by Kord Stone
She nodded with a smile and took a seat. “What did you do for work and entertainment before all of this happened to you?”
Justin sat back, appraised her a moment and decided to begin with the military. She appeared to be listening intently as he told her about how he and his brothers joined on the six-year buddy plan, and how their jobs separated them, then why he was transferred into cryptography.
Calia asked, “So, did they transfer you into cryptography solely for your skills?”
Justin let out a laugh. “No, I have no delusions about that. If that were the case, they could’ve and probably would’ve sent me to any number of bases that had need of my skills.”
“What would a specific location have to do with it?” she asked.
Justin replied, “I was sent to the Aleutian chain. That is a chain of small islands in the middle of nowhere, and I was stuck in a cubicle decrypting coded messages and pretty much spying on other countries, and our own people as well, come to think of it.”
He must have seen her confusion because he added, “The island I was on is what I always referred to as a black hole. The military sends people they wish to hide there. I think they did that with me so they could keep a close watch on me and make sure I didn’t talk about that message I decoded. It’s funny though, I ended up seeing far more classified information than that minor event.”
“Like what?” she asked with great interest.
Justin peered around then chuckled and said, “Spaceships coming to Earth for one thing.”
Calia did not understand and said, “Why would that be classified? Other civilizations visited Terra—sorry I meant Earth—a lot over the years. Granted they were usually dropping off their criminals.” She could see his confusion and added, “Earth had turned into a kind of penal planet, at least until Lantis was taken there when Anukan became uninhabitable.”
Justin nodded in apparent understanding and explained, “For the most part, Earth has a monotheistic, and some polytheistic cultures. It is believed by a great number of people on Earth that an all-powerful god or gods created the planet, and created man in his image.”
Calia let out a booming laugh. “I am sorry, please continue.”
Justin smiled at her and continued, “For the most part, a single religion has dictated to the masses what was real or not. Until five to six hundred years ago, the church had convinced the masses that the planet was flat, and the heavens above circled the Earth… I know, well the powers that be on Earth must believe that the people of the planet cannot handle the thought of visitors from other planets, because any time there is a sighting or a crash, the governments of the world work to discredit or conceal the truth from the people. It happened a few times while I was stationed in the Aleutian chain.”
Calia was amused, she had a good idea how a theistic culture could come about, as Atlas had needed to set planets straight about himself many times. She asked, “What kind of gods are they worshiping?”
“There are a lot of them actually, for the most part, they are described as gods who descended from the heavens. Why do you ask?”
“Atlas and I saved a few planets from destruction over the years, and when we later returned, we found that the primitive civilizations had erected monuments to him and were worshiping him as a god. This infuriated him to no end, and we went back in time to set them straight. He knew from the history of Lanna how damaging it could be to worship a person, and he refused to allow anyone to worship him. For a while, some of the Lantin culture even worshiped the Imortum as gods, but they were set straight by them as well.”
Justin said, “The ancient Greeks believed in a god named Atlas. He was the son of Poseidon and was condemned to hold up the sky for eternity.”
Calia grunted and said, “It is a good thing Atlas is dead. He would be quite unamused.”
“So that was your prior commander?”
“More than likely. His father was actually named Posidus, and as for being condemned, Atlas insisted on taking over this ship. It is fascinating how some facts make it through time, and others do not.”
Justin chuckled. “I can imagine; the only reason we know about Atlantis… I’m sorry this time, I meant Lantis, is that a writer named Plato wrote about it. If I remember right, the story originated from an Egyptian priest.”
He must have seen her confusion and added, “Egypt is where the great pyramids are located. “They worshipped gods there as well, the god of the sun, moon, love, war. They pretty much had a god for almost everything. But for the most part, they’re considered to be mythical, kind of like the ancient Greek and Roman gods.”
“You said you left the military. What did you do after that?”
“After I got out of the military I held a few odd jobs while I went back to school. I just completed a degree in information security. Jason was having a tough time of it after being discharged from the military, and I was going to take a new job and move closer to Jason to help him in whatever way I could, then this happened to us. After finding out what had happened to Jason, I now realize I wouldn’t have been much help to him though.”
Chapter Ten
Justin lost track of time as Calia skimmed over some of her history with her prior commander. He could tell she admired Atlas a great deal, and after hearing about some of his missions, Justin had to admit that he had some big shoes to fill. He was about to ask her about what she knew of the other ships and their commanders when Jerren’s voice sounded.
“Justin, are you busy?”
A bit startled at the sound of his brother’s voice he blurted, “Yes…I mean no. Is there a problem?”
Jerren let out a low laugh. “No, I’m just wrapping up in here and wanted to check with you and see how it’s all going.”
“Everything’s fine here. Would you like to come over for a visit?” Justin was hoping Jerren would say yes so he could see Calia’s expression at seeing his brother. He had gone out of his way in not giving details about the fact that he and his brothers were identical triplets.
“That sounds good. I’ll be over as soon as you open the archway. I can’t stay long though. I have to be back here in about fourteen minutes. That’s when Jason will open his archway.”
Jerren said that last part with a bit of mirth to his voice and Justin wondered what his brother found so amusing. Wasting no time, he opened the archway, stood and extended his hand to Calia, “Shall we meet him together?”
She grasped his hand and said with a warm smile, “That would be nice. I have not had many visitors over the years.”
Calia and Justin made it to the engine room and the archway was up, but Jerren still had not come through. Justin was just about to call him when Jerren appeared through the opening. Justin looked to Calia and noticed the confusion cross her face.
She looked at Jerren then back at Justin and said, “You didn’t tell me Jerren was your twin brother.”
Jerren laughed. “Justin is always doing that. He likes to see the confusion on people’s faces,” He strode over and extended his hand. “As you’ve probably figured out, I’m Jerren.”
With a bemused grin, she took his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Jerren. I am Calia.”
“You’ve chosen a lovely name,” he said in his silky come-hither voice, raising her hand to his lips and placing a kiss on her knuckles. “It’s nice to meet you…Calia.”
She smiled. “Thank you, but it was Justin who came up with the name.”
Justin let out a low growl at his brother’s deliberate attempt to provoke him. He put his arm around Calia, and asked, “So how did your time in the master control room go?”
“Is there somewhere we can relax a while?” Jerren asked with a smirk.
Justin knew something was up and said, “I thought you had to be back in fourteen minutes.”
Jerren laughed. “I did, but Jason thought I forgot about the time differential between the ships and the master control room. They wanted a couple more hours alone so Jason
asked if I could wait fifteen minutes.”
Justin laughed and Calia asked, “What am I missing?”
Justin explained to her that the master control room was in a negative eight phased time dilation, so Jason’s fifteen minutes was actually two hours.
Justin smiled, closed his eyes, then a second later he said, “There, we have a living room set up on the second level now. We can relax and talk up there.”
* * * * *
Calia was still reeling from the notion and impact of the master control room and once they were all seated, she opened the next line of conversation. “You are sure that room is in a negative eight PTD?”
Justin answered, “Yes, that’s what Alise told us. Why do you ask?”
She was stunned but continued, “About a hundred thousand linear years ago we had a lull in activity, and we decided to see what this ship could do. Atlas and I tested the bounds of this ship extensively and one of those tests was with the time dilation.
We took this ship to both positive and negative 9.9 dilation. It took twice as much energy to maintain a negative TD than it did for a positive in the same dilation and duration. We were at a pyramids generator for the experiments and for the last test we performed, we had a full charge. We wanted to see how long we could maintain the maximum TD from a full charge. We only lasted seventeen hours at a negative 9.9 TD before we were flung back into real time. I cannot even begin to fathom the power source required to maintain a negative eight TD for a long duration.”
Justin asked, “Did you do any tests while attached to the pyramids generator?”
She nodded. “Yes, we could only maintain a negative one TD without a power drain. Any higher and it would cause a drain on the system and the power loss was increased exponentially per full TD level.”
“Well, the master control room must be drawing power from something a hell of a lot stronger than a planet then,” Jerren said.
Calia smiled. “Indeed.”
Justin asked, “I was meaning to ask, what is the difference between TD and PTD?”
“They are in essence the same thing. Time dilation is the shift in time. The phase has a resonance component, which prevents matter convergence, and at higher resonance you can pass through matter. If you were to look at TD like a second segment you have 9.9 segments in a positive and negative direction before you actually reach the next second and engage time travel. At a ten in each direction you actually begin traveling in time.
“Any time you adjust off a zero TD or regular time, your perception of that second is altered. In a positive TD the time runs faster, and in a negative it slows to a crawl and with that shift it causes a temporal blurring effect around the ship, making it phase out of view. It is strange though. We can halt time altogether in a temporal bubble and use less energy. With a full charge, we can stay in the bubble for almost a month before running out of power. And with full time travel, we use even less energy.”
Jerren smiled and with a chuckle said, “That is some deep stuff there.”
She laughed and replied, “I can give you the comprehensive quantum mechanical elucidation if you would like.”
“No, that’s okay,” Both Justin and Jerren said at the same time and smirked at each other.
Calia laughed at their responses. “Do you do that a lot? Answer the same way I mean.”
Justin laughed. “Yes, we tend to think alike.”
Justin looked at Jerren. “So did you find out anything of interest in the master control room?”
Jerren’s expression got serious. “Not really. I only had minimal control, all but one of my queries ended with not being authorized.”
Justin caught the “one”. “What could you do?”
Jerren laughed and said, “Caught that, did you? Well, it was just after you left the master control room, a little over three hours ago, for me at least. I was studying the TDS 5 console and I noticed their heading promptly changed, and my interest was piqued. I saw it was headed back to Earth, and that’s when I noticed that Jason and Alise were still on Earth. I tried to contact Jason, but the communications wouldn’t work. I went back to the TDS 5 console to monitor them and repeatedly tried to contact Alise or Jason.
“TDS 5 was about one minute from Earth when my communications began working again. Alise told me Jason was on Earth at the time, and she tried to transport and or warn him of TDS 5’s arrival, but apparently TDS 1’s transporter and communications were not responding. She asked me where TDS 5 would arrive in orbit. I think she was going to ram TDS 5 when they arrived. Anyway, once I told her their arrival coordinates, my communications cut out again, but a moment later TDS 1’s wall showed they had set course for Daregon, so I figured they had resolved the issue with the event horizon, and they got the hell out of there.
“I went back to the TDS 5 console and a second after TDS 5 arrived at Earth I saw that someone transported to the planet, and at that moment, a new command appeared on the screen.
“Apparently, these ships have a major diagnostic program that can be performed once every ten thousand years, and TDS 5 was well overdue. The second I noticed the command, I activated it and the diagnostic cut the ship to minimal functionality for a few minutes in my time.
“A little while later, the communications system allowed me to speak with Jason and Alise again. They said everything was fine but wanted to know the status of TDS 5.
“TDS 5’s diagnostics were about to finish, and Jason was wanting to head back to Earth to confront the commander of that ship.
“From what I overheard Jason and Alise saying, Alise must have lost control of TDS 1 for a while, but Jason was able to control it. The diagnostics completed and TDS 5 took off, and I was going to see where it was headed, but the display went blank and I couldn’t get it to come up for me again.”
“After they open the archway I’m going to have a sit down with them and see what they want to do about that other ship.”
Calia shook her head solemnly. “Something has to be seriously wrong with Baelentus. He was a kind-natured person. Atlas researched him extensively before selecting him and he should have been a great replacement.”
Jerren asked, “Who are Baelentus and Atlas?”
Calia explained, “Atlas was the former commander of this vessel and he was also the first king of the Lantins. Nearly fifty thousand years ago, TDS 5 lost a commander and Atlas installed Baelentus as the new commander of TDS 5. Baelentus is a distant great-great grandson of Atlas.”
Jerren got an excited expression and stated, “Maybe if you were to try to contact him he would answer. He won’t respond to any of our attempts to communicate.”
Justin shook his head and said, “Calia told me they knew something was wrong with him for a while and they were trying to track him down when the incident happened at Lantis.”
Calia said, “Justin is correct. We attempted over several thousand years to make contact with him, and he refused to respond. After this ship was powered up, I researched the incident at Lantis and after discussing what Justin and I knew, we have come to the conclusion that TDS 5 was attempting to destroy the remaining two ships, thus leaving his as the sole ship, for reasons known only to him.”
Jerren sighed and said, “We need to have a sit down with Jason and Alise, and let them know all of this as soon as this ship is back to full power. How much longer should it take until you reach Daregon?”
Justin closed his eyes a second, then stated, “We’ll arrive in just over sixty-three hours at our current speed. I’ve already explained our plan to Calia. After you get back to Jason’s ship could you let him know we need to set up the meeting?”
Jerren nodded. “Will do, Captain.”
Justin chuckled. “Captain? I like that. I went from E-5 to O-3 and didn’t have to go through OCS.”
Jerren chuckled and Calia looked at them in confusion. “What are E-5 and O-3?”
Justin smiled and said, “Those are rank pay grades in the U.S. military. The E stands for en
listed and the number refers to the rank achieved, and the O stands for officer and an O-3 is the ranking for a captain in the Air Force.”
“I understand now. So how high do the rankings go for an officer?” she asked in apparent amusement.
Justin said, “O-10, those are four-star generals, there was a five-star general position, but there hasn’t been one of those for several decades now. There’s one person who ranks above all of the military forces though. That’s the President of the United States. His military designation is the Commander-in-Chief. He’s also the elected leader of the country we’re from.”
She smiled at him. “Well if the president is only in charge of a single country and not even the whole planet, then you are ranked far higher than he could possibly imagine. Being commander of this vessel makes you responsible for the welfare of the universe. We are not beholden to any petty planetary politics or rules. All five of the commanders equally shared these responsibilities and would rectify issues as they came across them.”
Justin laughed at the thought. “See, Jerren, I am king of the universe.”
Calia said, “Laugh if you must, but we are the reason Terra…I mean Earth is even still there. A couple of the past evolutions of humanoids on Earth achieved great levels of advancement before self-destructing. A few of them escaped to form new civilizations on far off planets, but if it were not for these ships, Earth would have been an uninhabitable rock eons ago.”
They sat talking a little while longer before Jerren’s watch beeped and Jason’s voice sounded over it. “I’ve opened the archway, and you can come back anytime you like.”
Jerren replied, “Okay, I’ll be right over. I was just visiting with Justin.”
Jason replied, “Could you tell him we need to have a meeting after we get the ships recharged?”
Justin laughed out loud. “I heard. We were going to make the same request. We’ll see you after we connect to the pyramids generator.”
