The
Ochivari had a weird and violent way to travel the bulkverse. It was
noticeable; conspicuous. They couldn’t just quietly appear in a closet. They
could, however, walk down a hallway, having arrived in this world at some
other point. Elder and Baylor were probably okay dudes, especially the
former, who Mateo would vouch for as a friend. Dutch, on the other hand,
could be the enemy. This was why Leona didn’t want to tell anyone about the
human infiltrators, because they did not know how to handle them yet. The
only possible way probably involved getting one of them to confess, and
using them as a baseline to suss out any others. Then again, the odds that
they would show up at the same time were low if they were here for the same
reason.
“All right, we’re gonna go on a little trip,” Ramses decided. He offered his
hand to Dutch, who took it more out of curiosity, not knowing that he was
about to be teleported to the wrong side of a set of metal bars. He came
back for Baylor and Elder, relocating them to their own cells, right next to
each other. They didn’t complain or question it. It was the only logical
course of action, even considering what Ramses knew of them. He told the
jail guards to treat them with respect, but to not let them out without
authorization directly from the Primus. Then he left to relay the
information to her.
“Why would you be worried about them if they’re human?” Naraschone
questioned.
“Some humans are bad,” Ramses answered. “You know that as much as I. The
reason you have jail cells in the bunker is because you sometimes have to
lock people up. We’ve not been able to verify this information, but
according to the Ochivar that Leona and Angela interviewed, some humans are
bad enough to be working with them.”
Primus lifted her chin, but kept her eyes contacted with his. “We always
knew that that was possible, especially after learning that they were from
another universe. If there are an infinite number of them out there, it
stands to reason that a handful of people would find themselves in
accordance with the aliens. The statistics make it essentially impossible
for there not to be.”
“Your team interrogated the Ochivar years ago,” Kineret pointed out. “Why
are you only telling us now?”
“They were worried what we would do with this information,” Naraschone
explained for Ramses. “Every single person in the world has now become an
enemy.”
“No, there are people I’ve known my entire life,” Kineret reasoned. “If we
can trace someone’s background, we can rule them out.”
Ramses shook his head, reluctant to argue. “No, you can’t. Bulk travel is
time travel. Infiltrators may have shown up years before the war started, or
centuries, or longer. Half the people on this planet may be the descendants
of those who originated on some other version of Earth. You would never
know. There’s no way to tell.”
“Surely there is,” Naraschone determined. “There’s something different about
you, isn’t there? Given enough data, could you not find a way to
detect—forgive me—foreigners? You should be able to use yourself as a
baseline.” Hm. She came up with the same word that he had for this problem.
“We possess genetic data from nearly everyone on the planet,” Kineret
continued. “We would have to requisition it, but that shouldn’t be too hard,
given the fact that we’re in wartime. Compare it to your own DNA, look for
differences.”
“My DNA is different,” Ramses explained. “I’m posthuman.”
“Well, what about our new prisoners?” Naraschone asked.
Ramses nodded, not because he agreed that that was the answer, but because
it was technically a possibility. “I can take samples today, and I can start
to run some tests, but I am no biologist.”
“Aren’t you the one who grew the bodies that you and your team now inhabit?”
“With the aid of centuries of prior research, and an AI. To do this, I would
need to devise new technology. I’m not saying that I can’t do it; just not
today. It would take me a year, and by then, your prisoners will no longer
be locked up.”
“He’s right,” Kineret admitted. “We will not be able to hold them all year.”
“We won’t have to,” Naraschone decided. “If I’m to understand this
correctly, only the Ochivari have the means to transport themselves to other
universes, which is why we’ve never been able to allow them to roam free. We
can keep these three people without actually locking them up. There is no
legal time limit for how long you’re allowed to accommodate guests.”
“They can travel the bulk,” Ramses began to explain, “they just can’t
control it. There is no guarantee that they will still be here next year
when Olimpia and I return.”
“We’ll store the samples, and cross any bridge we must when we come to it,”
Naraschone decided. Kineret was right, we’ll be able to request access to
the global DNA database, but we would probably not be able to get it done by
the end of today anyway. Let’s plan on starting this plan in one year’s
time.”
There was a slight pause in the conversation. “Now that that’s been
discussed, could you please transport me to my daughter?” Kineret had to
make her job her number one priority, but she also had a responsibility to
her family, and it was time that she personally made sure that Shay was
okay.
Ramses held out his hand, but Naraschone reached for it instead. “First,
transport me to the jail in the Executive Bunker. Then take Kineret to her
daughter, and stay with them for support.”
“Very well, sir,” Ramses replied.
A year later, Ramses returned, and immediately began to work on the problem
of detecting bulk travelers. It took the whole day for him to start getting
the idea that this was not a DNA problem, but something else. He
needed to be looking at the subatomic level. That could take even longer, so
there was no time to waste.
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