The Needs of the Many
Confusingly named Saga!Three was sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting
for her new partner, Zektene to get out of the bathroom. Zektene was from
another universe, and came here after a trip to the past changed enough about history to stop her from ever existing. That was no longer her world, so she made this her
new home.
“I’ve been thinking about your name!” Zek called out through the door.
“You don’t have to yell!” Saga!Three shouted back.
“You’re yelling!”
“I’m just trying to match your energy!
Zektene laughed.
“What about my name?”
“We need some way to distinguish you from your alternate self.”
Saga!Three was also a time traveler, and was created when a different
version of her named Saga!Two went back to help kill Adolf Hitler early. To
avoid ambiguity, others began to address them by the number that was
arbitrarily assigned to their reality. There were an infinite number of past
realities, however, and this was in no way only the third, but the name was
good enough. “That’s what the number is for.”
“It’s too impersonal!” Zek argued. “Who was that one gal you mentioned, who
met her alternate self? She goes by her real name, while the other goes by
their nickname?”
“Holly Blue and Weaver, yes. The former just never started using the
nickname. You wanna start calling me Doorwalker?”
“No, that’s dumb. That’s why I wanna talk about it, so we can figure
something else out.”
“I’m all ears.”
Zek came out of the bathroom. “How about Freya?”
“You have already thought about this.”
“Just a little. During my research, I learned that your name, Saga is
associated with a goddess named Frigg. I don’t know what it means to be
associated with a different person, but I don’t much care for Frigg. I do,
however, like Freya, which is somehow associated with Frigg. I don’t know
what that means for its relationship with Saga, but I think it suits you
either way.”
“Fine with me. Freya it is,” the newly reborn Freya affirmed.
“Now, is that Freyja with a j, or just a y-a?” asked some stranger in their
hotel room.
“Whoa! I’m sorry, but who are you?”
The stranger looked confused. “I...I’m Nadia.”
Freya continued to look confused and disturbed with her eyes, and widened
her mouth like a smile to offer this Nadia person more time to elaborate.
“You may have heard of The Historian...?”
“Oh. That’s you?” Freya asked. That’s Freya, with a y-a.
“Okay, I got it, Superintendent,” Nadia said with a roll of her eyes. Don’t
you roll your eyes at me. “Oh, forgive me, Your Grace.” You are forgiven.
“Are you...speaking with The Superintendent right now?” Freya asked.
Nadia was writing in her book. “F-R-E-Y-A. What was that? Oh, yes, he’s
being a di—uhhhhh...lightful supreme being. He’s being..great.”
“Why do you need her new name?” Zek asked, changing the subject back. “I
mean, it’s cool you know, but for what specific purpose?”
“Um, she can’t just change her name, and expect everyone to start using it
all of the sudden. When the Shapers go to a new time period, I have to
manipulate reality to account for their new identities. When Lowell Benton
changed Jeremy’s name from J.B., I had to update our records. Otherwise, he
would have to start correcting people one-by-one, and that is so tedious.
It’s much easier if I just send out a psychic blast. From now on, most of
the people you run into who already knew you should now start using the new
name. There may be a few glitches.”
“Well...” Freya began. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Nadia replied. “I’m also here for another reason. This belongs
to you.” She handed Zek a business card. There was no writing on it, but it
was covered in colors.
“What is this?” Zek asked.
“Rendezvous card,” Nadia said cryptically. “It’s up to you to figure out how
to use it. Be at that location, and someone you’re supposed to meet will
arrive as well.”
“Sounds like you’re not going to tell us who it is,” Freya presumed.
“I don’t know who it is. I just found it as a bookmark on your title page,
and I know what it does. I couldn’t tell you if it’s a mission, or someone
you’ve been looking for, or what, but someone has decided to put you two
together, so go on and find out.”
“Thank you again,” Zek echoed.
Nadia softened her smile, and raised her hands in front of her stomach,
pinkies together, palms up. She ceremoniously closed them together, as if
shutting an invisible book, which served to fold her own body into a
two-dimensional object, and make her disappear.
“This is a distraction,” Freya told Zek.
“We don’t know that.”
“We’re supposed to be looking for something called The Transit. That’s what
Vearden said. That’s going to help us end this once and for all.”
“Have faith in the process, Freya. Now, I think I know how to work this
thing. Hold onto my shoulder.”
“Okay,” Freya conceded.
Necessary Evil
The new team continued talking, asking questions, and arguing. Freya was
used to being conscripted for missions, and fighting for causes she didn’t
know anything about. It was just part of her life, so even though she wasn’t
sure she wanted to do this, it was no longer in her nature to try to get out
of it. These other people had no such experiences. They were polite and
careful, but didn’t just agree to this blindly. If there was one thing Freya
learned about the Maramon, it was that they weren’t very cunning, and they
did not play the long game. If one of them approached you, and asked for
your help, they were probably—honestly—one of the good ones, and knew that
you were good too. Good Maramon like Khuweka were rare, and seemed to only
become that way after spending time with decent human beings, but they were
not raised as such. They developed in a universe that was literally smaller
than most, and suffered a lack of resources beyond most people’s
conceptions. They were angry and spiteful, and they only ever showed
potential for change on the individual level, when they were removed from
society, and their people’s bizarre worldview.
As one might expect, the ethicist, Professor Spellmeyer was the hardest to
convince, while Limerick was the easiest. He didn’t know anything about the
Ochivari, but he deliberately chose to think of them as insects, rather than
insectoids, which would make wiping them out less like genocide, and more
like large scale pest control. The Ochivari were somehow dragonfly-based,
but they were not dragonflies, and did not evolve from them. According to
what little data people were able to gather on them, their skin looked like
that of a bug’s, but it was not an exoskeleton, and they were shaped like
humans, complete with arms, legs, fingers, and toes. Their wings were not
useless, but they did not allow them to fly. They used them in battle, to
blow gusts of winds at their opponent, or to dodge attacks. They were very
fragile, however, and even though damaging one didn’t cause too terribly
much pain for the victim, they weren’t likely to heal, and doing so did
lessen any advantage they had.
Freya called all this the source variant, which was a term one of her
friends coined to refer to a subspecies that developed on an alien planet.
They originally came from human DNA, which was shipped across the galaxy,
and seeded on other habitable worlds. So they came from humans, but each
unique environment shaped each unique population in unique ways. By being
exposed to a different atmospheric composition, being fed different foods,
and possibly by interstellar radiation, their genetic make-up was
transformed into something different; probably always humanoid, but
rarely—if ever—passably human. Freya and Zektene spent time on a planet with
two of these source variants. The Orothsew were human-based, and the
Gondilak Maramon-based. It was kind of a coincidence that both parent
species chose to seed life on the same planet, except it wasn’t that
far-fetched, because there were a finite number of hospitable worlds
available, and humans wanted to live everywhere they possibly could.
The Ochivari were presumably created in the same way as the Orothsew, but on a second
planet that they called Worlon. One of them came to Orolak once, intending
to bring death and destruction to all inhabitants. When Freya and Zek left,
the people they left behind were working on defending Orolak from this
threat. The two of them made it their responsibility to go on the offense,
so while they weren’t happy about the temporal genocide, it would accomplish
what they set out to do, and bonus, they weren’t going to have to do it alone.
The engineer, Carbrey was either massaging his eyes, or trying to pluck them
out with his fingers. He was not being gentle, because this was stressing
him out so much. “Let me get this straight. You want me to build a spaceship
from scratch that can travel at superluminal speeds. We don’t have that on
my Earth.” He was more concerned with the logistics than the ethics, which
was fine because they probably needed a break from the intense debate.
“Well, you won’t have to build it from nothing,” Khuweka clarified. “The
humans in this time period have interstellar ship technology today. They’re
just lacking our speed requirements, which I will procure from The
Shortlist. I just don’t want to take a preexisting ship, because we would
have to steal it.”
“What is the Shortlist?” Limerick asked, interested in it because it sounded
ominous and cool. Freya didn’t know either.
“The Shortlist is a group of incredibly bright and busy women who are
responsible for time travel technology in this universe,” Khuweka explained.
“Most of the galaxy is not allowed to have their technology, because it
would screw things up. If we want the specifications of the reframe engine,
we will have to put in a request to them. Or at least, we might. I’ll
contact the inventor first. She may be able to sign off on it without a full
council meeting.”
“Okay,” Zek said, “who is this inventor, and how do we get in touch with
her?”
“Her name is Hokusai Gimura,” Khuweka revealed.
“Oh, we know her,” Freya realized. “She’s the one trying to protect Orolak
from the Ochivari.”
“Yes,” Khuweka began. “While that won’t happen for another two thousand some
odd years, I believe the Hokusai living on the Earth at the moment has
already experienced that in her personal timeline. I’m not sure, though, so
careful what you say.”
“She’s on Earth right now?” Zek asked.
“Yes,” Khuweka began, “living alone on the beach in a place formerly known
as Dounreay, United Kingdom.”
“She’s alone?” Freya pressed. “Does she want visitors?”
“If she wants us to leave, we’ll leave, and if we have to do that, we’ll try
to reach the Shortlist, and perhaps a younger Madam Gimura will be more
agreeable. For now, Miss Cormanu, could you please teleport us to that
location?”
“Dounreay?”
“Dounreay.”
“I can only take two by two,” Zek explained.
“That’s fine.
They made the trip halfway across the globe, and ended up on the shore of
the North Atlantic Ocean. A little hut had been erected several meters away,
really just large enough for one person; two, if they were fine being close
to each other. Someone was lounging back in a chair on the approximation of
a front porch. They approached, and found her to be Hokusai Gimura, but a
much, much older version of her.
“Madam Gimura,” Khuweka greeted her. “My name is Khuweka Kadrioza. You may
also call me Keynote, if you’d like.”
“Just set it over there,” the old Hokusai said, haphazardly pointing to the
ground beside her.
“Set what over here?”
Hokusai finally turned to look at who she was talking to, tipping her
sunglasses down to get a better view. “Oh, I thought you were a...never
mind. What can I help you with?”
“We were hoping to procure the plans for the reframe engine. I’m sure you
have reserva—” Khuweka interrupted herself when she noticed Hokusai tapping
on her wristband. “Umm...”
A flashcard popped out of the wristband. Hokusai sighed as she removed the
card from its slot, and dropped it into Khuweka’s hand. “There ya go.”
“You don’t wanna know what we’re gonna use it for? I have this whole speech
about necessary evil.”
“I don’t give a shit anymore. I’m tired.”
“We’re sorry to have bothered you,” Freya jumped in.
Now Hokusai perked up. “Madam Einarsson?”
“Miss,” Freya corrected. “Never married.”
“Oh, you’re the other one, that’s right. Anywho, I have a very busy day of
not engineering any inventions. You may stay if it strikes your fancy, but
when the sunglasses go on, the mouth goes off, ya dig?”
Khuweka carefully dropped the flashcard into Carbrey’s hand, like it was
radioactive. “Maybe someday. You take care of yourself, Madam Gimura.”
Hokusai just nodded her head. She must have been through a lot since Freya
last saw her. Time travel will do that to you, and who knew who she lost
along the way? Her wife, Loa was conspicuously missing.
“We’ll be on this planet for the next two years or so,” Freya told her after
the rest of the group had started walking back down the beach, even though
they could teleport from anywhere. “I don’t have a phone number or anything,
though...”
“I won’t need anything,” Hokusai promised. “Thanks for the sentiment.”
Freya just kept watching her with a sad panda face, even as Zektene started
transporting the team back to home base.
“Really, I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me. Just kill those dragonfly
mother fuckers. Kill them all.” So she already knew.
Zek offered to leave Freya there, so she could have a deeper conversation
with Hokusai, but they all knew that wasn’t what Hokusai wanted. They just
went back to where they were, an underground facility in what was once
called Kansas.
They watched as Carbrey inserted the flashcard into the reader, and opened
up the files. It took him a moment to get used to the system. Different
universe, different way to use computers. He picked it up pretty quickly,
and started looking over the data that Hokusai had given them. “Hmm.”
“What?” Khuweka asked.
“No, it’s just...it’s an interesting way to look at faster-than-light
travel. I mean it’s just warp speed, but the math works out a lot easier
this way. Anyone with a second-level higher degree would be able to decipher
this, except...”
“Except what?” Limerick asked.
“I don’t know what this thing is.” Carbrey pointed at the screen.
“Oh, that’s the cylicone,” Khuweka started to explain. “Vital to any time
tech. It’s what makes it work, and why a post-grad has no chance of
stumbling upon the secret.”
“People aren’t allowed to know about this?” Carbrey questioned.
“Time travelers only,” Freya answered.
“For now,” Khuweka added cryptically. “Can you do it? This world has
nanotechnology and ninety-nine automation. All you need to do is make sure
everything runs smoothly. Two years should be no problem, but if we don’t
make that goal, we really will have to go back in time. I don’t want that
seed plate landing on Worlon, and so much as starting to create the
Ochivari.”
Carbrey took in a breath, and looked back at the data. “I don’t know how
your tech works, so there will be a learning curve. I can’t promise two
years just because of that. I’ll go as fast as I can, though.”
“I think you can do it,” Khuweka said confidently. “Like I said, it’s all
automated. Spaceships aren’t run by pilots, or even astronauts. They’re run
by AI, regulated by engineers, like yourself.”
“All right,” Carbrey said. He went back to the computer.
“What are we going to do for the next two years?” Limerick asked as the
group was stepping away to give their engineer some space.
“Hopefully we’ll be discussing this matter further,” Andraste recommended.
“It’s fine he starts working on that thing, but we are nowhere near done
yet.”
Khuweka was trying very hard not to roll her eyes. “Very well, Professor
Spellmeyer. Let’s do an exercise called Devil’s Advocate. Professor, since
you’re so adamantly opposed to this idea—”
“That’s not what I’m doing here,” Andraste argued.
“How do you mean?”
“I’m not opposed to the idea,” Andraste continued. “I just want to make sure
you’ve considered the ramifications of your choices. Ethicists don’t take
sides. We provide facts, or provide ways of determining facts.”
“Well, is anyone actually opposed?” Khuweka opened up the floor. “The
Devil’s Advocate exercise only works when someone wants to do it, and
someone doesn’t, so they can switch places, and argue each other’s
position.” She waited for someone to say something, but everything they had
heard about the Ochivari, and what they had done, had seemed to erase any
true reservations they had. Andraste would probably always be wary—as would
peaceable healer, Landis—even after the mission was over, but that didn’t
mean they weren’t going to go through with it. “Okay,” Khuweka said with an
air of finality. “We will continue to refine our methods, and contemplate
the ethics, but I think it’s time we agree that this is happening, in one
form or another. For now, let me introduce you to this fun little game I
found out about called RPS-1o1 Plus.”
The Ends Justify the Means
Carbrey spent about a month studying this universe’s technology, so he would
understand how it worked before he even thought about engineering something
real. He picked it up pretty quickly seeing as the tech wasn’t too
dissimilar to what he was used to, but he said he would rather be safe than
sorry. The laws of physics, he claimed, were exactly the same, so that was
nice. The facility they were staying in was mostly a gigantic underground
hangar, with a few other rooms attached to it. They each had their own place
to sleep, but it was nothing fancy. This place was obviously not designed
for boarding. Freya wondered what they once kept in here, and why it was
abandoned. While they were relatively close to the nearest population center
in Kansas City, Khuweka assured them that no regular human would show up. A
few temporal manipulators were aware of it, but none had much reason to use
it in this particular time period. There appeared to be at least one,
though. They were eating lunch together in the middle of the hangar when a
ceiling suddenly appeared above their heads, starting from a single point,
and then extending outwards. Of course, there already was a ceiling, but it
was many stories above them. This one was only a few stories up, and while
that was more than enough room to clear their heads, the force of its abrupt
arrival knocked them all to the floor.
“What the hell just happened?” Limerick asked as he was sitting up and
massaging his head.
“I don’t know,” Khuweka said honestly. She had been thrown down as well, but
Maramon were physically superior to humans, so she wasn’t hurt at all.
Andraste, on the other hand, was very hurt. Blood was seeping out of the
back of her head, and spreading out on the floor. Her eyes were closed, and
she wasn’t moving. When Landis saw this, he started crawling towards her.
His wing appeared to be hurt as well, perhaps broken, but he knew that
Andraste was priority. He took a deep breath, and exhaled over Andraste’s
body. “Injuries heal faster than terminal diseases,” he explained, “but it
will still be a few minutes.”
“What if she’s dead already?” Zektene asked. “I don’t mean to be negative,
but can you cure death?”
“Death is a process,” Landis answered. “It doesn’t happen in one moment. I
can’t go digging up graves, but if she died, it was quite recent, so it
should be fine. She will not have even experienced permanent brain damage,
which is the one thing I cannot repair.”
“Khuweka,” Carbrey began, “what is that thing?”
“I think it’s a ship,” Limerick assumed right.
“Zek,” Khuweka said, “could you take Mister Genovese to investigate? Jump
back here at the first sign of trouble.”
“Okay,” Zek replied. She took Carbrey by the hand, and teleported away.
A minute later, Andraste sat up, and checked the back of her head, not out
of pain, but because it was still wet with her blood. “What happened?”
They told her.
“Do you feel okay?” Freya asked.
“I feel great,” she answered. She started opening and closing her hands. “I
think my arthritis is gone.”
“Yes,” Landis said. “I’m a holistic healer. I couldn’t cure only one disease
or injury if I wanted. It’s all or nothing.”
“We should all get treated,” Limerick suggested excitedly. “I know my liver
could use a little TLC. You guys know what that acronym means?”
“Yes,” they replied in unison.
Five minutes later, Zek and Carbrey reappeared before them. “It’s an
interplanetary warship called The Sharice Davids.”
They all looked to Freya. “I’ve never heard of it. Sorry.”
“Is there anyone in it?” Khuweka asked.
“Totally empty,” Zek said.
“Based on what little of the system I saw,” Carbrey started to say, “an
emergency escape maneuver recently completed its sequence. It was traveling
all throughout time and space, spending only seconds at any one point,
evidently so no one would have time to board it. It had to stop eventually,
though. This last jump depleted it of all its power, except for what little
was able to eke out in order for me to get this information, but then it
died completely.”
Limerick was staring up at the bottom of the vessel admiringly. “We should
keep it.”
“It isn’t ours,” Khuweka argued.
“Why did you choose this hangar?”
“Because no one else was using it.”
“No one else is using this ship either.”
“You don’t know when they’ll be coming back,” she contended. She turned to
face Freya. “It is your job on this team to know these things, or find out.
Please make some inquiries for us. Meanwhile, Carbrey, power up some of the
internal systems, just to gather more information. We’ll only refuel if we
all decide we’re allowed to.”
“How do I...?” Freya began to ask, but thought better of it. She was right,
this was her job. She had to figure this out herself, or she should just
quit. Out of everyone here, she was the most dedicated to the cause. Not
even Zek totally wanted to be here. She mostly joined the mission in the
first place because she didn’t want Freya to be alone. “I’ll take care of
it.”
“I’ll go with you,” Zek offered for the upteenth time.
“Good, because I need a ride to Giza.”
They teleported to the benbenet of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was
invisible to all who did not know it was still there. A man was standing
before them. “Stargazer,” Freya began, “you once told me that you owed me a
favor, even though I had done nothing for you.”
“Not you, per se,” Stargazer corrected. “I consider alternates to be equals.
Another version of Saga helped, and I honor that.”
“But if you do me a favor, am I not taking it from her?”
“You are not. What can I help you with?”
“We need to find someone familiar with advanced temporal technology,
specifically in regards to a spaceship,” Zek said.
“This is my friend, Zektene Cormanu,” Freya explained. Stargazer was polite
and accommodating, but wary of strangers. “She’s cool.”
He nodded with his eyes closed, then turned to Zek. “What time period?”
“This one, I think,” Zek answered. “It’s called The Sharice Davids.”
Stargazer was taken aback. “That should not be here in this moment. You must
take it away. It is too dangerous. The future depends on no one else ever
finding out it survived. I didn’t even know, and must now have my memories
erased once you leave to protect it.”
“We’re sorry,” Freya said with a frown.
“No, it’s quite all right. It’s good that you came to me, since I know what
to do with this information.”
“It’s only an interplanetary ship,” Zek pointed out. “Where could we
possibly hide it?”
He shook his head. “It was designed to protect against external threats to
the solar system, but it eventually became outdated, and time travelers
later retrofitted it with interstellar capabilities. It was destroyed before
reaching its first exoplanet, so if it was put back together, it means some
very powerful people came back to reclaim it for themselves. You cannot let
that happen, so you cannot trust anyone.”
Freya looked for answers in the layer of sand on the floor. “There might be
a way to get rid of it.”
“Tell me nothing,” Stargazer warned before she could continue. “I’m happy to
erase my memories, but the less I ever knew, the safer the information will
be.”
“Understood,” Zek said. “But just to be clear, there is no one in this
timeline who deserves this? Does it not belong to someone else?”
“It does,” Stargazer confirmed, “but it is best that they also believe it
was destroyed. The knowledge should not go further than you two.”
They winced.
“You’re not the only two, are you?”
Freya straightened up, and put on her poker face. “I will tell you nothing.
No comment.”
He smiled. “Good. Carry on.”
They returned to the hangar, but no one was there. A hatch was open on the
bottom of the Sharice, suggesting that everyone made their way into it while
they were gone. Zek transported Freya up to the bridge, and then began
sweeping the corridors using a series of rapid jumps. A minute later, she
returned to ferry Freya to the group. They were in an auxiliary control
room, which Carbrey said was where the emergency temporal displacement drive
was housed. Based on its remoteness and lack of signage, he guessed that
very few people were made aware that this TDD existed. Freya and Zek relayed
what they had learned from Stargazer, and it seemed to mesh well with what
Carbrey was able to learn from the computers.
“So, not only can we take it, but we actually should?” Limerick was happy to
hear this.
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Khuweka disagreed. “Stargazer wants us to get
this thing out of the timeline, and the safest way to do that is by sending
it to some other universe. That’s not something we can do, and even if we
could, we need a ship to get to Worlon first, and this can’t do that if it’s
supposed to remain a secret.”
“Aren’t we going to Worlon before anyone else arrives?” Andraste reminded
her. “We should be able to keep it secret until the mission is over. Perhaps
this is fate. It certainly came at the opportune time. Mr. Genovese was just
about to start building us a new one, and now he doesn’t have to.”
“It’s not that simple,” Carbrey said, pulling himself away from the screen.
“I was working on a minimalist design. It would incorporate the reframe
engine, but it was otherwise only large enough to accommodate the seven of
us. This thing is far more than we need, and I don’t think it has a reframe
engine.”
“We don’t need it if we can travel through time,” Limerick noted.
Carbrey shook his head. “The TDD is gone. It was only ever meant to be
activated once, and as it was sending the ship to this last location, it
evidently self-destructed somewhere else in time. The logs called it a...”
he squirted at the screen, and rediscovered what he read before, “Lucius
last resort. Whatever that means.”
Something was distracting Freya from the conversation. “Landis, are you
still hurt? Can’t you heal yourself.”
“I can’t,” Landis answered. “I cannot heal myself. After I got my foundation
going, my security detail was composed of hundreds of people.”
“Anyway. I think we’re destined to use it.” Limerick was so sure of himself.
“Build the reframe engine thing, put it in here, and let’s get on with it. I
know it’s not easy, but you still have two years.”
“That doesn’t help us with the real problem,” Khuweka reminded him. “Once we
destroy the Ochivari, someone would have to take the ship to the
Triangulum galaxy, or something. I’m not sure anywhere is safe, not when
considering time travelers.”
“I thought you said I could travel to other universes,” Limerick said.
“Yeah, you can, and other people can follow you through. You can’t create a
shatter portal large enough for a spaceship, and even if you could, you
can’t breathe in outer space. You would have to be outside the ship to make
it happen. Look, the Sharice came back here for a reason. It believes this
is the safest place for it. I say Carbrey builds us what he was going to all
along, and we just leave it alone.”
“I can’t accept that,” Limerick fought. This is a warship, and we’re in a
war. And who knows, maybe our mission will change enough about the future to
stop these evil future people from even existing? I say the ends justify the
means.”
“I agree with him,” Freya finally said. They looked at her, a little shocked, but not completely surprised. They knew she was all gung ho about killing the Ochivari, but she was also quite protective of her universe, and if keeping this ship around put it in danger, was that worth the risk? As they were arguing, she was working
through that conundrum in her head, and ultimately decided that yes, it was.
“We don’t know what we’re going to encounter out there, and this is our best
shot at surviving. If we don’t succeed, we can use this in the war, and
we’ll always keep it far enough away from whoever is trying to steal it. I
don’t know how we’ll actually get the damn thing to another universe, but
that’s not our problem at the moment. Let’s stop the Ochivari, then worry
about that later. Hell, we might even find a solution on Worlon. We still
don’t know how it is they were born with the ability to bulkverse travel.
Perhaps it has something to do with their home planet. We can take whatever
that is for ourselves.”
“I think it’s too dangerous,” Khuweka said, shaking her head slowly. “But I
am nothing if not a fair leader. I will concede to whatever the group
decides.”
They continued discussing, letting Andraste moderate the debate. In the end,
they decided to use the Sharice Davids towards their own goals. At least if
they always had it with them, they could control other people’s cognizance
of it. They figured it was better than just leaving it here, and hoping that no
one happened to show up.
I Did What I Had To
The problem with keeping The Sharice Davids—and this would be true of any
ship, though there would be less at stake—was that they needed to get the
vessel off the ground, and onto a vector without anyone outside the team
noticing. There were ships that were capable of doing this, but they had to
be quite small, and there was about a fifty-fifty chance of death. It was
called darkbursting, and the downside to being invisible was that everything
else was invisible to those in the ship as well. Even if the Sharice was
capable of darkbursting, Carbrey would have to very carefully plot a path
through interplanetary space without hitting anything, but also without
being able to course correct. Again, though, it was impossible for an object
of this mass anyway because it wasn’t small enough to be mistaken for space
debris. Small objects did not appear on any but the finest of sensors, but
while The Sharice was no interstellar colony ship, it was hard to miss.
“If I could still turn this thing invisible, I would,” Khuweka lamented.
“You used to be able to do that?” Limerick asked.
“I used to be able to do a lot of things,” Khuweka answered. “I could
teleport anywhere in the world, I could diagnose any medical condition, lots
of stuff. Then it all got taken away by a base modification in
bladapodoverse.”
“What the hell is that?” Limerick pressed.
“On that version of Earth, there are these little creatures called
bladapods. They release this sort of gas, which gets into everything, and
changes it in unpredictable ways. I once met a woman with literal eyes in
the back of her head. She had a son who could only speak in a sarcastic
tone. And they lived in a house with constantly changing paint color.
Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s good, and other times it’s whatever. For
me, it was bittersweet. My powers made me really popular, but that came with
the same downsides that any celebrity experiences.”
“So, that’s all it did?” Zektene asked. “They removed your other powers?”
“Well, they made it so that I bleed out of my fingers every few months until
I’m pretty much dry. Obviously it replenishes, but the more it happens, the
weaker my abilities get. I can technically still do it.” She looked around
until spotting a bottle of water on the table. She concentrated on it for a
few moments until it disappeared. Then she picked up, and drank from it,
showing that it was still there, just hidden.
“If you’re still capable of it, then I might be able to help,” Zek offered.
“My abilities were created in a lab, and passed down the generations until
evolving into something stable and usable. The scientists weren’t just
working on teleportation, though. I remember one experiment they designed to
enhance other people’s abilities. I never met this person in my reality, but
they may exist in the reality that supplanted it. I think it’s worth a shot
if Limerick here really is capable of traveling the bulkverse.”
“I am!” Limerick protested. “I think. I am, right? That’s what you said.”
“You are, yes,” Khuweka confirmed. “You ever try to punch someone, but you
miss, and hit a wall, except there is no wall, it was just air?”
“I know I’m a drunk.”
“No, that’s what you’re doing,” Khuweka tried to explain. “When you punch at
seemingly nothing, at the right spot, you can start weakening a point we
sometimes like to call a thinny. If you continue to strike at it, this
thinny will break, and you can cross over. Others can follow if the portal
is large enough to stay open before spacetime heals itself.”
“Wait,” Limerick began, “do I have the ability to punch these so-called
thinnies because I’m a bastard brawler, or am I bastard brawler because I
can punch thinnies?”
“That I do not know,” Khuweka answered sincerely. “I have never heard of
anyone who was born with this ability. Meliora learned it after spending
centuries in a persistent meditative state. Zoey has to use a knife. Joseph
has his coat. Every other form of bulkverse travel ultimately came from a
single people’s ultimate invention, and they spent literal aeons working on
it. It is an incredibly rare gift, even more so when you can grasp how
unfathomably large the bulkverse really is. You are unique among
undecillions upon undecillions of people, and I have no clue where you get
it.”
Limerick acted like he had never heard anyone say anything nice about him
before. He didn’t cry, or even tear up,but he did have to straighten himself
out, and act like he had been there before. “Okay. So I just need to punch
hard enough for everyone to get through? Doesn’t sound so hard.”
“Not everyone needs to get through,” Khuweka clarified. “It’s my problem,
I’ll go alone.”
“That’s stupid,” Zek argued. “I’m the one familiar with that universe, so I
will go escort you.”
“We’ll all go,” Andraste corrected. “If we’re going to be a team, then let’s
be a team. I hear tell her universe is parked right next to mine. I should
quite like to see that.”
“You won’t recognize it,” Khuweka warned Zek.
“Didn’t think I would.”
“It may be dangerous,” Khwueka continued.
Freya placed her hand on Khuweka’s shoulder, though it was highly
uncomfortable, because of how tall she was. “We’re going. Limerick, do
whatcha gotta do.”
Limerick took a breath. “Nobody help me. I wanna see if I can figure it out
on my own.” He tried to punch the air, and honestly, it looked a little
pathetic. “Forget you saw that. I’ve never swung this arm sober before, it
don’t feel right.” He prepared himself, and tried again. His had better form
this time, but still nothing happened.
“You have to find a thinny,” Khuweka reminded him. “It’s the difference
between hitting a concrete wall, or solid wood. They’re both difficult, but
the first one is nearly impossible. It might not be pleasant if you’re not
inebriated. It might hurt.”
“No, I wanna do this clean. You were right, I haven’t felt this good since I
was eight years old. Maybe you can teach me how to find a thinny, though?”
Khuweka walked him through the process of locating the weak spots in the
spacetime continuum. They were all over the place, but ephemeral. And it
wasn’t something a normal person could exploit for their own purposes. In
fact, they were largely undetectable. Machines like The Crossover were so
large that they could punch through that proverbial concrete wall at any
spot, so no technology existed that could find them. That was just one more
way that he was one of a kind. He did have his limitations, though. Not all
universes were open to him. They had to be part of a network of bridges
created by others, and these bridges could only be accessed at certain
points in spacetime. Other bulkverse travelers had more freedom, but his
gift was still impressive.
Limerick found his point of entry, and got to punching. It took him about a
half hour to get all the way through, but Khuweka assured him that he would
get better over time. He did have to keep going through all of it, however,
because like an antlion’s pit-trap, the thinny would always start repairing
itself as soon as he let go. Once he was finished, Landis and Carbrey helped
him through the portal he had just created, following Khuweka on the
frontline. Andraste went through next, followed by Freya and Zektene.
Limerick was instructed how to find a good egress location, using a psychic
connection he evidently enjoyed with the bulkverse itself. They didn’t want
to come out in the middle of a highway, or something, and Khuweka in
particular needed to keep a low profile. Unfortunately, as this was
Limerick’s first sober shatter portal, he didn’t get it quite right, and
instead of the middle of the woods, they ended up in a park. By the time
Freya got all the way through, the children and their parents had already
stopped the fun they were having, and were staring at Khuweka’s unfamiliar
appearance. They didn’t seem frightened, and no one tried to rush their kids
away, but they were exuding optimistic caution.
A woman in a construction outfit was the only one brave enough to approach
the team. “Where did you come from?” She was asking in order to obtain the
information, not because she had never seen anything like it before.
“Let’s just say...another world,” Khuweka answered, using her own caution.
The construction worker nodded. “You probably ought to check in with
Bellevue.”
“Is that a city, or...” Andraste began.
“It’s a city, and an agency,” the woman replied. “I believe they have a
field office downtown, but Bellevue Proper is thousands of naykos away.”
No one seemed to have heard of that form of measurement before, but it
sounded like miles or kilometers. She surely wouldn’t be talking about feet.
“If you show us where it is on a map, we can get there on our own,” Zek told
her.
“A teleporter, okay.” She pulled up her phone, and found Bellevue on the
map.
Zek began to ferry the team there two at a time, saving Freya for last, who
was able to see how indifferent the crowd was to seeing someone teleport.
She couldn’t help but notice how different it looked. Normally, Zek would
just disappear, but here she turned a shade of purple, and visible strands
of energy flowed around her body. Before Freya too left, the children had
already returned to their fun and games, having seen this sort of thing
before.
They walked into the lobby of what, honestly, looked more like a hotel than
some kind of government agency headquarters. The receptionist smiled at
them, took down their info, and relayed it to the appropriate
representative. Then she asked them to sit in the waiting room. No one else
there was the least bit concerned about Khuweka’s form. This seemed like a
nice world.
Five minutes later, a man came down from the hallway, and started shaking
everyone’s hand. “Hello, my name is Luka Drake, Head of Base Security. Come
with me to Conference Room C, if you will?” He led them down another
hallway, and into the room. “Where are you all from?”
“Can we be perfectly candid?” Khuweka asked.
“I wish you would,” Luka confirmed.
“We are from a parallel universe. Actually, multiple universes. Now, you may
have heard of alternate realities.”
He waved off the rest of her explanation. “We are aware of the bulkverse. We
try to stick to the Composite Universe and Universe Prime, in order to avoid
any temporal confusion. And we don’t crossover often.”
“Unfortunately, we do not have this luxury,” Khuweka continued. “You see, we
are at war. At war with a race known as the Ochivari.”
He nodded. “I have never heard of them. Perhaps we simply use different
words. Our historical records speak of a multiversal threat called the
Maramon.”
“That is my race,” Khuweka revealed. “They are truly a threat as well,
however a team is already working on that problem. I have assigned myself
the Ochivari threat. We are attempting to quash them before they can even
evolve. We were hoping to encounter an anomaly who can enhance my
associate’s teleporting abilities. Our world is unaware of the threat, and
we would like to launch from the surface without their knowledge, to protect
them from the truth.”
“You betrayed your own race to help humans?”
“I did what I had to,” Khuweka said. “Still do.”
“Understood. So you’re looking for an anomaly who can enhance your
abilities,” Luka echoed. “I have not seen Ambrose Richardson in quite some
time, and we are not presently cognizant of his whereabouts. There are two
options after that, but you will need Savitri’s permission for the first,
and the agency’s permission for the second. The second is a permanent
solution, albeit a bit less stable.”
“You know Savitri?” Khuweka asked, surprised.
“Not personally, but it was through studying her that our scientists were
able to come up with a technological adaptation. We’re working on a drug,
but it is not yet ready. We’ve had some bad history with
ability-enhancement, and besides, that would only work on an anomaly.”
“I’m an anomaly,” Zek told him.
He was shocked. “You are?”
“I’m from an alternate timeline. I went back in time, and erased myself from
the future. That’s how I ultimately ended up on this team, and how you ended
up existing. Bellevue’s not a thing where I’m from.”
“Hmm...” Luka contemplated this new information. “As an anomaly, you are
entitled to join the drug trial, if you would like. I can get you in quick
for the price of an account of this alternate reality you come from.”
Zek looked to Khuweka for any hint that she should say no. Khuweka gave
none. “Well, okay. I don’t see why not.”
Luka smiled. “I could probably throw in a booster platform if you also tell
us what you know about these Ochivari. It enhances your power as long as
you’re using it, and it’s designed to work with anyone, not just anomalies.
Success not guaranteed, however; not with either of them. Only Savitri
herself can guarantee results.”
“We’ll take it,” Limerick exclaimed. “Madam Kadrioza, tell the man what you
know.”
“Hold on,” Andraste stopped them. “Let’s make sure we all know the details,
and what’s at stake. I want to know more about this drug, and how far along
you are in your research and development process. We are time travelers, let
us not rush this.”
Critical Existence Failure
The team spent over a standard month in the Composite Universe, which
was closer to six weeks in Earthan terms. The natives measured time
differently. They learned a lot of things from these people while they were
there, eventually figuring out that a nayko was equal to 2.442 kilometers.
There was no Earth in this universe, but there were plenty of humans. Nearly
all of them spoke English—though they did not call it that—and while they
were genetically incompatible with people from other universes, they were
indistinguishable in most cases. In a more taboo sense, men did not have
scrota, so there were ways to tell the difference without a DNA test.
The information they gave Bellevue was invaluable to them, so much so that
they agreed to give the team anything they wanted. Khuweka possessed a lot
of knowledge about the Maramon, and their tactics, and Landis regaled them
with fascinating tales of the voldisil. They even found Andraste’s input
incredibly useful. People from her Earth were well known to the people in
this universe, and they were decidedly off-limits. It was like the Prime
Directive, except it only applied to this one planet. The chance to speak
with one was a great honor to them, and they did not take it for granted.
Earthan input was highly coveted on its own merits, as they had a completely
different perspective, especially when it came to philosophy and psychology.
Drug addiction was practically non-existent here, but not completely.
Understanding how to help the few addicts they did have was something they
had been struggling with for millennia.
Freya felt pretty useless here, as she had little to contribute. Her entire
reason for being on the team was to help them navigate her universe. Not
only was that probably not all that necessary at all, but it certainly
didn’t help here. Faster-than-light travel was ubiquitous in the galaxy,
except for the planet they were on right now, and even they were nearing
these technological capabilities as well. Freya was able to give her
insights about the Maramon, having spent time studying their descendants,
the Gondilak, but that wasn’t much. Hopefully it was still useful
information, however, because it illustrated an emphasis on nurture against
nature, and suggested Maramon were the way they were by how they were
raised; not by some inherent evil that was impossible to be rid of. Bellevue
didn’t seem too bothered by how little Freya helped, but she did what she
could, including a lot of grunt work when it came to hauling the retrofits
back to salmonverse.
Bellevue gave them more than the power-enhancement platform, and the
promises Zektene’s oncoming drug experiment. They retrofitted The Sharice
Davids with its very own Nexus, which they could use to transport themselves
to anywhere in the network. They also installed something called an astral
collimator, which would allow them to enter their version of FTL known as
the orange plex dimension. It would probably do nothing for them in
salmonverse—or any other universe, for that matter—but it was nice to know
it was there. They enhanced the Sharice’s capabilities with gravity
transfunctioners, smaller transport ships with their own collimators, and
they finally got the pocket dimension generators working, which were already
there, but not yet in working order. It would seem Bellevue was even more
advanced than they let on. They were ready to explore the galaxy, they
simply hadn’t done much of it yet.
They had to travel back and forth from this universe to theirs a few times
to transport everything through, so Limerick managed to get a lot of
punching practice in. He was exhausted by the time it was over, but also a
pro now. There was only one thing left to do. While all of this was
happening, Zek was undergoing a battery of tests, first to prove she really
was an anomaly, and then so they could tailor the ability-enhancing drug
called Aukan to her physiology. They warned her of the risks, including
unforeseen side effects, and she agreed to take the drug anyway. It was for
a good cause, and she decided it was worth it.
They gathered in the infirmary, at Zek’s request, and watched as the doctor
injected her with the substance. He explained it while it was still working
her way through her system. “We have been working on this compound for
decades. It comes from an old drug program a rogue group of scientists came
up with that was dangerous and volatile. We’ve managed to correct their
mistakes since then, and Savitri has helped us immensely.” Evidently,
Khuweka and Savitri were part of a group of people who had lost their time
powers while they were just trying to help other people who wanted to be rid
of theirs. They went off on a quest to try to get them back, but the process
was interrupted, and they all ended up just sharing each other’s powers.
Soon thereafter, they were stranded in separate universes, and some, like
Savitri, lived there without the others for centuries.
Zek reported a deep but dull pain throughout her entire body. While a nurse
for a time traveling doctor named Sarka, Freya once got hurt herself, and
was given narcotics. She recalled feeling heavy and stiff, and believed she
could detect the blood moving throughout her body. This was what it looked
like for Zek. It was surreal and uncomfortable, but at least not
excruciating. Then it got excruciating. She started writhing and screaming,
and the medical team had to hold her down. Landis tried to help, but they
fiercely rejected his interference. There was no telling what would happen
if their completely different kinds of powers interacted with each other.
Zek turned blue, and not lack of oxygen blue, but a bright and glowing blue.
Electricity surged around her skin, which was what her version of
teleportation looked like, but only when she was in her home universe. It
wasn’t supposed to last this long, or be painful. She just kept tossing and
turning, and glowing brighter.
The blue light escaped from her body, and lit up the whole room. Then the
room disappeared. It didn’t blink out of existence, but slid away rapidly,
like they were on an extremely fast people mover at an airport. They were
outside the hotel headquarters, and then they were across town, and then the
state, and then the country. They flew across the ocean, through all the
lands on the other side. More ocean, more lands, more ocean, more lands.
They just kept circling the globe, randomly changing directions, sometimes
going straight through the planet, and back out the other side. They
appeared to be on the moon at one point too. They were falling and flying
and being shot out of a cannon. Finally they stopped being able to see the
world altogether, and were immersed in a sea of electric blue. It was hard
to tell if they were still moving, or static. Zektene finally stopped
thrashing about, though she appeared to still be in a little pain.
“Where the hell are we?” Freya demanded to know.
“This is an astral plane; the blue one,” the doctor explained.
“This is how she teleports in her universe,” Khuweka clarified. “She doesn’t
just jump from one point to another. She falls through a simplex dimension.”
No sooner did she say that did the lights turned from blue to a purplish
blue.
“Okay, that’s weird,” the doctor noted. “Now we’re in the indigo astral
plane.”
“One step lower than blue,” Khuweka added. “You can’t travel as far.”
The colors changed again, to full on purple.
“Okay, that’s bad,” the doctor said. “But we’ll be fine as long as it
doesn’t turn black.”
Everything turned black; a hopeless void of busy nothingness. No one was
talking anymore, but Freya still knew what they were thinking, like they
were all communicating telepathically now. Zek started screaming again, but
tapered off, not out of relief, but a lack of air. They sounded like the
life was being choked out of her, and she couldn’t move. Freya couldn’t move
either. She didn’t have a body anymore, just a noncorporeal mind. She
couldn’t help. She couldn’t save Zek. All she could do was listen to her
friend’s last thoughts as the space around her crushed her into a single
point. Ten seconds later, the lights turned on, and they were back in the
infirmary. Zek was gone, replaced by the largest diamond Freya had ever
seen. You would need two arms to lift it up, even for a really strong
person. You just couldn’t wrap your fingers around it with one hand.
“What happened to her?” Andraste wasn’t used to being so angry.
The doctor and her team looked ashamed and scared. She took off her
stethoscope, and placed it on the diamond.
“What the hell are you doing?” Limerick questioned.
The doctor placed her palm on the diamond now. A few seconds later, she
released. “It’s her.”
“What do you mean, it’s her?” Even Khuweka was lost.
The doctor sighed, distraught. She was trying to work through the problem.
“This is like the virus, but they cured that years ago.” She stopped a
moment, but didn’t wait long enough for anyone to press her for more
information. “The drug this was based off of, it worked. It worked fine. It
enhanced the anomaly abilities, sometimes even giving them related, but new,
abilities. It had side effects, though, eventually causing the anomaly’s
abilities to turn on them. Milo could no longer control magnets, but became
helplessly magnetic. Diane, who once controlled fire, exploded. A few people
experienced something called critical existence failure, which is worse than
it probably even sounds. This was all before my time, I’ve just read the
reports. They fixed that. They promised me they fixed it. This wasn’t
supposed to happen. They used Aukan-6, this is Aukan-11.”
“Answer her question. Clarify what you meant when you said it’s her,” Freya
demanded.
“Put your hand on the diamond.” The doctor took Freya by the wrist, and
gently placed her hand on one face of the diamond.
“Freya?” came Zek’s voice. It wasn’t coming from outside, but inside Freya’s
head. This was a psychic connection.
“You’re alive?” Freya questioned, both grateful for it, but horrified that
her friend was now somehow trapped inside a gemstone.
“My consciousness has survived. As for whether I’m alive, I could not answer
that question.”
“She’s in the diamond?” Freya asked the doctor.
“She has been turned into the diamond,” the doctor corrected. “Forced that
way by the incalculable pressure from the black astral plane. It’s like
being a one-dimensional object, I’m surprised the rest of us survived. We
must have enjoyed a persistent connection with the higher dimensions.”
“I’m not enjoying this,” Limerick contended.
“Can it be reversed?” Carbrey suggested.
“It cannot,” the doctor apologized. “I am...” she trailed off.
“Landis,” Andraste prompted.
Landis had been waiting for someone to ask him to do his thing. “I’m
obviously going to try. You cannot, however, get your hopes up. What’s
happened to her is nothing like I’ve seen before, but it is not unlike being
cremated. People have asked me to repair their cremated loved ones before,
and I haven’t had any bit of luck. I don’t bring people back to life. I just
heal them. At some point, they’re beyond my gifts. I would say being
transformed into a diamond goes far beyond that point of no return.”
Freya presented him with the Zek-diamond. He stepped forward, and placed his
hand on her so they could have some private conversation. Then he leaned
over, and breathed upon the stone. Nothing happened, nothing changed. It
didn’t even sort of almost begin to work, or even moderately illustrate that
he had any kind of supernatural gift at all. The rock just sat there. Zek
wasn’t gone, but she would never be the same.
Well-Intentioned Extremists
After debrief, Freya and the rest of the team went back to their universe.
Well, it wasn’t all of their universe, but this one certainly wasn’t home
for any of them. Not anymore. Had they stayed, the leadership at Bellevue
would have wanted to keep apologizing every five minutes until heat death
destroyed everything trillions of years later, and that wasn’t helping
anything. Zek could not be saved but for time travel, and that was against
policy on their world. Sure, Limerick could ultimately punch a portal, and
deliver them back to Zek’s universe in a moment before the first time they
showed up, but all that would do was create a copy of everyone. This version
of Zek would still be a diamond, and that would still be irreversible. The
remaining team members were silent and aimless when they returned to the
hangar underneath their newly retrofitted Sharice Davids. There was a
suggestion that they change the name, and everything else about its
appearance, in order to prevent anyone from ever realizing what ship it
truly was, but they hadn’t gotten around to that yet.
It took them a hot minute before they realized a stranger stood among them.
She was just standing there patiently, waiting to be addressed. “Um...who
are you?” Freya questioned.
“My name is Eliana Prime,” the stranger replied.
“Is that your real last name?” Limerick asked, fully aware that wasn’t
really the most pressing question here.
“It is a surname blend,” Eliana answered. “My parents were...complicated. I
didn't want to take either name, but also didn’t want to make up something
random.”
“What are you doing here?” Freya was in no mood to be polite.
“Now, hold on,” Khuweka warned. “She could very well have every right to be
here. We too are squatters.”
“I have no right to be here.” Eliana was quiet, even-tempered, and
presumably quite understanding. She seemed like the type of person who was
always open and honest, but never volunteered information, instead generally
only speaking when spoken to.
“Then why are you here?” Landis asked.
“Bellevue sent me as operational replacement for your original teleporter,
Zektene Cormanu. The keyword here is operational. I shall make no attempt to
instantiate myself into the social role she filled within the group. I am
only here to transport you where you need to go, and will do everything I
can to ease any thoughts you might have that I might have the expectation to
be accepted, or treated as one of you.”
Limerick stared at her blankly, nearly drooling on the floor as he did so.
“Did anyone else follow that? Because I did, I know what she said. I just
wanna make sure you’re all on our level.”
Khuweka sighed. “She wants to be our teleporter, but she understands she
cannot replace Zek as our friend.”
“How did you even get to this universe?” Carbrey asked her. “I went through
the portal last, and it closed right behind me. I would have seen you.”
“I can teleport through portals,” Eliana explained. “It’s a little like
jumping out of a train on a bridge, and landing on a plane as it’s taking
off below, but it can be done. Bellevue disapproved of the secrecy, but I
decided it would be best if we had this conversation here, rather than
there. If you would prefer to send me back, I will not argue, or try to
convince you otherwise. But now that I’m already here anyway, it might be
easier for you to justify my recruitment to your respective selves.”
“Again. Totally understand what you said,” Limerick claimed, fooling no one.
“Better to ask for forgiveness later than for permission now, and be told
no,” Andraste translated.
“Oh,” Limerick realized. “That’s my excuse for everything I do.”
“I don’t think we need to vote,” Khuweka determined. “If you reject her
nomination, then just speak up. I will say this, we need a teleporter. That
booster platform doesn’t work on me, but it def will on her.”
Landis handed the Zek-diamond to Carbrey. “Zek greatly appreciates that
she’s here, and challenges anyone to come up with a good reason not to
accept her...in every capacity as a member of this team.” He stepped
forward, and offered Eliana his hand. “Can you jump blind?”
“I can,” Eliana replied. “I can even let a passenger be navigator through a
mild and temporary psychic link.”
“Then let us go up to The Sharice, and find you some quarters.”
Eliana looked to the rest of the group, still waiting for anyone to speak
now, or forever hold their peace. Once she was made rightly confident by the
silence, the two of them disappeared together.
“Now that that’s done,” Khuweka began, “we should run mission simulations.”
“We need to come up with a new name for the ship first,” Carbrey said. “My
simulations will rely upon this. Or rather, they might falter to the
ambiguity or uncertainty.”
Freya stepped over and took Zek from his arms. “It already has a new name.”
She started to walk away with her friend. “It’s The Cormanu.”
Two years later, they were ready for mission launch. Whether she meant to or
not, Eliana was able to integrate nicely into the team. She became fast
friends with Zek, and even coached her through her new life as a gemstone.
Making physical contact with Zek was only necessary at first to start
forming a psychic bond. As time went on, these bonds grew stronger, until
they discovered that she was capable of maintaining a persistent connection
to her crew all the way on the other side of the planet. She was still just
as much part of the team as she was before, and continued to participate in
their training. They had to learn how to work together, and how to overcome
obstacles and complications.
They fell into job roles that went beyond the responsibilities for which
they were originally recruited. Andraste was a great cook, and Landis
adopted the responsibility of overseeing the general maintenance of the
vessel. His life as a healer had been so dull. To maximize his abilities, he
sat in a chair for literally half the day as the terminally ill stood in
line, and came up to him one by one. He couldn’t watch TV, or read, or learn
something new. He lost all sense of wonder, and was not used to being around
people who didn’t worship him. He was happy to be busy now. It helped him
find himself again, and enjoy the company. Limerick was an entertainer at
heart, which helped keep the team from getting lost in the mission, and not
taking time out for themselves. Two years was a long time to do nothing but
work. Khuweka taught them all the Maramon language, which wasn’t probably
ever going to come up, but it was nice to have a way to communicate with
each other that most others wouldn’t be able to decipher. They had their
psychic connections with Zek to take care of that in most cases, but you
never know.
Carbrey was pretty much only the engineer, and that was absolutely enough.
His was the most important job, and they banded together to alleviate the
burden as much as possible. They all learned some basic mechanics, so it
wouldn’t just be on him. Freya took this the most seriously. The others
watched some tutorials, and hung around while Carbrey did his work. Freya
actually transported to the Kansas City Arcology, and entered an accelerated
engineering education program. It wasn’t enough to make her an expert in the
time allotted—and she still didn’t feel comfortable calling herself an
engineer—but it made her competent in the field, and perfectly suited to
serve as Carbrey’s assistant. It reminded her of working as a nurse with Dr.
Sarka. Neither was a profession she ever intended to be part of, but both
opportunities were important when they arrived, and she ultimately found
them to be very rewarding.
On launch day, Eliana strapped herself into the chair on the booster
platform, and used it to interface with the rest of the ship. Carbrey was in
charge of running the whole ship, so it became Freya’s duty to make sure
Eliana was both effective, and safe. They ran a final systems check, crossed
their fingers, and jumped away.
There was a bit of confusion as the teleportation interlocker of The Cormanu
started to power down to high idle. The navigation systems were evidently
not perfectly calibrated for the jump, which meant it was going to take a
minute to figure out exactly where they were. And that was a literal measure
of time. It was only going to take around sixty seconds, and then they would
be fine, but Carbrey was freaking out, because it felt like an eternity to
him. As Freya was confirming Eliana’s vital signs, she could hear him on the
shipwide comms, barking orders at people, trying to expedite this process.
He didn’t have zero reason to be worried, as the whole purpose of this
exercise was to clear present-day Earthan detection space, so that no one
would know they existed. Still, there was no way to get the computer to make
the necessary calculations faster, and panicking wasn’t helping anything.
A minute later, the computer confirmed their highest of hopes. One light
year. They were exactly one light year from Earth. “Is that possible?”
Carbrey asked. “I was to understand we would barely pass the plutinos.”
“Different universe, different interpretation of the physical laws,” Khuweka guessed. “Bellevue’s prediction of our maximum jump distance was based on
their understanding of these laws, not ours.”
“What does this mean,” Landis asked, “in practical terms?” He was leaning
against the wall of the booster compartment, ready to heal Eliana, should
she need it. It was looking like she wouldn’t. She reported feeling as good
as she ever did after a jump.
“It means we can go a lot faster, right?” Limerick figured. “A jump takes
about a second. Eighty-seven light years equals eighty-seven seconds. That’s
under two minutes on my world.”
“She’s not going to do that,” Freya said as she was needlessly dabbing
Eliana’s forehead with a warm washcloth.
“She won’t have to,” Khuweka promised. “We wouldn’t do this through burst
mode, even if there weren’t a biological consideration. It will take us
forty-five days to get to Worlon at maximum reframe. I want us to get there
in forty-five days. Not forty-six, not forty-four. This is the schedule, and
we’re sticking to it. Miss Prime did her job, and now it’s done.”
Freya curved her index finger and thumb towards each other, and twisted them
once, gesturing to Landis that he should mute his comm badge. They were very
sensitive, and while the humans would not have been able to hear her talking
from across the room, the ship’s sensors would pick it up, and log it. “You
want to say something, Eliana. What is it?”
“It wasn’t just me,” Eliana told her quietly. “I didn’t jump us this far out
alone.”
“Who else could have done this?” Freya asked, the answer came to her
quickly. “Zektene.”
Eliana nodded. “She still has her anomaly ability. She may even be stronger
now. You never needed me.”
Freya ran her fingers through Eliana’s hair. “I’m glad you’re here anyway.”
While their end of the comms was muted, they could still hear outgoing
messages. “Boot up the reframe engine, Mr. Genovese,” Khuweka ordered.
“Let’s take this show on the road.”
The doors to the booster compartment opened, and Kivi walked in, holding
Diamond Zek in her arms. It didn’t look comfortable for her. Landis held out
his own arms, not to commandeer the diamond, but be passively available,
should Kivi want to have a rest.
“We should put her on a cart, or something,” Freya suggested. “I can rig
something up quite nice. I’ll make it look like a throne.”
“We’ve been talking privately,” Kivi said. “Zek is not sure if she wants to
inform the rest of the crew about what happened.”
“She added a second boost to the jump?” Freya asked. “We already know.”
“No, not that,” Kivi said. “We’ll tell everyone about that. No, she saw
something on the way. Or, I guess it was more of a feeling?” She hesitated.
“What is it, Kivi?”
“She believes we are being followed.”
Landis stepped forward. “Who would have such capabilities?”
Freya shook her head, not to answer in the negative, but because there was
no answer. “You have to understand something about my universe. Time travel
is all but ubiquitous. It’s not that everyone has it, but anyone may have
it. If something exists at any point, it exists in all points. Everyone is
dead, everyone is alive. Almost nothing can’t be undone. Who else can shadow
the fastest ship in the stellar neighborhood? Someone from the future, or
one that’s piloted by a man named The Trotter...or maybe his son, I don’t
know. They would have to interface with their vessel in some way, but that’s
not too difficult when you have all of time and space to figure it out. If
you want to know who specifically possesses comparable speeds, I’ve never
heard of it, but that in no way means this person or persons don’t exist.”
Kivi finally handed Diamond Zek to Landis. “Due to this uncertainty, I feel
it is best we inform the crew, so that we may prepare for any eventuality. I
do not want to use the weapons systems, but we may have no other choice.”
She turned to walk away.
Freya stopped her. “Wait. Do you know who our shadow could be? You’re from
this universe too.”
Kivi chuckled once. “I was literally born yesterday. Don’t you remember?”
On that bizarre note, Kivi left, and Eliana took this opportunity to get
herself out of the booster seat before Freya could stop her. “I don’t need
rest, I’m fine.” She demanded that Freya give her some space, so she could
move about the cabin upon her own agency. As she passed Landis, she patted
Diamond Zek like she was a loyal dog. “Thanks for the assist, cuz.” They
weren’t really cousins, but seeing as they were both descended from the
original Composite Universe astral teleporter—a man by the name of Nur—they
were technically related, albeit across two timelines.
As they were discussing the possibilities, and their options, as a group
later, Freya noticed that Kivi insisted on holding Diamond Zek in her lap,
which was weird. That was no longer necessary, as they should have all been
fully capable of communicating with Zek through a permanent psychic
connection.
Andraste interrupted her thought process as she was questioning Kivi’s very
existence. “What do you think? Do we prepare for war?”
“I’m sorry?” Freya hadn’t really been paying attention.
“As per usual,” Andraste started over, “Khuweka, Limerick, and Carbrey are
ready to fight. They’ve all done it before. Landis and I disagree, as does
Zek. Kivi is abstaining from voting.”
“She is, is she?” Freya questioned, still suspicious of the ninth
crewmember. “I mean...okay. Wait, am I the tie-breaker?” She started
checking people off.
“No,” Andraste said, “there are eight voters. Both you and Eliana have yet
to respond.”
Freya couldn’t help but continue to leer at Kivi, who seemed unsurprised by
this. She broke herself out of the trance so she could address the crowd. “I
think we’re all on our way to commit time genocide.” She stood up from the
table. “Having scruples about a hypothetical space battle with an invisible
enemy is a bit like washing down your entire large pizza with a diet cola.
We may be well-intentioned, but we are still extremists. Everybody needs to
find a way to embrace their dark side, and get on board, because it’s too
late to get off.” She walked down the table, and placed her hand on Diamond
Zek, but looked into Kivi’s eyes. “We need to talk.” All three of them
teleported to the other side of the ship.
The Constant Variable
Freya separated herself from Diamond Zek and Kivi, and stepped away to pace
the room. The both waited for her patiently, while she figured out what she
wanted to say. She didn’t want to be mean, but she had to get answers. “Who
are you?”
“My name is Kivi Bristol.”
“What are you?”
“I am a chosen one, having been created by an unknown chooser.”
“Why do you seem familiar, but I also get the feeling that we’ve never met?”
“I am bound by a phenomenon called spontaneous quantum reemergence. I come
into existence at seemingly random points in spacetime, and disappear just
as quickly. Sometimes the people around me are aware of it, and sometimes
not. Sometimes I am aware of it, and sometimes I’m not. It’s unclear whether
there are multiple versions of me running around the timeline, or if I am
one person, being shunted throughout the timeline in a nonlinear order.
Someone once called me the constant variable.”
“I have memories of you being a part of this team for two years,” Freya
argued.
“Do you, though?”
“Well, yeah, because you...”
Kivi smiled. “My ability does sometimes fabricate memories, but most of the
time, it just forces your brain into ignoring the fact that you don’t have
memories. I actually didn’t join the team until shortly before we launched.”
“Are you good, or bad?”
“Good. That’s one thing that’s consistent about me. I’m always good.”
“How do we know?”
“Zek is immune to the psychic intrusion.” She held up the diamond a little.
“But I am not immune to hers. She would know.”
“Give her to me.” Freya took Diamond Zek from Kivi. She didn’t need to hold
her to have a private conversation, but this made it easier to be sure Kivi
wasn’t somehow listening in. Is she telling the truth?
She is, Zek confirmed.
Would you know if she weren’t?
I believe so.
Can we trust her?
Can we trust Khuweka, and Landis? Can you trust me?
I would like to think so.
Then that settles it, Zek decided. We will trust Kivi as much as we have
anyone else on the team. Do not tell the others what we know. We need to be
able to work together, and as far as they are aware, they’ve been learning
to do that with Kivi for the past two years. Revealing the truth would
undermine the mission.
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Freya said out loud.
No, we would not.
Freya handed Diamond Zek back to Kivi. “Like I did, people will start to
notice that you’re not capable of communing with Zek without physical
contact. I suggest you speed up the psychic bond as much as possible.”
“Very well,” Kivi said graciously. “Thank you.”
Freya took a moment. “What, do you suppose, you’re here for? What are your
skills?”
Kivi cleared her throat.
“Be honest,” Freya said, growing suspicious again.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“What?”
“I’ve practiced law on multiple planets,” Kivi answered, worried how she
would be received. “I’m not an engineer, or a fighter, or anything else you
would expect to find on a battleship.”
“Have you practiced on an alternate future version of Worlon?”
“If I have, I have no memory of it,” Kivi said. “I doubt it, though. They
sound pretty universally spiteful of humans.”
“Perhaps you argued against them.” Freya really was trying.
“They would have to have gone up against a pretty formidable enemy for it to
lead to nonviolent legal proceedings, rather than some kind of deadly
conflict.”
“True.”
“I may have one trick up my sleeve, though.”
“Oh?” Freya was interested.
“I’m romantically linked to Lincoln Rutherford. I don’t have a way to
contact him from where I sit, but...that’s something?”
“It certainly is,” Freya agreed. “He knows literally everything, which means
he knows where you are right now, which means he could send help if we need
it. You may be our backup.”
“So are we cool?” Kivi asked.
“We’re okay...for now.”
A month and a half later, they were finally approaching their destination.
It was Freya’s job at this point to read off the specifications for the
planet, so everyone knew what they were getting into. A project called
Topdown decades ago sent giant telescopes into the intergalactic voids, so
they could take measurements of the entire galaxy, but there were some
details that were best left to upclose sensors. “It scores a
point-nine-two-one on the Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index, which
may sound great, but ninety-five percent is the bare minimum that Operation
Starseed will accept when deciding which worlds to plant life on, and which
to ignore. Oxygen saturation is one-point-eight times as it is on Earth. I’m
not sure if that’s why Ochivari are related to dragonflies, or what, but it
certainly tracks. Surface gravity is one-point-four-gee, so we’re all fat
now.”
“Signs of intelligent life?” Khuweka posed.
“None that the ship can detect,” Freya responded.
“Mr. Genovese, have you been able to locate a seed plate, or an interstellar
ship?”
“Working...” Carbrey said.
“Which are we expecting?” Andraste asked.
“Once he hacks into Project Stargate, we’ll know,” Khuweka explained. “Each
plate is responsible for establishing a presence in seven to twenty-eight
star systems. There’s no way to know whether Worlon will get the plate, or a
ship that the plate builds somewhere else. If it’s a secondary ship, it
won’t be here for awhile. Arrival dates are estimates.”
Carbrey nodded his head. “I’m in the system. An automated interstellar probe
is scheduled to arrive here in six years.”
“What do we do until then?” Eliana asked.
“We’re not waiting until it shows up,” Khuweka said. “We’re going to meet it
head on, and destroy it. Then we’ll take it’s job, and start sending
measurements back to Earth ourselves, but they’ll be false.”
“Do we really want to do that?” Diamond Zek asked. “Shouldn’t we just
destroy the probe, and keep away from this planet?”
“We need to stop Operation Starseed from coming here with human DNA samples.
If we don’t falsify the data, the system will eventually send those samples,
whether they come from the nearest seed plate, or the next nearest. This is
prime real estate. If we don’t do something to make it think this world is
worthless, they’ll just keep sending backups. This whole project is destined
to last tens of thousands of years. They’re patient enough to deal with
failures, and fully prepared to correct them. Even if that takes thousands
of years, they’re still well within their deadline.
“Furthermore, seed plates are the things they built on Gatewood, and
dispatched with the gargantuan modular carrier at the start of the project.
They’re powered by microfusion reactors, which are incredibly small, and
only designed for short bursts of momentum, and maneuverability. A plate
only exists to drop down on one orbital or satellite in one solar system.
The branching network probe ships, however, are part of the inventory that
this seed plate will make once it lands, using the raw material that it
finds there. They can be much larger, and thusly support larger reactors.
They can afford to spend power on other things, like long-range sensors, and
a constant data connection with Earth and Gatewood. If we let that thing get
close enough to Worlon to codify its habitability, all will be lost. We have
to intercept it.”
Throughout Khuweka’s explanation, Carbrey kept working on the computer. He
already understood all of this and knew that he needed to plot an intercept
course. According to Freya’s education, finding something in the middle of
interstellar space wasn’t as easy to do as fictional representations made it
seem. On TV, they just pulled up a screen, and barring any invisibility
cloak, every single object within a sufficient range would just be
automatically visible. Still, it wasn’t impossible to find something either.
Like Khuweka said, the probe was constantly sending data back to the stellar
neighborhood, including its own location, relative to nearby celestial
objects. He just needed to access that datastream. “I got it.”
“How far away is it?” Khuweka asked
“Roughly six light years. It’s going at maximum relativistic.”
Khuweka just looked over at Eliana.
“She doesn’t need to,” Freya said.
“No, she doesn’t,” Diamond Zek agreed. “We’ve been working on something.”
Without even touching them, she was able to teleport everyone to the booster
room. They weren’t aware she could do this, but they weren’t shocked either.
Her power was growing every week. She would probably reach a limit at some
point, and never become a god, or anything, but the light year limit was a
thing of the past. “Simulations suggest that I’m up to a parsec,” she
announced proudly. “Freya?”
Freya took Diamond Zek from Andraste’s arms, and took her to the back of the
booster seat. There, she had engineered a special case for her to be locked
in. It connected her to the platform, and kept her secure. Only the eight
people in this room would be capable of removing her from her spot, but
there wouldn’t likely be much reason to do so anymore. The case also
integrated Zek’s consciousness with the ship’s systems, effectively making
her the ship itself. Everything was working. All that needed to happen now
was a consensus that she be allowed to do this, and a test of the new FTL
jump limitation.
They all looked to Khuweka, who looked back at them. “Her superconscious
crystalline carbonaceous substrate, her choice.”
Limerick watched as Freya locked Diamond Zek into her new home. “On my
world, we have these things called wedding rings. They look like that.”
“Hmm,” Freya noted. “The ring here exists to concentrate Zek’s temporal
energy. It does kind of look like a giant wedding ring, though, doesn’t it?”
“Mr. Genovese,” Khuweka said simply, once Zek was fully in place.
Carbrey started tapping on his tablet. “Plotting a lateral course. We’ll
still be six light years from the probe, but a parsec from Worlon.”
The engines started up, made their connection with Diamond Zek, and jumped
away. Carbrey was notably less panicky than he was the last time. He
patiently waited for his tablet to calculate their location. They were
exactly where they wanted to be.
Diamond Zek was quite pleased with herself. “I could have gone farther. I
probably could have gone twice as far.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Khuweka told her. “For now, a parsec will
suffice.” She looked at Freya and Carbrey. “The three of you need to work
out how we’re going to do this. I know you already have a plan in mind?”
“Yes.” Freya nodded. “With a precision jump, we can essentially surround the
probe, and match its speed. If all goes well, it should be hovering inside a
quantum Faraday cage, where it can no longer send a signal back to Earth.”
“Well, actually,” Carbrey began to correct, “it will send its signal, but
will do so about five million years in the past. With no quantum receiver on
the other end, it will just...disappear.”
“Very well,” Khuweka said. “If you’re sure this will work, make the
necessary preparations, thank you.”
Freya and Carbrey did make the necessary preparations, while the other six
members of the crew went off to do their own thing. They started building
the quantum Faraday cage when they arrived in the Worlon system, but before
it could be used, they needed to make sure it was completely ready. There
was no room for error here. To that end, they also needed to work out the
calculations. The probe ship was traveling towards Worlon at 0.999999c,
which was the fastest possible without time powers. The Cormanu was fully
capable of reaching this velocity, and in fact would need to already be
there when they made their jump. The probe ship would basically suddenly
appear inside the Cormanu, and once it did, they would be able to disable it
manually, but getting to that point would take a lot of finesse. And
extremely high level math.
Within the day, they felt they were ready, and prepared for any eventuality,
so it was time to just go for it. Zek first made a jump to about 50,000
astronomical units away from the probe, just to make the final jump easier
on her. That was well outside of the probe’s known sensor range for an
object of the Cormanu’s mass. They accelerated themselves to max
relativistic speed. Early vessels needed time to accelerate, and just as
much time to decelerate, but even the humans managed to conceive a
workaround that allowed them to reach target velocities almost instantly
without turning passengers into mush against the back wall.
The two of them chose to stand just outside the cage when it happened, so
they could watch it. They built it a lot larger than they needed to, so
there should be no danger from this distance. When Carbrey had just
activated the final step for the jump, Limerick walked into the shuttle bay,
wanting to see it as well.
“Lim, get over here! It’s dangerous on that side.”
“What?”
Freya ran over to retrieve him. Their calculations were right, but there was
always a chance they were off by a meter or two. The probe could
theoretically end up on the wrong side of the cage. The signal would still
be blocked for long enough to allow them to fix the error, but you wouldn’t
want to be standing there when it happened.
“Jumping away,” Zek announced.
“No!”
Something turned out to be massively wrong with their calculations, or
something. Freya didn’t have time to form a hypothesis. She and Limerick
were being pressed up against the cage. The probe was nowhere to be seen,
and the fence was threatening to buckle under the pressure. They couldn’t
get off, but perhaps that was the only thing keeping them from being sucked
out into the interstellar void. The fence gave way, and sent them hurtling
towards the back. The fence on the other side held for a moment, but it too
would lose hold.
She fell forward, and landed on her face. On the ground. She was on land.
Somehow. In a breathable atmosphere. Limerick was next to her, recovering
from his own tumble. What the hell just happened?
Stable Time Loop
The two of them struggled to stand up as they rubbed their various wounds.
Freya felt heavier than before, and was quite off balance. It wasn’t
impossible to get upright, but not easy. They were in the middle of a
forest. Limerick breathed deeply through his nose. “Wow. Is it easier to
breathe?”
Freya took a breath as well. “It’s much easier. Perhaps...almost twice as
easy?” She bounced her knees a little. “Surface gravity higher, oxygen level
higher. Trees look a little short. This is Worlon.”
“We jumped back to the planet? I thought we weren’t ever going to the
surface.”
“Maybe some kind of emergency teleport. Zek should have brought us all
together, though, if the ship was destroyed.”
“What destroyed it?” Limerick asked.
Freya started pacing, not so it would help her think, but so that she could
get used to the new gravity. She did need some time to think, though.
“Backwards. We were backwards.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know how. That’s just what happened, it’s the only explanation.”
“I haven’t heard an explanation yet.”
Freya got back down on her knees, and found some visual aids; a leaf, and a
pebble. She tore a hole in the middle of the leaf that was large enough to
fit the pebble. “This is what we were supposed to do.” She slowly swung each
object in front of her, parallel to each other. After a few seconds, she
quickly pulled the leaf in closer to her, so it was encapsulating the
pebble, just like they did up in space with The Cormanu, and the probe. “But
this is what I think happened.” She started out just as before, with the
objects flying parallel, but this time, when she teleported the leaf over to
the pebble, she turned it around, and pulled it in the opposite direction,
serving to tear the leaf all the way open. “The probe kept going forwards,
but since it was facing the wrong direction, it shot right through the back
of the ship, and back into space, where it either continued on its journey,
or was damaged enough to start drifting. We were almost sucked into that
hull breach, except we ended up here.” She looked around some more. Then she
reached into her back pocket, and removed two sticks of gum, one of which
she handed to Limerick. “This is gravity gum. It will help your body
acclimate to your increased weight. If it’s just us, and we stay on
schedule, the pack will be enough for us to adapt, and not need it anymore.”
“And if it’s not just us? Where are they?”
“Zek? Zek?” Freya spoke out loud, but was really just trying to send a
psychic signal.
“Could she have transported all of us, but not herself.”
“She could have done that, yes, but why would she have? We could have gone
back to the ship later, if that’s all she wanted to do; save it.”
“Well, you said it was going the wrong direction. It would have eventually
flown out of her teleportation range, right?”
“I guess.” Freya took out her device. “But I don’t see anyone else.”
“Is that a tricorder? Does it show life signs?”
“No, that’s stupid. It can ping other devices, though. I know Carbrey had
his, and Khuweka would too. I would say about half of the others would
happen to have kept it on their respective persons.” She kept pinging the
others, waving her hand around, looking for a good signal. Nothing.
“Maybe she just saved us, because we were the only ones in danger.”
“So was Carbrey, and she should have just transported us to a safe section
of the Cormanu.”
“He might have flown out of range, through that hole.”
Freya dropped her arm in sadness. Then she decided to try one more thing.
She switched to a different menu item, and held the device back up towards
the sky to measure stellar drift. Preliminary data came through pretty
quickly. “Oh, no.”
“What is it? What do you see?”
“It’s still calculating a date, but...”
Limerick figured out where she was headed. “We didn’t just teleported, we
traveled through time.”
“The past.” She kept watching the screen. “The deep, deep...deep, deep,
deep-deep past. It’s still going.” She dropped her arm back down. “It’s
slowing down, and it won’t be exactly accurate, because it requires more
data, but millions of years. A few million, at least.”
Limerick smiled, and cracked his neck. “That doesn’t matter to us, though,
does it? When I shatter this portal, we can go to any time period we want,
in any universe.”
“In any universe touching ours. That limits you. You see, in the outer
bulkverse, time is not a temporal dimension, but a spatial dimension.” She
held up her fists as more visual aids. She placed her right index knuckle
against her left pinky knuckle. “They have to be touching at the right
point, which for us, is a moment in time. Now in the future, it’s constant.
All the universes you could ever need to get to, are touching each other. I
think someone did that on purpose, they call them bridges. Back in this time
period, though...I don’t know. Do you detect any thinnies? Do you sense any
nearby universes? Or are they all too far away?”
He held up his hand, and searched for a place he could make a portal. He
stopped moving and closed his eyes to focus his senses. “I can feel one, but
you’re right, I think it’s too thick. Or too far away, or whatever.”
“I don’t suppose you have an ETA on when that gets closer, if ever. It could
be drifting away from us.”
“No, it’s getting closer. It hums a certain way, but I can’t predict the
time table. We’ll just have to wait and hope, I guess.”
Freya shrugged her shoulders and sighed.
“Wait.” He seemed excited. “Can’t you get a message to them?”
“No, not from the past. That’s just impossible.”
“But why did we end up here, in this moment? You said, millions of years,
but you’re not sure exactly when? Aren’t you, though? The probe was supposed
to start sending its data to the past. That room is designed to send time
messages.”
“Oh, you’re right. That’s why we ended up here. I mean, it doesn’t explain
why we were able to make a physical jump, but it must be the exact same time
period that we chose. Oh, but no, we’re not on Earth. The message is going
to prehistoric Earth, not Worlon. It doesn’t matter that we’re closer, it’s
quantum communication. It’s actually really weird we’re on Worlon. It
doesn’t make much sense.”
He placed his hand back up to the invisible barrier. “Then we’ll just wait
and see.”
The two of them grew closer over the three years that they were alone
together. They continued to look for others, but there was no sign that
anyone else came with them. This had something to do with the quantum
Faraday cage, rather than Zek, and they were the only ones within its
boundaries at the time. The other universe continued to draw nearer,
according to Limerick’s beliefs, but it was hard to tell because of how
faint the connection was, and how slow it moved, if it was doing so at all.
He just kept measuring it as best he could, waiting until it was close
enough for it to be useful to them. They made a life for themselves here,
and as the only two people on the planet, of course, they had sex regularly.
They had no birth control, but they were extra careful about it, because
they didn’t want to raise a child in this environment.
It wasn’t the worst possible place to live, but it wasn’t civilized either.
They built a latrine in the ground, and wiped themselves with leaves, and no
matter how intricate they made their Crusoe dwelling, the toilet situation
wouldn’t ever get better. There was plenty of food to eat, and infinite
fresh water, and none of the animals gave them any significant trouble. They
chose not to eat them, partially because they couldn’t effectively estimate
any given creature’s intelligence level, but mostly because they didn’t need
to. Their vegetarian diet was doing them well. What passed for insects were
larger here due to the greater oxygen content, so that was a lot of fun; not
creepy at all. Today, everything changed. Like cicadas did on Earth, Freya
and Limerick woke up to find giant flying bugs crawling up out of the
ground. There was no telling how long they had been there beyond the three
years they had never seen them before. They looked a lot like dragonflies.
Shit. This was it. This was where their enemies came from. Five million
years in the future, these little fuckers would somehow transmit their DNA
into the developing human scions that Operation Starseed planted here, and
create a source variant species capable of raining hell down on countless
other worlds.
They were witnessing the early evolution of evil, and there was nothing they
could do to stop it. The bugs ignored the humans at first, or perhaps didn’t
see them. But one took notice, and then they all did. They started flying
towards their prey, forcing the couple to seek refuge in their hut. They
were able to keep the mega dragonflies out for a few minutes, but the walls
were buckling, so they had to fall back to the little panic room they built.
It was stronger than the rest of the place, though not fit for anything but
this kind of situation.
“We should have run. They’re gonna get in here eventually,” Freya lamented
as the creatures bashed themselves against the walls.
“They would have caught up with us. We live longer in here. Maybe they have
a really short memory. Best to keep ourselves out of sight for as long as
possible.”
The wood started cracking. “Not long enough.”
Limerick regarded her. She felt like such a pathetic little nothing, sitting
there so frightened and hopeless. He apparently had an idea. He grabbed her
wrist, and held it up to his mouth. “Hey, Thistle...where’s my hex phone?”
“Pinging hex phone,” the watch announced.
The bashing stopped, and they could hear the little song Freya’s device was
playing on the nightstand. The sound of wings flapping grew fainter.
“Stay here,” Limerick told her.
“No. We do this together.”
“Better they get one of us than both. If you find an opening, then run.
Otherwise, please stay here.” He took a beat. “Please.”
“What are you going to do?”
He literally rolled up his sleeves. The Maramon promised me I would get to
punch someone. Here’s my chance.”
Freya connected her watch’s hologram to the camera on her device outside,
which allowed her to see what Limerick was doing. He really was punching
them, like some kind of The One in a sea of well-dressed agents. They kept
flying at him, and he kept knocking them away. He always knew which one was
the most pressing target, and exactly where it would be. It was a
magnificent show, but Freya knew that it couldn’t last forever, because he
would grow tired, and there would always be more, waiting in the wings, so
to speak. But then something happened.
He punched one of the cicada-dragonflies, and it disappeared, almost as if
it had been sucked out of an airlock. He punched another, it did the same.
The more he tried, the clearer things became. He was creating small
fractures in the universal membrane, sending them out into the void, where
nothing could survive. They were not yet close enough to another universe,
so they were just...lost. The survivors started taking notice, and even
though they obviously weren’t as intelligent as their descendants would
become, they were able to take the hint. They rose up from underground to
breed, and this fight was both a distraction from that goal, and not doing
them any good. They flew off before they could kill Limerick.
Freya came out of the panic room, and dove down to help him.
“I’m all right. I just need to rest. Water?”
“Of course.” She retrieved some water from the barrel, and handed him the
drinking gourd.
He took his drink, and caught his breath. “Whoo! That was amazing. You have
no idea how good it feels to fight an enemy you’re allowed to destroy. I’ve
been in a lot of brawls, but I’ve never actually wanted to kill any of my
opponents. They were human. I know I’m not supposed to think this, but so
far, it’s been the best day of my life.”
She smiled. “It’s okay to feel that. It’s your truth.” She stood up to look
out the window, where the evil dragonflies were starting to perform their
mating rituals in the distance. “We’re both alive, and that’s what matters.”
Out of nowhere, a flash of darkness overwhelmed Freya’s eyes, and grappled
onto her face, knocking her to the floor. She was being attacked, presumably
by a cicada-dragonfly that didn’t want to give up. She reached up to get the
facehugger off of her, but it wouldn’t budge. It just wrapped its whatevers
around her tighter. Freya could taste some kind of disgusting fluid forcing
itself down her throat. It didn’t last forever. Limerick managed to stab it
with his walking stick, and tear the corpse off of her. Together, they wiped
the viscera away as much as possible.
Without warning, he jammed two fingers into her mouth, and pulled out as
much retch as he could. “You swallowed something. In thirty minutes, we’ll
do that again.”
“That’s not science,” Freya argued.
“We don’t have medicine, so inducing vomit is the best option available.”
“Okay.”
Freya drank a lot of water, and then a half hour later, retched it all up
again, hoping that cleared whatever it was the cicada-dragonfly put in her.
Like they had both said, this was not necessarily going to solve their
problem, but without any means treating a disease, or even diagnosing one,
this was all they had. They spent the rest of the day building a ring of
torches around their entire hut, hoping the fire scared the creatures enough
to keep them at bay. Tomorrow, they would try to break a thinny one last
time, and then move out somewhere else. Perhaps there were places where the
cicada-dragonflies didn’t thrive.
Until then, Limerick wanted to have sex, as they did every night.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I thought you were feeling better.”
“Oh, I’m totally fine. I could be infected with something, though.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
“Better it gets one of us than both,” she echoed him from earlier.
“If you give me a space STD, then so be it. If you die, what am I gonna do
without you anyway? We might as well get in the same boat. If you’re not up
for it, that’s fine, but I am, and I’m not afraid.”
She was into it too, and the risks seemed worth it, what with this world
looking more and more like the place where they would die regardless of when
that ended up happening. “All right, let’s go to bed.”
Seven months later, literally about a thousand baby cicada-dragonflies flew
out of her vagina, and off into the world. No, this was it. This was where
her enemies came from. The Ochivari never had anything to do with Operation
Starseed, but were spawned by Freya herself. She was the mother of evil.
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