Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  The weight of our situation swooped down on my shoulders, and I felt as if I would collapse inside my suit. I had been through so damn much in such a short period of time. How much more could I bear?

  Kostas’ dark eyes were peering at me now. “You need medical attention—there’s a cut on your face. And you’re bruised.”

  My hand flew to my face—then I regretted pressing at there; my broken skin began to sting.

  “Pull up your readout again and run a medical scan, if you can,” Kostas said. “The power-packs in our suits have lost energy overall, but they recover more quickly than our hand-held devices because the suits are more efficient absorbers of energy from their environment. Transporters unfortunately use a lot of power, so they will take longer to recharge, assuming they do at all.”

  I tried to get my suit’s medical scanning function going now, and it worked perfectly. “My suit wouldn’t work at all on Claudius’ ship at first—my hands were bound behind my back in a clamp. I kept trying to reach the controls. I could have sworn I did a few times, but nothing happened.”

  “Something must have been interfering with the suit’s power-pack.”

  I frowned now. “The clamp was an electronic one. Once they removed it, I was able to use my transporter controls….”

  “We know. We saw,” Kostas said as she helped me use my suit to medicate me.

  But my eyes flew to Gary’s. He slowly shook his head at me, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he said, “Claudius is damn lucky I wasn’t in the room.”

  “You are exhausted,” Kostas said to me now. “You have been to far too many dimensions in a short period of time. We must find somewhere to rest. We’ll do it in shifts. You two will go first.”

  She turned around, and Gary and I followed her across the long plain in front of us. Kostas’ penetrating gaze bounced around the land as she moved, but I didn’t see anything other than the endless plain, which eventually turned into a bumpy forested area—the rocks scattered around here were weird; they looked too sharply angular for natural formations. I said so to Kostas.

  “They aren’t natural,” she replied. “I recognize them: they’re pieces of a manufactured material from another universe.”

  Both Gary and I nervously jumped farther away from the nearest of those pieces.

  Kostas’ eyes shot over to us. “Don’t worry—they aren’t dangerous.”

  I was frowning now. “They make it look like a landfill around here. The bitter smell to the air isn’t helping matters.” I suddenly pointed at a large tree nearby. “Can we rest under there?”

  When Kostas nodded at me, I plopped down beneath the tree. The earth here was soft. This universe was supposed to be a crazy place, but, right now, it felt like heaven beneath my aching body and to my overstressed mind.

  My eyelids sagged as I spoke. “I can barely stay awake now.”

  “Rest,” Kostas said. “I’ll continue trying to get us out of here….”

  *

  When I woke up later, I was alone under the tree.

  I almost had a heart attack.

  I scrambled to a seated position—then I spotted Kostas and Gary behind one of the manufactured “rocks.”

  “Why the hell did you leave me?” I shouted over to them.

  Gary’s eyes spun my way. “We need water. Kostas found some.”

  “My device has powered up more,” Kostas said.

  “So can we get out of here now?” I asked eagerly as I stood up.

  But Kostas only shook her head at me.

  They both started walking back my way; Kostas held a clear, plastic-looking, bulging baggy—it looked like Gary’s food packaging.

  “That bag with the water’s from your food, Gary!” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” he replied, patting one of his suit pockets. “I’ve still got it all.”

  “How long did I sleep—did you sleep too?”

  He nodded.

  Kostas passed me the bag full of water. “In Earth time for us, I’d say we’ve been here about seven hours.”

  “That long!” I said, frowning. I took a drink from the floppy bag; it wasn’t easy, but I managed to do it without spilling too much water. “Don’t you want any?” I asked, looking at both Kostas and Gary.

  Gary shook his head. “We had some when we were getting it. This is for you.”

  Kostas’ eyes were on me. “When you finish drinking, we’ll fill it up again—and fill yours too, Lydia.”

  When I was finally done drinking, I did as she’d said: I removed my food stash from my belt, gave the food-baggy to Kostas to fill with water, and shoved my stash inside one of my suit’s pockets.

  Kostas walked away, and I said to Gary, “Does—does my face look any better?”

  “It looks wonderful,” he said, and he grabbed me then, held me to him for a long moment in this strange, landfill-like land. I could feel his heart pounding against mine even through our suits.

  “I’m serious,” I finally said. “I didn’t even know I was wounded till Kostas said so.”

  Gary pulled back. “Some of the bruising’s gone. Kostas said you might be suffering from a disorientation sickness—well, you should be after visiting the Krin-sphere. She had a special room set up for when you returned to the Monument, so you could heal from the Krin meeting. But then you never made it back to the ship—”

  I grabbed onto one of his sleeves. “How is everyone else there, Gary—the crew? And what the hell happened? I mean, how did Claudius get me? He confirmed that he can track us. I think only sometimes, but still….”

  Kostas walked up to us, both of the baggies in her hands full of water now and twisted shut. She attached them to a tab on her suit as she said, “Lydia, you must tell me everything you remember he said and everything you saw.”

  I did what she asked, relaying my experience in a slow voice, while reliving what I went through in all its unpleasantness. And Kostas frowned while I spoke.

  I finally asked her, “Why didn’t you come into his ship to get me—why didn’t the Keepers?”

  “They tried, but there is now some type of force-field on the Reimark ship that barred their entry because it quickly drains them of energy. We were finally able to get the transporter through an intermittent weakness in the field that we were using to look inside his bridge, but, still, the Keepers themselves couldn’t make it through. So I came to get you.”

  “I’m sure you’re thrilled to be here,” I said in a dry voice. “You once said I was being paranoid—it turns out that I wasn’t!” I sighed. “Still, I can’t understand how the hell Claudius got so powerful so damn fast since the last time he attacked us. It’s only been months.”

  “Not necessarily for him. He has apparently been—and learned from—elsewhere. He might have been gone for years. I couldn’t tell from on the Monument’s viewscreen, but did you think he looked older in person?”

  Remembering his face in front of me, I frowned now, slowly. “Now that you mention it, yes.” I was still frowning. “It scares me that he was able to do so much, including breaking through the cloaked transporter stream from the Krin-sphere.”

  Gary opened his mouth as if he wanted to speak, but then his lips clamped shut.

  “What?” I asked fast. “What is it?”

  Gary shook his head and sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Kostas had her device out again; her fingers were manipulating it as she stared down at it. “I still can’t get any communications or transporting to work. I’ve just scanned your suit-functions too. No luck. However, I believe I can draw more power to my device if we move to about two miles east of here—at least I think.”

  I was frowning again as we began walking across the land, which, unless I was going crazy, looked different now; there were more breaks in it, with fine cracks and waterways meandering across the ground. Several times we had to jump across an opening of some sort—one of which materialized just as we were moving toward it.

  �
��If this keeps up,” I said, “at some point, there will be no land left.”

  Kostas’ head whipped toward mine, a little too fast. It was obvious from the wary expression on her face that what I’d said was definitely a possibility in this completely unpredictable dimension.

  *

  Completely unpredictable turned out to be exactly right.

  The three of us were finally walking near another forested space when the sky suddenly darkened into nighttime.

  My feet immediately stopped moving. I never understood where the daytime here had even come from, but that was still better than this current darkness shit.

  The worker devices had lights on them, including emergency lights, so both Kostas and Gary quickly set their devices to shine more brightly.

  I was breathing heavy and fast now. We had just relieved ourselves in separate spots on the ground in the forest, but now I suddenly felt like I had to piss again. “What the hell do we do now? Will the light come back? Is this place powered by a sun somewhere?”

  “No,” Kostas said, and I could have sworn there was a tremor in her voice.

  Gary must have heard it too, because he said, “Why do you sound so worried now, Kostas?”

  She didn’t respond for a long moment. I felt like walking up to her and shaking her. But, that she was busy working on her device might have been responsible for her silence…. “The land here has omni-curvature. We can see very far ahead in every direction, and if you look out there now, it looks dark everywhere. My device is showing the same. For a major change to happen to such a large area in The Error Universe—that means there has been a sudden, great influx of energy.”

  My eyes were right on her when I spoke: “So you’re saying that anything can happen now.”

  In the strong lighting of the device right below her face, her heavy frown was very obvious.

  My knees began shaking—but not just because of what we’d been discussing. There seemed to be a tremor, coming along the ground. “Can you two feel that?”

  Kostas’ fingers were punching fast at her hand-held’s buttons. “I do, but it’s not registering on here.”

  “So should we believe your device or our lying feet?” My eyes whirled to around us; I was looking for both the source of the sensation coming from the ground and for somewhere for us to escape to. But of course, it was far too dark to easily make out the latter.

  “Do you see that?” Gary said suddenly, pointing toward behind Kostas. “It’s light green and it’s coming our way.”

  Kostas whirled around and said urgently, “Let’s go—now.”

  The thing in the distance came closer, and I finally saw that it wasn’t only a light green; it was a glowing, fluorescent light green. It was also very tall and stick thin, and as the three of us fumbled into the darkness, with the two devices our only direct light, the tall structure came even closer—and my mouth dropped open at what I saw now: it was a giant exclamation point, as if someone had ripped it off an illuminated screen and thrown it into the landscape here.

  A part of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity; another part of me was almost out of breath because I was charging ahead at the top speed of my legs as the exclamation point chased us.

  The point at the exclamation’s base easily rolled along the ground like a sphere, and the three of us kept running away from it, leaping over cracks in the earth and stumbling—I stumbled twice. Gary picked me up the second time—and then promptly fell into one of the wetter cracks.

  “Shit!” he said, scrambling to pull his legs out of the wet earth before the angry exclamation point reached us.

  I grabbed one of Gary’s arms as he finally jumped onto flatter ground. I turned and was about to start running again when I noticed the exclamation point had shifted direction; it was rolling at an angle to us now.

  “Look—” I said, panting out my words “—maybe it’s—it’s moving to chase someone else!”

  “Is there anyone else?” Gary asked.

  “Let’s hope not,” Kostas replied.

  *

  The three of us kept moving along the ground, away from where the exclamation point had disappeared. Then we heard a loud, long roooaaaaar.

  Uh-oh.

  My eyes whipped to Kostas. She sighed hard, then pulled the bright screen of her device closer to her face. “There are no life forms around according to my scanner maps. I don’t know what that was. It may just be an erroneous sound.”

  The “erroneous” sound came again, but, this time, it sounded closer to us.

  My gaze fruitlessly whipped around at the darkness beyond the three of us. “Where is it coming from—which direction?”

  “Look—the green light again!” Gary said, and, sure enough, the green light was there, looking like a tall blip on the dark land.

  Gary whipped out his gun, but Kostas shouted, “No! It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what that would do in this dimension.”

  Having no other options, the three of us simply started running again, away from the angry green column. “What the hell is the damn thing?” I shouted. “What does it want?”

  “It—it probably came here—unintentionally like we did,” Kostas panted out.

  “Yeah, but we’re alive.”

  “It may be alive, Lydia,” Kostas said. And, apparently, the exclamation wasn’t the only thing that might be alive around here besides the three of us: that roar came again, and we had unknowingly run in the direction of it, or it had changed direction and was now headed right for us.

  “There’s a huge shadow up ahead!” I said. I almost tripped over my own feet as the three of us came to an abrupt stop to turn around—only the exclamation point was coming from that direction now.

  “Move laterally, to the left!” Gary shouted, and then we flew that way through the night.

  We were all panting in an exhausted choppy way—I couldn’t tell which pant belong to whose mouth. My eyes were dry and tired, my mind frustrated and afraid—afraid we’d lose each other in the darkness—

  A sudden, blinking light not far from us: the light pulled all of our eyes there and finally revealed both the exclamation point and an enormous brown blob with long, powerful-looking arms; the arms were wrestling with the shaft of the exclamation, then lifting it up and trying to smash it against the ground. The exclamation didn’t break, but the intensity of its light faded till it was no longer a neon green but was instead a bright white.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here while they’re fighting each other!” Gary said.

  “And go where?” I cried. “We can’t see.”

  Kostas’ lit-up device shifted against the night as she raised her arm. “I’m going to divert power to make the light on this brighter—”

  I shot a frustrated hand up at the air. “Yeah, but then everything here can see us.”

  “I’ve also just realized I probably have enough power now to make a local transporter stream. If we’re in danger, we’ll just jump to somewhere else here.”

  “And land where?” I asked now.

  “You know I can’t answer that,” Kostas replied.

  *

  We continued rushing away from where the bright-white fight was still going on.

  “I’ve got to stop,” I eventually said when I could no longer see the exclamation point’s light. “My stomach is killing me.”

  “Yes—we’ll stop—and eat some of our stash,” Kostas said.

  A few minutes later we found a somewhat secluded spot between two large rocks with flat, extended tops; they made a crude cave beneath them, but who knew how long that would last in this ever-changing crazy place.

  I plopped down onto the ground between the rocks, then pulled my knees to my chest and gulped at the dark air. Gary sat beside me and handed me a piece of his stash—a disk of dried fruit from the garden on the Monument. Looking down at it now, I felt a pang inside me, near my heart. I missed that frigging mammoth ship, no matter all the trouble my being on it had now caused me.<
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  I bit into the fruit, taking only a small chunk then handing the rest back to Gary. “I wonder where everyone is back on the Monument.”

  Kostas was still standing; her eyes were gazing at the two rocks above us in a measuring way. “I’m sure they left where Claudius was and are no doubt cloaked at maximum power while also altering the cloaking on all the forms of transporters, to compensate for everything that’s happened.”

  “You got a message from them saying all that, or you’re just guessing?” I said, my voice coming out kind of snide. As soon as I spoke like that though, I felt bad about it. If Kostas noticed my tone, she didn’t say anything.

  “I think I’m completely stressed out,” I said now on a sigh.

  “You need sleep,” Gary said. “You too, Kostas. You didn’t wake us last time and take your turn. I’ll stay awake now and keep a lookout for…things.”

  “All right,” Kostas said, and her voice clearly sounded tired now. “I feel like this predicament is my fault, and so far I’ve been ineffective in getting us out of it. I don’t understand why I can’t get my device to power up faster—but I do think it was working better when the sky was light. I keep rerouting how the power moves through it to try to save energy, but I can never get the rerouting to stick for very long. Whatever is going on, maybe if I sleep on it, I can think of another solution.”

  *

  I really didn’t want to leave Gary alone and awake while Kostas and I slept, but I had no choice: I wasn’t feeling well. Between my nearly empty, acid stomach, the scary surroundings, and my aching lungs and limbs from all of that running, nothing could stop me from nodding off now….

  “Lydia—Lydia—wake up!” came Gary’s voice through the fog of sleep—Gary’s frantic voice. “The exclamation’s back!”

  I was lying on my side; I mumbled a “Huh?” against the ground, Gary’s wacky statement not registering with me at first.

  Then when I finally realized what he meant, I shot up to on my knees.