The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

“Little brother,” Jerry said, his mind piloting Kraw through the suffocating eye of hell. He stood gripping the bridge’s central railing, as if the ship wasn’t being violently jerked about. “Look at you, glowing like a rainbow. Damn, I missed you, bro.”

  “The big man himself, nice suit. I am grateful, Jerry, but now we die.” Unlike Andy, who was doing his best to hold on for dear life, Jim balanced and maintained his upright position as if he possessed an internal gyro and magnetic shoes. Cutting it short, their heads floated to behold the front viewport; hopelessness had new meaning. Jim refocused his regard on Jerry; Jerry on him. Behind them Andy was a cadaver in the process of exchanging blood for embalming fluid; he edged himself into a wall slot.

  The sludge was closing in from every direction: drone stew pushing against Kraw's lasers like the insides of a garbage-truck’s crusher, one powered by nuclear fusion, its inner walls lined with neutron-star matter. Then, something happened. Encircling beams with the girth of 50-gallon drums rained from the sky. Lasers punished the drones and a tubular wall of smoke and explosions surrounded Kraw. The beams changed from blues, reds, and greens, to a full spectrum of colors as they melted their way through countless millions.

  “Strap in,” Jerry said. He bolted into action. “Looks like we got friends in high places! There’ll be some dying all right, but it won’t be us. Come on, brother, show me what you got—and I might have a few surprises up my sleeve for you.” Jerry raised his fist which had the detail of a human hand above an embossed cuff of a flannel shirt—maybe it wasn't flannel; looked nicer by the detail of it. The seaweed-green color beneath his static teal glow seemed to vibrate like a shivering lizard’s skin and his encompassing teal radiation was a lightning storm. Two fingers unfolded straight up, then went forward—and blaring surfing music began to play; Jerry pointed the way, sporting a smile.

  Busting up on the inside, Jim managed a serious breath then contracted his every muscle and released. His leap into the chair beside Jerry stole a frame from the projector of time. He was there, almost instantly, and slowed by turning to see his big, green brother. Jerry was moving his head to the beat, rhythm slightly off. Seeing his bro, for real in such a weird, albeit ironically unreal way, by his side again, Jim’s inner laughter culminated to a climax and he cracked a smile. Their eyes met: alien to printed ones. While trying to be serious for at least one second, they sealed a vow. Let’s fuck these bastards in the ass!

  Andy strapped in standing at the rear. He shook his head, at least feeling a little better because of the two oddly confident, oddly quirky, gods at the helm who were jamming out to some old tune seeming to stir a mutual childhood memory.

  The new commanders glared at the mess ahead, seeing as well the nightmare behind them on another screen. With a resolve like that of the last dragons on Earth, not heading quietly into that good night, Jerry’s fist met Jim’s. The bump said, “Time to get the fuck out of here.” Moving to the beat, two heads focused on the nightmare surrounding them.

  The lasers raining from space were powerful but only made a dent, a dent that was better than nothing at all. The effectiveness wore off quickly as the drones pushed back with numbers that could make Pythagoras shit a brick. Jerry maximized Kraw’s lasers and a green ant whipping about a wasp nest became a hot potato, a greasy one that managed to twist and arc and slip its way through the first layer.

  “Hang in there, Andy!” Jerry yelled back.

  Andy dry heaved. If he still possessed upchuck he’d be painting himself continually. “Fuck you!” Andy called out when his stomach allowed his lungs momentary control of his windpipe. It was the mountain coaster in Midtown—derailed and as if the carriage had eight jet engines spinning it into oblivion!

  Before entering the second swarming layer of defense Jim’s head stopped following the beat. As if meditating, while barely swaying side to side, he interfaced with the ship. The bridge went bright and his eyes went into his head.

  Time stopped.

  The power of Kraw was nothing to be taken lightly and Jerry’s new self, in which Jim immersed himself, tapping into the systems as easily as stealing cable TV, was a pulse of light containing more energy than the sun on its final hour of existence—on one plane. He saw Jerry as the tall redneck he was: curly brown hair in need of a cut, wearing actual flannel, and worn jeans, and young as if he was twenty—and they shared a proper reunion. Nothing but white light surrounded them both, pure energy and raw information. Jerry put out his hand, smiling. Jim took it and they fell into one another, merging.

  At the console, Jerry, who had been piloting the ship with his powerful green arms, and simultaneously jamming in his seat, went limp; his arms folded onto his chest. Jim’s did the same.

  “Oh, shit! What now?” Andy said, jolting violently while the two up front seemed to exist in some sort of quiescent Shangri-la. And the surfer music continued blaring, loud enough to pop his eardrums. Andy’s arms were a vice squeezing his head, his hands white-knuckle earmuffs, his face was as if he’d swallowed a bottle of Colon Killer Hot Sauce, and his teeth were clenched tight enough to weld them together.

  “We’re being overwhelmed, sir,” Yelowan said. A gauge on the ship’s panel was on full alert, bathing the bridge in red—overload was seconds away. Then another light flashed, this one green.

  “Sorry I called you Snibble Nuts, Yelowan,” Q said, “And yes, I see it—we’re gonna take a spanking. Allow that radio transmission.” The COM started flashing shortly after they began firing. Q surmised it was the ship they’d assisted; the quantum channel it was coming through on was the same that had been used to establish a one-way link from Herald’s bunker to the seven cities. He knew it well, for he designed and deployed the technology!

  Like a fax machine getting whipped, only bizarre static came over the speakers as Yelowan patched it through. Q squinted his old, slanted eyes and examined the tiny dot of a green ship, highly magnified on screen: now it was cutting into the fabric of space itself. A radiant porcupine, lasers of every color burned a hole deeper into the same dent their fleet’s lasers had carved out minutes earlier. Trailing it, black excisions spun like the swirls of consciousness between high-level six and seven, spinning counterclockwise and clockwise, and paradoxically into themselves. Drone sludge was vacuumed like cocaine into black-hole nostrils; to the nowhere—and now, they’d never existed. The scourge of countless drones: large, small, blobs or skinny sticks, even the gas and snaking oddities, all disappeared into Kraw’s inexplicable wake.

  The transmission continued to deliver nothing but static and all of Q’s 24-ship fleet received what came next. Half of the crew from every ship—those wearing lending headgear—went into a meditative state. Arms folded onto chests and eyes went into foreheads.

  “Something is hacking us, Q,” Samyreux said, transferring the information mentally. Noit’s son, he was Admiral Q’s ranking captain of the fleet—all according to Q’s condition, his lifelong dream, his big plan. The systems inside the ship were running never-before-seen code atop the visuals of every screen. Like swirling tornadoes wriggling about on each of the screens wrapping the bridge, the cypher made the faces of the other captains a storm’s eye and a torrent of symbols flew out from each.

  Q’s wives had gone meditative, and Q stopped responding; a smile formed as he watched the outer-space drones and suicide ships. Now, they became confused. They were—attacking each other! The bus-sized oddities that had been the hardest to zap in sufficient time were still acting as suicide bombers, but into their own kind! And on Earth’s surface—the same thing!

  “Yes! They are doing it,” Q exploded. “It must be that ship. Hardy ho, and look!” The dark-green ship was spiraling up and away from the chaos still pursuing it; yet now the scourge was a pack of crippled dogs, not a coordinated twist of pythons. The green one arced in a wide escaping thrust, which from space looked as if it was slingshotting around some invisible moon. And now, it was headed straight up.

  “Collision co
urse, Q,” Yelowan said. He sat next to the human wearing maroon and white, plus lending headgear; Ensign Barry had gone comatose in his chair. Like Egyptian mummies, Q’s wives also had their arms folded onto their chests; they’d become useless, then the uselessness changed color. Even the fleet’s outer hulls began to glow with an aura of yellow—just like the blip now headed their way; it didn't seem so small now. The behemoth took up the entire viewport and was radiating yellow like an afternoon sun. Jaws, those who had one (or more), fell as the useless ones began to radiate rainbows. And there was nothing anyone could do but sit or stand, and watch. The entire fleet had gotten hacked. Controls and screens went bright like bulbs about to blow. All the while civil war ensued around them.

  Below, the black plague became scattered, then refocused as if trying to put itself back together. From space, the chaos was firecrackers with the occasional napalm or nuke, and, something else was happening as the entire fleet gawked at what seemed a wasp hive that’d been kicked. And the grand dome that had vomited its sludge, now sealed shut, began to glow. There were others too, appearing like angry volcanoes under sooty fog; hundreds mottled what had once been North America.

  Massive portals on metallic coastlines sealed shut like constricting lotus flowers. Branches of arteries, to blood vessels, to capillaries, the entire network became molten. Red domes became orange in no time, then white hot like welding arcs. The ocean bubbled around the anomalies and steam was a thousand and one plus who-the-fuck-knows, upside down waterfalls.

  Something ejected from the center of the Atlantic: one, two, three, then a fourth, gargantuan one—the size of Krakatoa! Samyreux didn’t need to be ordered by the acting commander. He controlled parts of the ship that still allowed it: the outer sensors mostly. Data poured in. Visuals revealed the three that had left the ocean were the same as the one currently on a collision course with the fleet; the fourth was a rocketing, upside-down, volcano-sized cone! All soared with a pushing teal glow. Samyreux moved the view to scan the departure area. The ocean was now boiling! Marine life bobbed to the surface. Boiled whales, long-extinct species, and fish—more plentiful seemingly, than the stars in the sky. Within minutes that felt like seconds the ocean had a gray-white blanket, growing, pushing upward, expanding, death on an unfathomable scale.

  Witnessing it, Q almost lost his breakfast. He put his hands over his nose as if he smelled a pressure cooker of eggs and octopus—in gasoline; his idiosyncratic mind easily imagined the concoction.

  A counter ticked down on the largest center screen. Samyreux collaborated the data and transferred the statistics as black text on the bright panels. The inside of the bridge was a trip into a Christmas tree and Q, especially Yelowan and Samyreux with their grand eyes, were squinting.

  “Thirty seconds to impact,” Samyreux said. “Those that had ejected from the ocean will arrive shortly after.”

  “How are they moving so fast?” Q asked.

  “Something, sir, must be providing them a way to merge the tiers, change the very laws of physics around them. Something, Q, even we have never been able to do from within the three-dimensional plane.”

  “Ten seconds,” said Yelowan, in awe, almost as meditatively frozen as ensign Barry who sat next to her.

  Q mumbled numbers in Korean as he watched the bright yellow light approach, “a-hup, yo-dolb, il-gop, ya-sot, ta-sot, net, set, tul, ha-naaaa—”

  119. A Short Chunk of Code

  About an hour before Q and his fleet arrived…

  “Hold on that, Amy,” Jay said. Her finger had one inch to go. The button would’ve sent the space-jet rocketing into the window Blaire had so precisely calculated—and they would’ve been in Jewel City within minutes.

  “What is it, Jay?” Amy replied, knowing it must be of the utmost importance; they missed their window.

  “I’m not exactly sure, how, it—”

  “Jay?” Jim asked.

  Jay’s eyes went up, he slowly raised one finger, then pointed at the glass above. Blaire, the only other bot not directly interfaced at the bridge, looked up too—as if she already knew.

  They spotted the pointed silver tip first, as it crawled past their fifteen-foot circular window to the world. The shadow made the aft view-port screens go dim, and the gloom encroached round like hugging arms, to the frontal screens while enshrouding the ceiling window. Silently, and centering the bridge twelve feet above the HAT—which Blaire deactivated—glided a massive ship, its shape oddly familiar. Seconds earlier, optimism-enforcing sunlight had been beaming into the bridge, and now, the dimmed light made for an ominous feeling, until Amy read Blaire’s countenance.

  “Something good? A friendly?” Amy asked, for she knew Blaire would not have simply switched off the HAT, as well Jay would have bolted into action.

  They waited. Amy felt something in her thin bones and angled her head.

  Jim had put four helper bots online and the bridge had been amply lit like a bright Monday morning, and they were as ready as could be to get to work. Blaire, a white helper bot similar to Jay, was the only other coherent bot; two others sat erect at the rear of the pentagon-shaped bridge area, hard interfaced with the ship’s systems. None had been put online for some time, but all worked as if it was just yesterday when they’d departed the bunker in Vallecito, heading for the first, next tier.

  Blaire was the fourth of Herald’s bots to ever be activated, after Jay, and had marvelous green eyes that smiled as the shadow blanketed both the glass portal and the wrapping screens currently set to view the cluttered junkyard floating above Earth. Blaire's face was thinner than that of the male helper bots, she had Amy’s warm-brown skin tone and height, and unlike the more basic bots such as Jay with his bright white plastic, she possessed a more capable, upgraded mouth. She stood at the HAT behind the front row of five seats; her human-like kisser portrayed an awed smile and complimented her astounded eyes as the shadow maker finally revealed itself. Flash! The arrival’s lights activated like a baseball stadium’s, and the thin gap between the ships was as if, space was folding over and onto itself.

  It perfectly mirrored the shape of their space-jet! As if, they were looking into a mirror. Their only portal to the outside, which wasn’t just a screen, magnified the new view and a tornado of curiosity whipped round the bridge.

  Squeezing his butt cheeks, Jim got nervous and stood up, one hand on the railing behind his seat. He looked to Jay, who sent him a relieving nod. Jay extended a reminding finger, pointing up again—don’t miss this. The bots had a way of communicating with the other bots logged in, data had been pouring in from the ship’s sensors—certainly they’d seen it, and knew myriad minute details—but it was odd how secretive they were currently being. Surely Blaire and Jay could’ve just spilled the beans if it was this important. Condescendingly, but in a good way, both of the bots were acting like parents—and children simultaneously; if Jay had a mouth it would probably be beaming like Blaire’s.

  One dome’s gentle curvature of magnifying glass met another’s, and what had seemed the folding of space-time, neared completion. Amy felt colors invade her mind: greens, brighter greens, popping, vivid greens and blues, and fields of flowers of every color, and the aromas of those flowers, especially…it can’t be, she thought.

  An identical bridge perfectly positioned itself upside down above theirs. Slowly, slowly—not a sound, save for echos fluttering like flapping book-birds in Amy’s mind, reinvigorating old thoughts and feelings—and the duplicate ship crawled to a halt. No bots, same HAT, currently off. But two thin humans were there. They stood alone, together. Adding to the shadows were their silhouettes, each with an arm around one another.

  The interior lights activated like a clock’s digits, from behind the two and around until the light bathed two faces. The young woman’s youthful smile was by far brighter than the lights. She waved as if she could contain herself no longer; the young man had his arm around her and he squeezed his woman gently, then turned his head straight up t
o see. A tear navigated each of his acne-scarred cheeks.

  The feeling was a million white rabbits released from a genesis weapon, frolicking through a field of poppies on a spring afternoon—prismatic sunlight went esspeeeeeeew as the rays exploded from the edge of a moving cloud. Amy hard blinked while her jaw lowered like a drawbridge. Every goosebump on her skin held its minuscule hair like a lightning rod, and electricity from each zapped her neural network—from the endings to the beginnings and up her spine as if channeling the flow of an overstuffed baking-soda volcano. Colors popped like a lit bucket of fireworks, in her mind—and her imaginary friends jumped for joy.

  With the alacrity of freed prisoners, the rabbits charged outward, cutting the spring grass like an exploding starburst, charging Amy’s emotions. Flowers bloomed as if Chronos had tripled the speed of time, changing colors under a bright sun that had become a spinning disco ball: reds, yellows, pinks, purples, purples—PURPLES! Her eyes pumped like happy hearts and she couldn’t stop blinking, while Jim, with his white shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail, couldn't stop rubbing his; then Jim was crying.

  Ana and Herald waved. Aboard Amy’s space-jet it was as if they were reveling in the high-frequency waves of the higher dimensions, again, and even Blaire and Jay, the only bots not in calculatory, plugged-in la-la land, also seemed to feel the tornado of emotion spanking cheeks with flushed colors as it spun round and round. Jay raised both arms like a mountain climber at the summit; Blaire folded her fingers and pulled them to hide her popping, smiling face; she had the lips, but teeth had been scheduled as a subsequent upgrade. Blaire’s mouth was a happy black hole, until she switched on the colorful strobe light at the back of her throat.

  The smooth, sleek, identical silver and red space-jets were mere inches apart! Herald’s lips moved and his space jet crawled its last few millimeters. The arrival had seemed to take an hour, tickling anticipations, gripping spines with cold fingers and hot palms; the final halt exploded minds. Two space-jets, precisely aligned. Herald spoke another command, after which Ana and he pushed away from the floor by doing a nonchalant set of calf raises. Holding hands, the two floated toward the glass.