Temporal Incursion

by Neil A. Hogan

  On the screen was one of the alien residents. A green creature with big eyes and a long snout. The image turned, showing its long ears and the spines on the back of its neck. Next to it was a scrolling list of achievements and abilities.

  Watanabe swiped left to indicate that he wasn’t suitable, and the image was replaced with a reddish alien with long spines out of its head and sharp yellow teeth. “Hmm,” said Watanabe interestedly, and swiped right to offer the assignment.

  Another alien, another left swipe, another alien, another right swipe. Then a very handsome human male with large muscles and an impressive list of qualifications appeared. Watanabe sighed, and his finger paused, momentarily tempted to go against his better judgement. Then he shook himself and swiped left.

  A few more swipes and then Watanabe closed the tablet and headed a few more steps to where the main outer spokes of the rings had been partly constructed. The corridor splayed out into a ring shape with artificial gravity stretching around and over his head, with other corridors spreading out from it. Most of these were partly complete, with a wall at the point where construction had stopped. One of these, directly above, reached the room he wanted. Corridor 6 would take him up to where he would help begin construction of the signal detector.

  Watanabe blinked as he felt the pull of the gravity from above him. That was the problem with being tall, he thought. Whenever he was inside a ring, it always felt like someone was trying to pull his head off.

  He quickly walked up the side of the wall and then headed into the overhead corridor which was now level with him, and strode into the room.

  He knew that his hires would all get the assignment he had chosen for them. It was now up to them to decide whether they really wanted it.

  He grimaced at his predicament. Since builderbots had been doing all the manual construction for decades, he’d probably have to show his hires how to use a simple screwdriver.

  Chapter 62

  "Those boffs are making a fantastic amount of noise,” said Tenant. “That energy creature will have no choice but to check it out.”

  "If you're wrong, it'll just pick us off one by one," said Petree’s voice from his lobecom.

  "I'm afraid you're wrong," said Heartness, walking up the steps into hexicle 20.

  "You again!" said Tenant. "I thought you'd left."

  "Got stuck." She shrugged.

  "Hey, is it that girl?" said Petree's voice. "Ask her. Ask her why she arrived in a dive? Who would willingly jump into a wormhole if they had another choice?"

  They'd obviously discussed the whole situation after she had left them.

  Tenant looked at her, seriously. "You heard his question. And now there's a crazed energy cloud erasing people on the base. Do you have anything to do with that?"

  Heartness thought carefully. They were now all afraid and looking for someone to blame. "All of you had disappeared in the future. I was investigating where you all went, and the creature suddenly appeared and began tracking me. If I hadn't dived through, I would have been absorbed as well."

  She heard a sharp intake of breath from the communicator.

  "She's from the future," said Petree. "We're all already dead there."

  "A boff was able to detect 27 people in the cloud," said Heartness. "I might find a way to get them all out again."

  Tenant and Petree were silent, considering this news.

  Just then the door from the other side of the room opened, and Petree waddled in, with a determined and resigned look on his face.

  "What are you doing?" said Tenant, turning off the communicator.

  "No need to worry now. We're dead anyway. Let's see what we can do about helping Victoria solve the future problem. That way there's a possibility she'll bring us back. It's our only chance."

  "No!” said Tenant, agitatedly. “Our only chance is getting off this base. That is a parallel future that we don't have to have!"

  Petree ignored him.

  Tenant grabbed him by his white shirt. "Don't you see? This is our chance to change our future."

  Petree patted the hands on his shirt calmly, and Tenant relaxed, pulling away and stepping back, feeling embarrassed. Petree then straightened his shirt, pulled out his communicator and played a saved recording to Heartness, showing what had happened to Bekar. "He tried to change his future by getting information from you. But he was already destined to go first.”

  Tenant screwed up his face and gritted his teeth. The fear was getting to him. “I just… I don’t want to…die.”

  The recording cut out just as the screams of the assistants were heard in the background.

  “Brace told me that, as soon as the cloud absorbed those three, systems around it went offline,” Petree continued, directing the information at Heartness. “The cloud became too powerful for much of the hive’s basic EM systems to cope. I was able to access the last camera record using some electricity, but we don’t have much of that. We could probably increase the power and get them all online again, but I don't have time to reconfigure everything."

  Petree rubbed his chin, thinking. "Though, I think we might be wrong on the sound thing. Those assistants were already in the next room, but the creature was still able to locate them quickly. I think it homes in on organic electric energy, rather than sound waves. A bit like a shark.”

  "Our heartbeats," said Heartness.

  "And it chased after those that were trying to leave first," said Petree.

  "I hadn't thought of that," said Heartness. "But I guess it would be calculating the easiest or the hardest targets. The ones leaving would be the first to go."

  "Or maybe the ones with the fastest beating hearts,” said Tenant. “We send out EM pulses with our hearts with every beat. Easily tracked. So, anyone running for surface exits or the lifts would be picked off first.”

  "Which means, the safest thing to do is not move," said Petree.

  Maybe three heads were better than one, thought Heartness. She doubted a tiny piece of future information could change things dramatically. "The last person to be taken was Sam-Yel Utson," she said. "He sat unmoving, eating food and drinking in the lunch room. He had no idea of what was happening."

  "Sam-Yel keeps to himself, sets his own hours, and never checks communications. He's also got permanently implanted hearing impairment systems that only pick up base communications. With no one in the main center, there won't be any way of sending a message to him."

  "And because he's calm, his heartbeat would be lower, and the creature wouldn't notice him as quickly as the others!" said Heartness, understanding.

  Just then Petree lowered himself to the ground. "Being overweight means my heart is beating faster than yours. I need to meditate and remain unmoving and calm, then the creature will track someone else first. It might give us some time."

  Just then, Tenant had a thought. "You said 27 people were in the creature. But there are only 27 on the base. It looks to me like you’ll be fine."

  “Utson wasn’t in it yet when I arrived.”

  “Ah.”

  "If I can find a solution to preventing the creature from continuing its absorption, and leave that solution for future people to find, it might help save this star system."

  Petree took a deep breath, and Tenant scanned him with his wrist band. "Heart beat already slowing. He must meditate often."

  He scanned Heartness and himself. "Way too high for us. Not even low enough for walking beats." He indicated a couple of chairs near the reactor control panels. "Take a seat."

  They both sat down, and Tenant played with his wristband a bit more.

  The monitor in the room lit up to show the base with about 20 shadows, little heartbeat monitors on all of them.

  "That's ingenious," Heartness said.

  "Yes, but I'm not sure about hexicle 18," said Tenant.

  "Cheree's hexicle," said Petree quietly.

  "Yes, the system is showing two heartbeats, but one person."

  "So, she fibbed to us whe
n she said she was needing to lose weight,” said Petree. "Probably didn’t want us to know yet in case of a miscarriage. I wonder who the father is?"

  Heartness' hand flew to her mouth. "Two heartbeats means a mother and baby."

  "Which means if the creature is hunting heart beats, she'll be the next target," said Tenant, sadly.

  "And also means that Heartness has a chance of not being one of the 27," said Petree.

  "Oh, my god," said Heartness. "You're right!"

  "So, let's assume this young lady can get back to the future and find a solution. How can we get her there?"

  "What about the same way she came?" asked Tenant. "A time hole. Can we create one? Reconfigure a wristband? Could be risky."

  "In the future," began Heartness, "this whole area is unstable with time fissures, micro time particles and time bombs exploding everywhere. Not to mention time quakes. They began increasing just as I left. Perhaps they started being created here?"

  "If they're time holes or reverse time particles, they can come from anywhere, even parallel realities, or further in the future" said Petree. "I'm not sure about sending you forward to a point where that creature is hunting you, or you're going to be surrounded by time fissures."

  "What if we could slow down the time hole? Make sure she appears with a slow heartbeat. Then the creature won't know where she is!"

  "That's brilliant!" said Petree. "Tenant, I didn't know you had it in you."

  Petree carefully got up and showed his wristband. "Heartbeat lower than yours now.” He swiped a section of the display. “I’m sending the boffs back. Let’s head back to the hexicle where she came in and see if we can detect the doorway to the time hole from there."

  Just as they headed through to the next hexicle, a bright flickering light began materializing in front of them.

  "Ah," said Petree, resignedly.

  Chapter 63

  A small explosion rocked the Stellar Flash, and the Center crew briefly stumbled away from their stations.

  “Warning,” said the A.I. “Nanite shell compromised. Warning. Temporal incursion. Alert. Time crystals stabilizing.”

  Hogart looked at his other crew members alarmed, as the avatar’s voice echoed around them. “All stop!” he yelled. “Josie?”

  Tonderai placed her hand on her panel, absorbing information. “Captain. There wasn’t anything there moments ago. It just appeared.”

  “But, nothing can break the structural integrity of the lattice shield,” blurted Hogart. “It’s outside of space and time. That’s the whole point in having it!”

  “Captain,” said Torus. “The particle has reverted the time crystals to normal linear crystals. They’re no longer destabilized.”

  “Empty ship, Jonathan, er Captain,” said Kumar from the floor, rubbing his arm. “I sent the cleaning crews home before we left. I think we should be fine.”

  “Raj,” groaned Hogart, returning to his station. “This is a reversed time particle. This ship is 2.5 million years old. Literally anything can happen!”

  “Micro time particle detected moving into sewerage system 4J,” said Geo.

  “Oh, no,” said Cuddly.

  Hogart turned to Cuddly, alarmed. And then, everyone was thrown to the floor as much bigger explosion ripped through several doors in Corridor 2.

  *

  In space, a section of the Stellar Flash flickered brightly, and then exploded outward – a massive hole appearing just above the second letter ‘a’.

  The lights along the side went out, then one of the new stanchions twisted and fell towards the center.

  And then another, much bigger explosion ruptured a larger hole, and the Stellar Flash went dark.

  Episode 9

  The Quincunx of Time

  Chapter 64

  Inside the Stellar Flash, the lights came back on, and the airlights to the center control room activated.

  The crew struggled to get back up again and grip their panels.

  “Report!” yelled Hogart.

  “Sewerage system 4J is a compartmentalized system to prevent the separated wastes of species 378 from combining,” said the A.I.’s voice. “Compartmentalization has been discontinued.”

  “This is so embarrassing,” mumbled Cuddly.

  “And the micro time particle dissolved one of the new walls, right?” asked Hogart. “I assume the area has been sealed off and nanites are repairing everything?”

  The ship’s Japanese avatar materialized. “I’m sorry, captain. But the micro time particle is hanging in this part of space. We need to move the ship away from it.”

  “Josie?” asked Hogart, and then realized his pilot was still on the floor. “Amy?”

  His fluid doctor slid over to her and scanned her. “Unconscious. The explosion overloaded her mental link with the ship.” She flicked a blobby tentacle at Tonderai’s position, indicating her hand gripping her side. “Pain feedback from the explosion. She’ll be out until we can fix everything.”

  “And, without a pilot, we can’t go anywhere,” said Geo.

  “No problem,” said Kumar. “The nanites are already on it and will be repairing it soon. We can leave.”

  “Not possible,” said Torus. “It is still there.”

  “Actually, I had hoped the explosion had destroyed it,” said Hogart.

  “It’s a piece of reversed time,” said Geo. “The explosion would have materialized around it. The particle is a catalyst.”

  “Captain” began Spiney. “We need to shift the ship away from the particle, creating the least amount of damage as it passes through. We have no other choice.“

  Hogart groaned. “Every time I relent, and get a pilot, we’re put in a position where we have to survive without one. A.I?”

  “The micro time particle is affecting my ability to manage the ship,” said the A.I. “I cannot analyze it as it keeps reversing my sensors. Manual override recommended.”

  “I can do it,” came a voice in Hogart’s mind.

  “No, Planty. It’s alright. We’ll work something else out.”

  “Plant-based thinking is much better for merging with the consciousness of the ship. Your clone knew that and let me pilot the ship a few times.”

  Hogart rubbed his face in surprise. “Thanks, but, not this time. Besides, experienced non-plant species can work just as well. Let’s try something else first.”

  Just then, Kumar ripped the panel off his podium and held it up. “The upgrade made them portable!” He ran to the exit to corridor 2, dissolved the door, and was immediately thrown back as hot air poured into the center. He reactivated it quickly. “Not that way,”

  He ran around past Geo and Spiney, then down corridor 1.

  Hogart watched him go, and called after him. “Permission to attempt manual piloting of the ship, captain? Yes, Security Officer Kumar, permission granted.” He turned back to the crew. “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  Chapter 65

  The cloud extended its senses across the static surface of the world, feeling for dynamic parts; the slow pulsing of pieces of itself. The ones it had just added, confused it. It had not felt anger before, nor fear. Or other emotions for that matter. It only had need.

  What is this place? It thought. Where had it come to? It felt separated. Incomplete. It was searching. What was it searching for?

  It was missing so much of itself. It couldn’t think clearly. All it could think of was it was lacking energy. Something had happened, and it needed to rebuild itself. It needed to get its mind back, and then it would know what to do next. From the pieces of itself it had already found, it knew there were other pieces not far away.

  Throughout the base the creature tried to find parts of itself. Every time it met one, it greeted it with love and affection, pulling it back in like a mother bringing her child into her arms. But each time these parts would fight it, would try not to be part of it, not want to return to it. They even had their own thoughts that were different from its own.


  It couldn't understand this.

  Confused, dazed and disoriented, it wondered why they would run towards it and then fight. It tried to adjust itself, to reorganize itself. Somehow it was living in reverse. Time in this world was moving in a strange direction. Things were falling apart rather than coming together.

  As they returned to it, atoms could not find a way to reconcile the arrow of time, and would simply reorder themselves. The creature tried to control this, increasing the amount of matter and ordering the wavelengths, but still it struggled. Time was wrong. The cloud was a mixture of past and future times, fighting to become whole again. And all its pieces were going in the wrong direction.

  Frustrated, it spun and met another piece. Two pieces in one. It absorbed them and felt fear from one of the pieces, but then it felt something different from the other. A tiny innocent piece, almost at the end of its life, sent it endless love.

  No. In this reality, at the beginning of its life.

  “Are you me?” asked the cloud. “Were you me? Will you be me?”

  “I am Kana,” said the little piece. “I am with mother. We are both separate and together. You and I are both separate and together.”

  “I understand. Not this or that. This and that.”

  “Yes, you understand. Soon, all will be understood.”

  The piece sent it love again, then slept in the back of the cloud’s mind like the others.

  This new piece calmed the cloud. The cloud knew then that it was doing the right thing. Bringing pieces back to itself, to be whole again.

  With greater love, it renewed its mission and floated through the strange structure, finding more of the pieces, absorbing them, until it encountered something that surprised it.

  Something that reminded it of its world.