by F P Adriani
“Think of a wheel again—think of it rotating on a powered spindle-framework. That kind of wheel works when in contact with a surface because the spindle keeps turning. Well, time works for the human-known parts of the universe only because a special framework makes time progress with motion in the universe’s spatial dimensions.
“Gary is correct—even the Keepers have not ever truly reached absolute zero. It still remains a theoretical temperature-point. Nevertheless, we suspect that those species composed of time do reach ‘absolute zero’ at death, and both their ability to add and subtract time to and from the other aspects of the universes and reach absolute zero—both aspects would be detrimental to the other aspects of the universes. It seems those species can directly manipulate time’s framework on a large scale—remember they have no spatial size or conventional mass. They are pure time—”
“What about YOU?” I cut in. “You Keepers seem to instantaneously travel, both as yourselves and as ships—you zip in and out of places, Kostas. You pulled us along with you on Rintu—you seem to move through spatial dimensions with such ease—”
“It is the nature of our technology,” Kostas said. “Humans use the terms ‘layers’, ‘dimensions’, ‘universes’—sometimes these terms mean different things; sometimes they mean the same things. They are each just another way of looking at the Omniverse, depending on what you are doing in the Omniverse at the moment, and what you want to do in the Omniverse in the next moment.
“It is true that Keeper technology can effectively manipulate time to a very great degree. We think we can also contain the time-creatures by simulating the conditions of absolute zero for them, even though we can’t actually reach absolute zero.”
“So, basically, you want to sort of freeze them by freezing time for them,” I said.
“Yes. We would have to move at many extremely low speeds, at least until we could get that life form back to where it belongs, if dealing with it becomes necessary at some point. But, right now, learning as much as you can about how this ship works is what’s most important.”
Kostas kept manipulating her device and words from her kept appearing on the wall again, in red this time. “Let us now simply consider the notion of motion as just being a non-scalar and non-vector measure that equals distance over time. Again, note that you can rearrange that ‘equation’ to be: time = distance over motion or speed. Even though speed has time units inside it, consider speed as being an intrinsic, inherent quality, because it actually is in the Omniverse. Again, the only reason there is time is because there is always motion—there are always thermal vibrations even at the most infinitesimal levels, at the level of the pieces and on-and-off bits of the continuum, of the Omniverse. There is also omnivelocity, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
“The thing to remember is that as long as there is motion, there is time being generated. If all motion were to stop, time would no longer be happening. If all motion stops in some kind of bubble, time is suspended within that bubble. But it seems there is always thermal vibration going on. Even though you are able to manipulate time in curon bubbles, there still must BE time.
“With respect to omnivelocity, Keeper ships can travel using conventional types of motion, but they predominantly use omnivelocities. Keeper ships are equipped with various engine types, but how Keeper ship engines tend to work is they gather energy from anything—from the ones-and-zeros, from the pieces of the Omniverse—and then the ships effectively travel without time because they travel at omnivelocities; in other words, at all velocities within a range you set, so that, effectively, the ship’s overall velocity is zero, because the many velocities are vectors in opposite directions that completely cancel each other out.”
A long silence followed, during which my crew and I tried to absorb all of this mentally, and our hands physically worked at entering information and questions into our workbooks.
With a heavy frown on his face now, Gary finally said, “But then how can you get to another point in the ‘Omniverse’? You’d effectively be stationary.”
Kostas’ head shook fast. “Inside a traveling Keeper ship, you are not stationary. You are actually moving in all of those component directions, and the ultimate addition of their vectors will be zero. But you will have actually moved in those directions—and you can move to anywhere then, instantaneously, depending on how far you go on your path and as long as you are inside the proper path inside a dimensional stream; in other words, to get to points a great distance away, you must choose very large positive omnivelocities in a certain space—and then you must choose the negative of those omnivelocities to cancel out the positive and cause an immense vibration of the Keeper ship, people, whoever, at a certain frequency. And you must do all of this in a very specific order, which is what all of you from the Demeter will have to learn.
“But when you use omnivelocities, you are pinpointing exactly where you want to go—where you want time to be suspended till—and time is indeed effectively suspended because you are moving at such a high overall amount of speeds and velocities, that the time part of the time-equals-distance-over-motion equation is close to zero….”
“I’m sorry, but you’re redefining terms in the equation so often that you’re getting nonsensical results,” Gary said. “This all sounds like magic, and it seems to completely go against your assertion that time is dependant on motion because now you’re talking about going at superhigh speeds, yet time is shrinking relativistically—you’re contradicting your own statements. It also sounds like you and the Keepers—well, like the Keepers are gods.”
“What are ‘gods’?” Kostas asked in an airy, philosophical way, her free hand carelessly waving in front of her. “Ages ago, my ancestors in their cultures endowed their notions of mythical gods with various qualities—some were more fallibly human-like, others were all-powerful. But all-powerful isn’t necessarily what a god is. There are degrees of godness, and that’s because what humans call ‘gods’ are simply not gods; they are life forms in the Omniverse who are extremely capable at manipulating the Omniverse.
“But, basically, if it helps to think of it like this, how the Monument’s main type of engine works is similar to the way a curon bubble works, but on a much larger and much more advanced scale.”
“But,” I said now, “when curon particles were discovered during a space experiment, which also led to our noticing the existence of the space flumes, the particles were really half-invented by humans.”
A sound came from Kostas—half-grunt, half-laugh. “Humans like to think that they think of everything, but the curon particles were actually invented by the creators of the firestones. Curon particles are a toy they used to play with.”
“Shit,” I said, my shocked mouth hanging open afterward. I watched my crew shift around on their chairs. Maybe they were thinking what I was thinking: what the fuck am I getting myself into here?
“Where are the creators of the firestones?” I asked Kostas now. “Have you reached them yet?”
“No,” Kostas said, frowning. “We suspect some of them are in The Steady-State Universe—a universe that is the ultimate universe: complete peace and equilibrium, where life forms just exist in harmony with the vibrations of the pieces of the Omniverse. The Keepers have never been able to reach this place—they haven’t evolved enough yet, and it is dangerous moving from one universe to the next if you’re not ready to. The life inside each universe has evolved so separately and sometimes so differently that you risk destroying the universes when you enter another one. It is likely that we Keepers will never be able to confirm where some life forms have gone because we cannot get to those places till we are ready to evolve into a form of life who can exist there.”
I watched Kostas’ face, her distracted-looking eyes, her slightly frowning mouth. Then I said, “But doesn’t that mean that, before then, you’ll never be completely satisfied with your work?”
“Yes.” A long sigh from Kostas now. “I think that
if you keep curon particles in mind, it may help you understand how we Keepers use velocity; curon particles work similarly—how do you think you’re able to use them to set up a separate, controllable space and time in which you manipulate and mitigate time-dilation effects?”
Gary was frowning. “The science of curon particles has never been well-explained. We use them and the fields they create, but we don’t really know how they work; we only know that they work. You don’t have to know how something works in order to use it. It just needs to produce the result you want.”
“Exactly,” Kostas said. “While my use of terminology today seems to be magic or to violate laws in this universe, my terminology is the best I can do to explain a form of science from a being with a different brain and different abilities. My human-language usage is an approximation of Keeper science. Some things do not translate well into the boundaries of what a human can know and become familiar with. Fortunately, as you will see later, much of flying this ship is automated, even for the Keepers, to make operating the Monument easier; while Keepers sometimes cannot control where they are and go, they also do not want to spend most of their intentional time getting to places. They need to spend most of their usable time acquiring, recycling and archiving.”
It was my turn to frown—and literally scratch my head. “There’s something I don’t understand—when you talk of many universes—what about The Infinite Layer? If that goes on forever in some directions, how is there a boundary somewhere, where other universes start?”
“What humans call The Infinite Layer appears to be infinite from your limited science, but it is not infinite,” Kostas said. “There is at least one species there who can actually manipulate the characteristics of that layer—and who needs a populace of other beings around it to survive, as if the populace were food. An outsider like us can do nothing about it. Those inside that layer must figure out how to convince the species to release them.”
“Wait a minute,” Cambridge said. When I glanced over my right shoulder at him now, I saw him sit up in his seat sharply. “I’m sitting here trying to deal with all this, but I just realized something. If you—if we’ll be traveling in this ‘Omniverse’, going everywhere as we move, can I find my son Peter out there somewhere? He disappeared years ago in The Chimera System. I’ve always felt like he’s still alive…. Do you Keeper people maybe know where he is?”
“Yes,” Kostas said.
Now Cambridge really straightened in his chair, and the muscles beneath the dark-bronze skin on his neck tensed into tight, visible chords. “Then he is alive—please take me to him!”
Kostas’ head shook, very sharply. “We can’t do that—at least not at this time. But it would be meaningless because—I will tell you this one thing: he fell in love with being on a planet, and now he cannot leave there.”
“That’s crazy!” Cambridge said now, almost shouting. “No matter what you said about yourselves, you crowd really are like gods—can’t you just get Peter off there?”
“We can’t do this now, and, anyway, the son you knew back then wouldn’t be the same son now.”
“Oh for chrissake—what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I was about to demand that Kostas give Cambridge more information, but Kostas’ voice stopped me: “I realize how difficult all of this is, but you all must put some personal things aside right now—because we have a mission to do.”
“And why do you need us to do it?” I said quite sharply. “I still can’t understand why. With all your powers, you could do practically anything.”
Cambridge glared at Kostas, while she pursed her lips. “It goes back to what I told you all before,” she finally said. “Just like other life forms in The Interstitial Universe don’t trust the Keepers, so do some life forms elsewhere not trust the Keepers.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” I said, rolling my eyes. “So, it seems that, basically, you’ve invited us to be part of the crew here because you want to put a new face on the work you do.”
“Yes,” Kostas said. “That’s part of it.”
“Well, really, I’ve gotta ask: who are you to control any of it? Like even if those time creatures are dangerous, maybe they’re what nature—the Omniverse—wants, so maybe they should remain wherever they go. I’m really starting to feel like I don’t want to be responsible for controlling any of this, for interfering—”
“But, Lydia, you’ve misinterpreted what the Keepers do. They do interfere, but they don’t control, as they are not a type of creator. They are more a type of mediator and protector, and, of course, an archiver.
“But think of throwing a wrench in the workings of a wheel to stop it—that’s what we Keepers tend to do now. We don’t destroy the wheel itself; we freeze the spindle. For example, we must ‘throw a wrench’ at that warring species. It’s really all they do now—they have no conventional bodies. They are only a motion of mind, but that motion can still greatly affect this universe.
“We’re particularly afraid that one of its members has now accessed information that will give their mind-motion outsized power—this is what will destroy the framework. We simply can’t let them move their fight beyond their mental sphere on their planet and endanger other life forms elsewhere, as we’ve described.
“We can’t get back to before the creation of time, or even to our own personal, earlier evolutionary times: just like the creators of the firestone, our evolution has sometimes led to a loss of information from our past existences.
“All of you here in this room will not just be a ‘new face’ on our work. Again, we also want to make sure that we share some of our information with other life forms while we exist as Keepers; that way, our knowledge wouldn’t necessarily die with us if we should ever evolve away from our current function, which has become quite a common occurrence in the Omniverse—”
Kostas’ head suddenly jerked upward, her tall body in her red worksuit stilling in a very tense way. Then she said in a loud voice, “I’m sorry, but I must go.”
And she did go—she instantly disappeared from the room.
My crew and I stared at each other with wide eyes. Then I felt something, through my shoes; my feet were planted on the room’s dark floor, and now there was a vibration inside, an extended rumble. Considering how massive and sturdy this ship seemed to be, I was pretty sure I shouldn’t have been feeling anything through the floor.
“Did anyone else feel that?!” I finally asked.
“Yeah,” Gary replied fast.
My fingers banged on my belt communicator. “Everyone get back to the Demeter—to your stations there!”
I ran from the meeting room.
*
The mass of me and my crew now rushed toward my ship and up the ramp. I ran as fast as possible all the way up to my bridge. Chen, Gary, Babs, Cambridge and Shirley burst into there right after me.
“Karen—Steve—are you there yet?” I said, standing by my chair now, my fingers on my intercom controls for engineering.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Steve said over the line.
“Can you give me any numbers on that vibration in the Monument?”
“I wish we could,” Karen said now, in a tired, drained voice. “I meant to tell you sooner that we almost never get any readings on anything from outside the Demeter when we’re on it. The hangar seems to block everything.”
“Shit,” I said, my eyes whipping up to the front viewscreen.
“Lydia,” Karen said, “what do we do?”
“We sit here and wait for Kostas—what else? I see the frigging hangar door has closed.”
“Captain—” Geena’s voice “—I’m with Bill, Nellie and Brayburn in the hall outside the cargo bay. Is there anything we can do? Maybe we shouldn’t have left the Monument rooms—”
Geena was right. “Hang on,” I said to her. “Kostas, can you hear me? Where are you? What’s going on?”
“There’s been an explosion,” Kostas’ rushed voice said. “Dozens of woun
ded Keepers are in one of the lounges near the kitchen.”
“Shit!” I said. “Can we help?”
“Yes,” Kostas replied.
I turned my head to the others on my bridge, who had all been standing and waiting in the center of the room. “Geena,” I said over the intercom, “I don’t know where that lounge is, but the four of you just go to the Monument’s kitchen.”
“We’re on it,” Geena said.
And then Chen added, “Lydia, I want to go too.”
“Both of us will go. Babs, Gary, you’re in charge here,” I said.
Then I ran off my bridge.
*
Just like my crew and I fled the meeting room before, Chen and I now fled my ship. Geena and her crowd were nowhere in sight in the hangar, and then I saw why: one second my feet were pounding at the hangar floor; the next I was nowhere, and then the next I was somewhere—in a dimly lit room, full of Keepers. Some were lying on the floor; others were standing hunched over. There were sparkly, sharp pellets scattered around the room—Keeper blood, apparently.
For a horrified moment, I just stood staring with my mouth open. So did my five crewmembers—Geena and the others had been transported into here too.
“What happened?” Nellie asked just as Kostas suddenly appeared at the far end of the room. She bent over one of the prone Keepers.
“Part of the cube has exploded,” Kostas said now in a breathless voice, but there seemed to be something else inside her words, something soft and young, and upset.
I rushed in her direction, and as I did that, she added, “Una is mortally wounded.”
Thura was the only Keeper I had ever heard speak from outside of her mind, but now I could have sworn I heard sad, guttural noises coming from several Keepers. I glanced around the room; as far as I could tell, all of the Keepers were still flashing in and out, but it seemed like it was only a low-frequency flashing. I could finally more clearly see their features now, could finally more clearly see how hollow their features really were, almost as if they were only a shell of a humanoid with a strange, shimmering fluid flowing through them.
