Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  “Keeper ships and the personal transporters normally need both the proper omnivelocity profiles for vibrating at the right frequency patterns, and they need to be in the proper place inside a stream to reach particular destinations. All of this is fundamental to how we Keepers travel and how this ship uses energy.

  “Keeper ship engines disassociate fuel-matter down to the smallest measures, even well before the gluon state, in order to get maximum energy from the fuel-matter, which energy is used to propel Keeper ships. And we can use anything as fuel, as energy—including space, normal matter, dark matter—”

  “Even our shit?” I said, hearing laughs from my crew around me.

  Kostas nodded at me fast. “Of course. Everything is recycled on here, just like much of it is on your ship too.” Her eyes shifted to around the room. “Back to the transporting again: you are all still human, as am I, and if you’ve noticed, I don’t always use personal transporting on this ship. Dimensional sickness is always a concern, so you should get used to using your personal transporter only when it’s very necessary or in an emergency—in other words, day-to-day, you should use the more mechanical means of traveling through this ship. I know that once you’ve been zipping around via transporting, mechanical means are slower. But, again, it’s a good idea to not rely on transporting too much. There are actually shields on the Monument, between us and the engines, and how this ship’s shell moves—there is shielding to protect us from dimensional illness as we live on here. The shielding also prevents the Keepers from being overloaded with energy. But sometimes the dimensional sickness happens anyway, if there is a momentary break in the shielding because we’re repairing something, recharging the engines, etcetera.

  “The Keepers have their own ways of intentionally traveling as a whole organism inside here and other places, including in space, which, again, can be quite instantaneous. But we humans can’t use those methods as they inherently rely on having Keeper anatomy to survive the trip. When in space, for example, the Keepers can breathe and maintain pressurization by vibrating in and out of other environments that are breathable and pressurized. We, however, can’t do that, so don’t try to jump out of one of the hatches here while you’re wearing only a worker suit.”

  “Um, that wasn’t exactly tops on my list of Things To Do Before I Die,” one of my crew said, and I couldn’t help laughing at his statement. But I noticed Kostas’ face had fallen a little—then I remembered Una….

  “How are the Keepers in the lounge doing today?” I asked Kostas fast.

  A slow nod from her now, but her eyes were focused on the device in her hands. “They’re doing well; they’re improving—thankfully. After our next lecture today, I hope Geena and several more of your crew can go back to the kitchen—”

  “Of course,” I said, glancing over at Geena and Brayburn, who both nodded back at me.

  “Excuse me, uh, Kostas,” Brayburn said now, clearing his throat. “Some of us aren’t engineering types—I mean, I’ll keep sitting through the sciency lectures, and I know enough about how to survive some things. But I’ve never flown a spaceship. I prefer doing more normal tasks, like in the dining room, loading cargo, etcetera. I don’t think I’m the only one.” Several people voiced their agreement with his statement.

  I sighed, but there was a smile on my face, too. “I think this is my crew’s way of saying they don’t want to sit through anymore incomprehensible Keeper science classes!”

  Laughter all around the room now—and even a small smile from Kostas.

  *

  Unfortunately for Brayburn and the others who weren’t science-savvy, the Keepers felt that all of us humans still had to learn the very basics of The Keeper ship, so, after we were through with our worksuit orientation, we had to separate off into three groups again and go to the next lecture.

  I was finally back in the same meeting room with the same crewmembers of mine as during the first lecture. This time, Kostas began with a discussion of the Keepers.

  “Because the Keepers naturally flux in and out of places, they don’t necessarily need ships to move; they need ships to contain the devices they collect and dismantle, to store their food, and so on. Many Keepers prefer to remain on Rintu—some must, to protect places like The Hall Of Devices.

  “There is always work to be done, and some of that work might involve difficult experiences, which brings me to another topic: The Error Universe.”

  Kostas used her device to draw images and words on the wall behind her—sketchy depictions of amorphous objects with words and symbols scattered around them: “+ or – an amount” “lags in efficiency” “incomplete force application….”

  “In the Omniverse,” Kostas said now, “it seems every measurement, every event, every motion, every interaction of energy has an error attached—there is entropy too. There are energy losses in many systems, and sometimes to a greater degree than is known. There are unexplained losses too, or losses of efficiency that have been explained incorrectly; the energy did not go where humans and other species believe it has gone.

  “What if you could add up all of those minute errors and find it in total somewhere? They would add up to a lot of energy-data. And they would also be a potential source of special thermodynamic parameters: this is energy that can behave outside the every-day ‘laws’ of thermodynamics.”

  Kostas stopped talking, and she seemed to become distracted by her device. I really hoped it wasn’t because of another disaster….

  Her twitching face didn’t look stressed, however—it looked like she was thinking hard about something.

  “Is something bothering you?” I finally asked her.

  She glanced up at me, her cheeks containing a touch of pink. “The Keepers are constantly feeding me information—some of which I’m reading off to you. But as I’ve never given lectures like this to such a large amount of people, I’m figuring out how to present some of the basics as I go on. Maybe I can take a break and answer some questions now?”

  “Okay—I’ll bite,” I said. “This Error place—are you saying that the Keepers take care of that universe too?”

  “Well—” Kostas frowned “—they’re not supposed to—nobody’s supposed to manipulate it.”

  “I’m not surprised: it sounds worse than the firestones and energy wells.”

  Shirley shifted around in her chair and tapped her workbook with her stylus, then touched the pen to her chin. “Kostas, I’m having difficulty with your description: if there is energy left over from a reaction or an interaction, it will heat the surroundings, be transmitted into kinetic energy—something. And that energy transfer is measurable in this normal universe. This has been tested numerous times. The energy doesn’t go nowhere or just disappear like it’s been transported elsewhere. It can’t be created or destroyed, even effectively.”

  “And you know all of that’s true for all reactions and interactions that have taken place?” Kostas said. “Humans do not have access to the constant stream of events in even this universe. How do you know energy is always conserved here? How do you know some supposedly conserved actions don’t actually lose energy from the equation? In The Error Universe, both intentionally and unintentionally, not only is some energy directly siphoned away from other universes for various reasons, there is often a mirroring of the events that have happened in the other universes. This keeps an accounting of where energy is going and has gone at all times, and it determines how efficient the way the universes are structured is.”

  Part of my mind froze at the sound—and meaning—of what she was saying. “And what if The Error Universe doesn’t think this one’s efficient enough?”

  “Corrections are then made to the laws in this universe.”

  Around me, Gary, Shirley and Babs all pulled a face at the same time. “Again, that makes no sense,” Shirley said. “To our senses, not counting the strange interactions and matter we’ve found while traveling space, the laws are immutable—that’s why they are laws.”


  “They are called laws,” Kostas said. “Nomenclature does not necessarily determine the nature of the thing that’s been named. Simply that there is even room for debate shows that the ‘laws’ are apparently not concrete. If they were indeed immutable laws, we would never debate them because their nature would be very clear to everyone upon examination.”

  In one frustrated shot, I spread my hands around the room. “But then how are we here? We’ve relied on laws actually being laws to get us off the Earth and do so much more.”

  “Yes but, again, humans have not seen what has happened to the efficiency of nature. You cannot see every atom. You have not had access to all matter. You have only accessed a tiny bit. You have not seen every atom that’s ever existed, every atomic interaction and consequential macroscopic interaction over the ages of the universes. You cannot see during all the times that have ever existed. You cannot truly time-travel. So what do you have to compare to? Your baseline is: you only have a result that is locked in your real time. Many events have happened, and time can alter what the nature of something looks like. What the past looked like in its present may not be the same as what that past looks like in a future present.

  “And, again, all the present interactions—humans do not have the ability to keep an accounting of that either. Even the Keepers can only access a fraction of the events of the universes. They do not control The Error Universe either; they can’t. They just know how to access that universe and slightly manipulate it if that becomes necessary. It took them over a million years to learn how to do that little bit.”

  Babs’ eyes were wide with interest, but her mouth ultimately flattened. “Then who does control it? Didn’t you say only some of the error-accounting is unintentional?”

  Kostas’ eyes shifted away from us, and her mouth seemed to soften into a strange state for her: frustration. “I’m not sure who or what controls it—the Keepers aren’t sure. We’re still learning.”

  Gary spoke now, and his voice was low: “It seems that all this time we thought we had control of our lives when we really don’t.”

  There was no frustration in Kostas’ gaze now; she looked at Gary with sure, direct eyes. “You have control of your own actions, just not all of the reactions. From your perspective, nothing has really changed. I have only told you that those reactions are more often under the control of other forces in the universes than you used to think.”

  “But I’ve seen the dimensional maps you posted on the wall last time,” Gary said. “And I saw the interactive library in the Rintu mountain. I’ve seen how much the Keepers can access about other events, about where everyone is—”

  Kostas shrugged now. “What have you really seen? You’ve seen one small part, one small device. The Keepers have many devices, and some other beings in the universes have even more. The job of the Keepers is never-ending, is constant, as is mine.”

  She seemed to straighten up more, at least the pants on her worksuit seemed to change into stiffer, straight lines toward the floor. “I’ve talked enough. It is time to get back to my other work, which is helping to coordinate the cube work. I want you all to review what we’ve discussed so far; do this for the rest of the day. Try to memorize as much as you can. Also, rest and eat what you want from the kitchen. Take a walk through the ship. If you can’t enter somewhere, you won’t be able to enter there. Tomorrow, I’ll take you on a tour of the Monument’s main bridge.”

  I watched her rapidly walk away from us and out of the room. Then I said, “Why does it always seem like the more I’m around them, the less I know?”

  My friends laughed at my statement, but their laughing ultimately didn’t prevent the uncomfortable silence that followed: we had so much work to do, but would we ever really understand any of that work?

  *

  I decided to go to that same lounge area to check on the Keepers while Geena and several more of my crew worked in both the lounge area and the kitchen.

  The lounge today looked different: many of the Keepers inside it now appeared to be eating and sleeping comfortably; more cushions had been brought in, and someone had turned on a large wall-screen, which contained images of other Keepers, seemingly from on Rintu, given the extremely strong orange color of the landscape in some of the images. Apparently, the Rintu Keepers had been mind-link talking to the Monument Keepers, sending their natural signals attached to artificial ones. I wondered what they were saying….

  A tinge inside my mind…a Keeper.

  We are sharing the information we have learned about the dangers of the cube, the Keeper said. It will be stored in an archive on Rintu.

  Who is talking? I thought.

  I am Purn.

  Hello, Purn. I hope you’re okay today.

  I am getting better. I was exposed to too much energy. Like one of your human electronic devices, my circuitry got overloaded. The residual subatomic stream that affected me is making me twitch a lot. It is quite embarrassing, especially on top of our normal inability to be still.

  I smiled a little; then I remembered what had happened to Una, and my smile faded….

  “I’m so sorry about Una,” I said out loud, glancing over at the spot where she had died. “Where is she now?”

  She is in a tube in one of the gardens; it was one of her favorite places to look at.

  “I’m glad she can rest in that one place now,” I said, though my voice didn’t come out sounding as if I was glad….

  I was feeling a little too warm in my suit, and I didn’t know how to adjust any settings for that; Kostas had said we would get more training on the suits tomorrow, but I was suddenly wishing we had learned more today. On the other hand, it was feeling like late in the “day” now to me, and when Geena and the others were done nursing the Keepers, we were supposed to all be heading back to the Demeter, to study and then rest—at least those would be my orders.

  I shifted my captain’s belt over my worksuit to a better position. I thought of contacting Steve: he and Karen and a bunch of the others who usually worked in engineering had gone with one of the workers to where the Monument’s engines were. I would have liked to see them myself, but there was only so much time in the day….

  I began helping Geena hand out bowls of blue-bread mush to the Keepers. As Geena passed near me, I noticed her face: her cheeks looked pale with fatigue, but there was a sharp enthusiasm in her brown eyes. I hadn’t seen such eagerness anywhere on her face in a long time; I couldn’t help smiling at that eagerness now…

  …And I was smiling about Geena once again later on, when most of my crew and I were in our normal clothes in the Demeter’s dining room, going over our notes from the lectures—and just relaxing as we ate big bowls of salad and sautéed purple tubers, which Geena had found in one of the Monument’s pantries.

  Geena was sitting across from me now. “If I don’t mind saying so myself, I outdid myself with these tubers. They’re fantastic.”

  Gary was on my right, and he spoke through a mouth that was quite full of purple mush: “You certainly did—I wish there was more!”

  Geena laughed a little. “How much to cook is taking some getting used to. I’ve never eaten many of the plant species on here, so I don’t know how filling they’ll be. Devin’s been helping me figure out how much to make—today, me and Bill and Brayburn had to cook enough for EVERYBODY, including hundreds of Keepers—yikes!

  “At one point, we just rushed into one of the pantries and pulled out a whole bunch of containers—fruits and tubers were rolling around on the floor. Jim walked in and his feet jumped backwards, and his eyes widened. He spun around and left as if he had no intention of dealing with any vegetables, and Bill and I just couldn’t stop laughing.”

  That must have been the first time Geena had seen Jim in days—at least I hadn’t seen him around in days—yet when she’d spoken about him just now, she didn’t look sad at all, as she would usually look in the past. I couldn’t help smiling about her again.

  Ac
ross the aisle, Babs and Shirley were sitting together, and Babs was looking down at her digital workbook as she said to Shirley, “You’re welcome, Shirl. I’m also sending you the marks I made on one of the dimensional-stream maps. I think you can see the overall volume of that single, dimensional structure better.”

  Shirley nodded fast, her eyes down on her own workbook. “Yeah, I do—thanks. Though, doesn’t it still look like there’s not much in common among most of the minor streams? Though I guess Kostas never said they’re all similar. They might naturally be idiosyncratic.”

  “Actually,” I said, chewing on a small, delicious slice of the savory tubers, “that’s a good description of the Keepers, too.”

  Steve came up to us and leaned against the back of my booth, pointing a finger my way, then at his workbook. “I’m thinking the same thing; navigating the streams must be, uh, well—the thing is: I just don’t see how there isn’t some special knowledge involved, or at least a whole lot of trial-and-error. The Keepers designed their ships, so they have that special knowledge. But where does that leave us?”

  I kind of smirked in reply.

  And Steve added, in a slow voice, “Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.”

  Beside me, Gary was sighing. “Well, let’s see what happens. We aren’t at the stage yet where we’ve gotten a comprehensive image of the whole ship. We’ve got the maps in the workbooks, but there are gaps in the maps, and looking at those isn’t the same as hands-on. Maybe we’ll find flying this thing is easier than we thought.”

  *

  Later that night, when I was finally on the verge of sleep while lying in my bed with Gary, I was smiling. The day had gone better than I had expected. I felt like my crew and I were finally making progress on more than just this city-ship.