Fractured Worlds (Book 1 of the Fractured Worlds Trilogy)

by Alan VanMeter

  16: TOGETHER FOREVER

  The first six months were probably the hardest on Tristan and Penelope as homesickness really set in, although Shen Dao kept them as occupied as possible. It really helped that the children had to become so involved with every aspect of their survival. Like toting the water for the garden every day, or restocking the replicators with the ever so heavy matter pellets. Plus they had to learn how to fabricate so many things from the basic materials the replicator would produce.

  Their training was proceeding along fine as well, and this assuaged the homesickness, as they began to develop self-confidence. Shen Dao had already started teaching them empty hand combat routines, and techniques. Tristan of course, being the older and larger, gained skill and strength at a much more rapid pace that Penny did; those first six months anyhow. Each of them had nearly the same schedule and routine, but Shen Dao had them do some things differently than the other, explaining that their physical differences needed to be exploited. Penelope was given some very challenging balancing feats to perfect, while Tristan was focused more along the line of increasing endurance. It was a difficult life at best, but they each were beginning to feel their own capabilities, and self-worth.

  It wasn’t too long until the soil for their garden was ready to plant, and they had eagerly awaited this time. The stasis containment field looked just like a silvery liquid that didn’t move at all, but it vanished after several moments of the opening of the crate. There were hundreds of small metal containers inside, and a hand written note was on top of all of these. It read; ‘Try the Early Bird Snow Peas’. Each child was very excited to start growing some real food that actually had taste, and texture, not the replicator slop.

  “It looks pretty much the same going in, as it does coming out.” Tristan often said of it.

  Shen Dao chose the first seeds they would use for crops, but told them as soon as they had some experience they would be free to make their own decisions about this. He explained that they were likely to lose most of their first crops, as it was a skill, even an art form called horticulture. This turned out to be all too true as they lost most of their first crops due to ignorance, and not following Shen Dao’s explicit instructions to the letter.

  Their second attempt at gardening was much more successful, and they ate good fresh vegetables for a change. Their harvest didn’t last them long though, as they hadn’t yet mastered the concept of rotating yields. It was back to replicator slop as they watched their garden slowly grow again. Gardening was hard work, and lots of it. They didn’t have to weed, but they did have to manually pollenate each flower they wished to produce fruit. Also they had to haul plenty of water from the bathroom or kitchen for the many containers. Yet the garden quickly became a source of mutual joy for them.

  As always, during the evening time Shen Dao would regale them with stories of his vast Universe. He always had a different story to tell too, and never told the same one twice. One night he told a particularly amazing tale of an ancient civilization that had utterly destroyed itself. The Pearmainian ‘Eternal Guard’ had found this race worthy of saving, and had travelled back in time to reverse the unfortunate course of events that had already destroyed them.

  That was when Tristan started wondering, “How come you can’t just go into the past, and stop us from even going to Dreamland then?”

  “I wish it were that easy Tristan.” Shen Dao said.

  “But if you can save an entire planet from destroying itself; can’t you stop seven kids from getting lost?”

  “A long time ago we could have. That was before the Time Wars though.”

  “Time Wars?” Penelope was curious.

  “You see, after our race learned the terrible secret of time travel; we as a race did a lot of good with the knowledge. For more than a million years we performed acts like the one I just told you of.

  Then something happened. Some of us made a mistake, somewhere, or some-when. Whoever it was, did something in the past which changed all of us permanently. Maybe it was carelessness, we don’t know. We don’t even know when, where, or what exactly it was, but it sure changed things. There was a whole group of us affected by the new temporal reality. It was as if they became paranoid over-night. Somehow they got the idea in their minds that even though we couldn’t kill one of our own, we could travel back in time and erase their existence. They became supra-paranoid of this happening to themselves, and started to try to accomplish this very same evil to the rest of us. We of course had to stop them, and so we resorted to similar methods.” Shen Dao bowed his head in shame. “We almost made ourselves extinct.”

  Tristan was incredulous. “Let me get this straight. You fought a war by going back in time to erase your enemies’ futures, and they were doing the same to you?”

  The old Chinese man nodded and went on, the female voice translated. “It was a time when you couldn’t trust reality, even for a moment. Perhaps we all went mad.”

  “What happened?” Penny wanted to know.

  “We won.” The old man did not seem proud, or even pleased; just sad. “We vanquished all but one of the enemy Pearmainians to non-existence.”

  Tristan queried, “How come you left one?”

  “Well it was an accident. You see it is very hard to accurately predict the outcome of events that you change in the past, and we missed one. When we realized that it could not travel time on its own, we decided, foolishly, to let it exist.

  What we didn’t know was that the last enemy alive was now completely insane, and was quite able and willing to physically kill other Pearmainians then. The enemy surrendered, and acted as if it were indeed reforming from its evil ways, even for many thousands of years; until it found a suitable race of warriors that it could easily manipulate. It didn’t take long for the slaughter to start. The rebel killed most of the ‘Eternal Guard’, all but a very small number.”

  “That’s the rebel you trapped on Earth, isn’t it?” Penny guessed.

  “Yes. That is the one responsible for you being here Penelope. We have yet to defeat her.” Shen Dao told them.

  “That still doesn’t explain why you can’t travel back in time and fix all this.” Tristan accused.

  “I was getting to that my boy. You have already seen that it takes three very special humans to activate a spire’s portal. Well it only takes one Pearmainian to do so, however it takes five ‘Eternal Guardians’ to rip time-space enough for trans-temporal shifting, or to travel through time. After the other Guardians were banished into non-existence in the battle for Pearmain, there were not five of us left.”

  Tristan and Penny began to understand what he was getting at.

  “Wait a minute!” Tristan objected. “How do you expect us to do something, with just two of us; that you can’t even do?”

  “That is a very good question Tristan. I don’t know how you will be able to, being purely human, but I do know that you do.”

  “Man, I still have so many questions.” The little boy sighed.

  “Questions are good, and most answers I do have.” Shen Dao encouraged them both.

  Penelope had thought about something; “Won’t we change something when we go back?”

  “That is a possibility, though I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you Penelope.”

  “Why not Shen Dao? Couldn’t we erase ourselves?” she insisted.

  “First you have to travel into the past, so you can have a future, or a present to worry about.” He smiled.

  “That’s the pair of ducks again.” She shook her head.

  By the end of their first year in the spire, on what they now formally had named ‘Penelope’s Planet’; each had grown considerably. The golden jump suits from Dreamland no longer fit them at all, and thus they were having to constantly fashion new clothes from the material they replicated. At first they wound up wearing toga l
ike garments, as they were poor seamstresses. Then they even tried the naked thing for a bit, as it was never cold in the spire, but their modesty got the better of them. They were just getting to that age. Soon though both were gaining proficiency at making decent pants, shirts, and even jumpsuits. Underclothes were a different matter though, and making something comfortable was still beyond their skill. Most things like blankets, sheets, towels, and such could be fabricated as a finished product by the replicator. If the garment needed to be sewn together, then they had to do it. Doing laundry also became a big chore, as even though there was a washing machine and dryer; if their hand made clothes weren’t sturdy enough, then the machines would destroy them. So they did a lot of laundry by hand those early years.

  Shen Dao kept them very busy with their martial arts training, as well as everything else, but the children still found time for some play and fun also. Tristan and Penelope were fast becoming the best of friends; after all they only had each other, and the holo-programs. This however did not stop Penny from insisting one day that Tristan move out of the bedroom building that they had been sharing, and into the second, as of yet unused, bedroom building. She told him she wasn’t mad at him, but that she needed some privacy. They both really did need their own space.

  By the time they had been there two full years, each was really starting to develop good balance, strength, and endurance. The old Pearmainian was teaching them some long routines, and had just started on the first of many melee weapons sets and techniques. Tristan and Penny had to make some quasi-wooden staffs for the first of these sets, and then they progressed to basic sword work. Each weapon they would learn required them to make the said armament. Some were easy to fabricate, while others required much care and labor. The children were of course curious as to why they needed to learn to use such archaic weapons, when firearms were so prevalent.

  “Too many a warrior has perished while leaning on the blade of their sword.” The old man spoke in parable.

  For some time Shen Dao had been having them practice meditation as well. At first he just had them stand in position and breathe as he prescribed, but soon they were performing a moving form of meditation. Mental imaging went with this, and that really helped them from getting ‘cabin fever’. Even though the interior was huge, and there was really no way to get claustrophobic, they still got tired of the same old surroundings. The mental imaging was a good escape, especially when used in conjunction with the holo-program.

  Not only had Shen Dao and Leena transferred their personalities into the machine, they had also included a vast library of different media. Books, movies, videos, music, scenery, and even a few games. He had instructed them to focus on particularly peaceful and serene images while they meditated. This kept them from going mad.

  As soon as the children were ready, Shen Dao had them start doing sitting meditation while on a cathedral pedestal. The golden light energy was pure form of natural energy that all possessed, and they could learn to tap into it. Most humans couldn’t even trigger the mechanism, or more properly bias it; yet both of them could. Shen Dao told them that was why the rebel had sought them out originally. Some humans were pure and attuned, and as such might pass through the lock-out. This was kind of like a backdoor mechanism. When asked just why the need for such a rear entry, Shen Dao told them that once a spire is deactivated, the only way to reactivate it is to know the dimensional pathway. This meant that either; another spire had to be dedicated solely to keeping the pathway open, or a Pearmainian with the ability to autonomously shift had to re-navigate the path. This was a lost ability to them. In other words, if the Pearmainians ever wanted to get to Earth again, they needed to keep a back door open, but one the rebel couldn’t use.

  “Are Pearmainians the only race that can do this ‘self-shifting’?” Tristan asked.

  Shen Dao looked at him with surprise. “We don’t know who, or even what they are, but yes we have felt other forces folding space-time.”

  The third year the kids started changing slowly. They didn’t even really notice this, save for the usual increase in their clothing size, but the holo-program sure did. It was monitoring their physical, and behavioral changes. The training intensified also, up to fourteen hours a day, on the heavy days. Tristan and Penny had gained so much strength that either of them could restock the replicators alone. True to what Shen Dao had promised they were becoming warriors.

  Other changes were occurring as well, especially with Tristan. To say that his hormones had begun to bother him would be an understatement. This is when the old man gave a very serious talk to him. He explained in no uncertain terms that if Tristan were to act on his burgeoning desires that the both of them would die, as they almost had their third week in the spire. He drilled this into Tristan as a sacred trust for their very lives. Nothing could be more serious, this was no joke!

  Then he taught Tristan some very useful meditations to help alleviate these new feelings, and in addition he allowed a method to release some of the frustrations of all kinds that both had stored up. Shen Dao had them begin to practice mock combat with each other. At first Penelope balked at this concept, but when the old man told them it was essential to their survival, she relented. They kept it playful to start with, as a game of sorts, but this sometimes quickly escalated into something a bit more serious. Tristan was a bit intimidated to hit her for a while, until she really let him have it a couple of times. Shen Dao tried his best to maintain discipline, but he could only be vocal in his authority.

  There were several times when the sparring got out of control. The first instance where Tristan put Penny down hard, he felt good about it, like he had firmly established his dominance, and had even told her: “Now you know who the boss is.” She never forgot that. His physical precedence over her would not last forever she determined. So she then became fanatical in her training, resolute to rise above the dominion he held. This spurred him on also, as he quite clearly saw what she was planning. Shen Dao found he could manipulate them with this competitive air between them, and he used it as a positive driving force.

  The fourth and fifth years were brutal on the pair both physically and emotionally. Tristan was a young man now, and his hormones were raging, kept in check only by his fortified will, and the knowledge that any slip up would mean certain doom. Penelope didn’t have that problem quite badly yet. She found his obvious distraction to be the perfect opportunity to thrash him in sparring practice, as she had been doing regularly for some months by now. Still they each were careful not to inflict any major injury to the other, because that too would seal their fate, as there was no medical help other than themselves guided by the expert holo-program.

  They didn’t get sick like most kids would, mainly due to their extreme health, but also due to the fact that the spire was a sterile environment. However injury was always a worry, especially from mock combat. It was the second most frustrating thing in the world to Tristan when she would put him on the ground hard, and make him submit to her. Penelope loved it. The special balance training that Shen Dao had her do since just about day one, was really paying off. Tristan was still much stronger than her over all, but not pound for pound. Plus she had quickness and agility all over him, and though he was certainly no slouch; Penny was becoming a world class fighter at age thirteen.

  The frustrations manifested by their physical competition wouldn’t be allowed to come to a head though, as each were still best of friends; that and the old man would always have them decompress by earnestly talking with each other after the bouts, truly trying to help each other as a team. There weren’t many secrets between the two, as each had learned pretty much what the other was thinking or feeling.

  The old Pearmainian’s internal meditative practices also kept their psyches in balance as well as anything could. The delved deep into their own minds, and began to understand the fo
rces that were constantly wrenching at them. Shen Dao then stepped up their internal training. They lost more sleep time, but after a good long meditation in the portal’s energy beam; they felt surprisingly rested and well.

  During the sixth year Tristan discovered how to project his mind out of his body. This frightened him after the first time he did it. Only with encouragement from Penny, Shen Dao, and Leena did he repeat the efforts. Soon he was able to ‘visit’ the exterior area around the spire without leaving. It was an airless, cold barren place void of any life. Even so, this was really neat to him, and he began to do it frequently, getting further away every time. There seemed to be no limit to how far he could travel, excepting for time itself; as it took time to travel even with his mind. Penelope wasn’t as far along as Tristan was in the internal realm, but she vowed to double her efforts as she wasn’t going to let him get the upper hand again. One day she realized that the old man’s constant instruction to ‘relax’ was indeed the key. It wasn’t a matter of trying so hard, as it was of just letting go. Soon she was making ‘out of body’ sojourns along with Tristan.

  Both of them were also gaining much talent in their other artistic endeavors. Tristan was becoming quite an accomplished painter, and had many works hanging on the walls of his bedroom. A number of these also adorned Penny’s bedroom walls, most were birthday gifts from him.

  She on the other hand was developing a fair talent with her music. Penny’s favorite instrument was a crude guitar she had fashioned, and then learned to play with professional instruction from the holo-program. She would often learn a song from just listening to one from the vast library of music that was recorded. The harder task was learning music from the almost infinite sheet music they had available, but she applied herself to this with equal zeal.

  During their day off from training, Tristan would love to paint while listening to her play, even if she were just learning a new song. He had told her that her music truly inspired him to great realms of imagination. They had both become the mainstay of inspiration for each other, as they had learned to encourage the other to greater heights; never to discourage.

  Years seven, eight, and nine were remarkable for them. With all the time and effort they were putting into their martial arts; they had achieved the extraordinary. Penny had caught up to Tristan in the internal arts, as well as keeping a close edge over him physically. The mock combat had become an expression of joyful body movements, and not of competition any longer. They realized the ultimate goal wasn’t to best their opponent, but rather to best themselves.

  During their many ‘out of body’ journeys together, they one day found a whole new frontier to explore. There was a kind of pinhole in space right above the spire’s tip that they could guide their minds through. Shen Dao told them this was dimensional rift, and though it could be extremely dangerous to explore beyond, that this they must do. He also proudly told them that they were progressing with amazing speed.

  Penelope and Tristan began to explore the ‘other side’ of the pin hole with great caution, as the old man had warned them they could become easily lost in the fourth dimension, and might never find their way back to their bodies. It was a strange experience to say the least. Visual shapes weren’t familiar to them, and there were myriad of exotic sensations to distract them. To move in this reality they had only to will it as with their other ‘out of body’ travels, but they immediately saw the danger Shen Dao had spoken of. Once you moved, it was difficult at best, to orient yourself, as directions were much different than their minds were used to. In fact Tristan would have become lost on their first journey into the other dimension, had it not been for Penelope. She had waited right at the vanishing point, and called out to him with her mind when he didn’t return right away. He was able to ‘hear’ her mental voice, and followed it back out.

  From then on they never explored alone. Shen Dao told them they were nearing a phase in their training that would require extra patience from them. When pressed, he said that next they must be able to activate the portal to be able to feel the energies at work when their physical bodies passed through the dimensional rift. Only then could they proceed on to the subsequent phase, and until then they would need to spend much time with their spiritual energies linked, while exploring the next dimension; learning how to navigate there.

  This was fine by them, as they had become inseparable by then. In fact it was much more than that; they had fallen deeply in love. Both knew it well, as their mental and spiritual odysseys left each wide open for the other to observe. There was only one thing to do, but when they broached the idea to Shen Dao, he told them they must still wait a short while. These were difficult days, and nights.

  On the two hundred and forty second day, of their tenth year in the spire; Shen Dao married Tristan and Penelope. His human half was a Taoist Priest, and he performed a wonderful ceremony lasting over an hour. Some of the customary rituals were strange to them, but all they really cared about was each other. The two young people were very happy. That day they gained an extra storage space; Tristan’s bedroom building. For a wedding present, Shen Dao had the replicator make some very special little pills for Penelope, and told her to eat one once a month.