The cyborg drew Jason’s attention; he looked worn out. “You look terrible, Ricket,” Jason said. “No doubt what you’re doing up on 4B is crucial, but you need to pace yourself. You don’t want to end up like Dolan, do you? Go ahead and suit up. Let’s take a few minutes and meet with this guy.”
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
With the forward gangway deployed, Jason, Ricket and Perkins made their way toward the bow of the ship. Jason’s head was throbbing and, more than once, he felt like he might be sick into his helmet. He also felt that carrying on a conversation with this indigenous underground tribesman would be an act in futility. First, he would have to apologize for parking two space vessels in what well could be sacred caverns. And how could he even explain what a space vessel was? Would Ricket be familiar with the ancient language and dialect needed to speak with this tribesman? The thought of having to carry on a conversation through elaborate hand gestures made his aching head throb even more.
The tall tribesman calmly watched as the three Lilly crewmembers approached.
This guy’s smiling again, Jason thought.
The tribesman spoke: “Welcome.” His smile broadened and he raised his bushy eyebrows as if he’d contemplated their surprise.
Jason and the two others hesitated in their tracks.
“Thank you. I’m Captain Reynolds, this is Ricket, and this is Lieutenant Commander Perkins.”
The tribesman looked at each of them, but spent a few additional moments inspecting Perkins.
“Now, aren’t you an interesting looking one?” he said, stepping in closer to look into Perkins’ visor.
“It’s a long story,” Jason said flatly. “Excuse my abruptness, but who are you? I take it you’re not an indigenous tribesman living here, a mile into the Earth’s crust?”
“Please, call me Granger. Phonetically, that’s about as close as you’ll be able to come to the actual pronunciation of my name.”
“So, who are you, Granger, and what exactly are you doing here?” Jason asked, regretting how his bluntness must sound to the alien.
“Well, I guess you could say I’m here for you, Jason. I’m what you’d call your welcoming party.”
Jason didn’t reply, just waited for him to continue.
“As you may have assumed, I am what you would call a Caldurian. These vessels of yours are both products of Caldurian ingenuity.”
Jason, head still throbbing, and normally more amicable to this kind of chitchat, was feeling anything but normal. He took in Granger’s appearance, his furs and long wooden staff. Jason guessed he was around fifty, but in truth he could be a little younger or older. What distinguished him from the other Caldurians he’d seen, such as the bodies found on the Crystal City, or even Perkins, was a full head of salt and pepper hair and striking blue eyes. Two characteristics he hadn’t seen before in a Caldurian.
“May I call you Jason?”
“That’s fine. I have questions that need answering and I have no idea if you are the right person to ask. Why I’m standing here, a mile deep into the Earth’s crust, and talking to an alien who seems to speak English better than I do is the first one that comes to mind.”
Granger didn’t answer right away, seeming to weigh his response before speaking. His eyes held on to Ricket. “My people have survived for hundreds of thousands of years. As with humanity, our civilizations have come and gone numerous times. The things I will be discussing with you may be difficult to comprehend.”
“I’ll do my best to keep up,” Jason said sardonically.
“You wish to help your crew, and your family, survive the impending destruction of your internal nano-devices. You want to see your daughter live longer than fourteen more days. Perhaps it’s best to put sarcasm aside, yes?”
Jason bristled, speechless that this strange being already knew all about him, as well as their predicament.
“Let me start by saying something you will undoubtedly not want to hear. Within the next fourteen days you, your crew, and even your daughter will all cease to exist.”
“You’re telling me we’re all going to die? There’s no way to reconfigure the devices—”
“No.”
“But one of the Craing officers—”
Granger was already shaking his head. “A short reprieve. The counter on his neuro-based nano technology has merely been extended for several days. He too faces the same inevitable end.”
Ricket, moving his weight from one foot to another, seemed agitated. “You aren’t simply here to relay this dire prognosis. Did you give this same information to inhabitants of the Crystal City?”
“Yes.”
“Well, whoever you are, thanks for … the information,” Jason said and turned—already heading back to the ship—when Granger replied: “Jason, I want to show you something. I want to show all three of you something.”
Jason started to turn away, ready to let Granger go back to where he’d come from, but the look on the Caldurian’s face was not what he’d expected. There it was again, that same damn smile. What the hell.
“Now? You want us to do what, follow you?” Jason asked.
“If you would indulge me, I think you will find it worthwhile to do so.”
Granger headed in the direction of the commandeered Caldurian vessel hull. They maneuvered in between several natural rock columns and crossed over into the smaller cavern. For the first time, Jason had the opportunity to inspect its colorful wall murals up close. They were beautiful. Nothing like the ancient monotone cave drawings of early man, or those of the Neanderthals. These drawings were akin to colorful Egyptian murals. The figures depicted here were clearly Caldurian, with their angular heads, shorter torsos, longer limbs, and extended tapered fingers. Jason caught up to Granger.
“So, is Earth your, the Caldurian, home world?”
Granger turned and looked up at the painted walls. “These murals were made recently. Within the last fifteen thousand years. Caldurians have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. I, myself, am well over two thousand years old. What you’re seeing here is the work of primitive relatives, an offshoot of our people, who did not embrace technological advancement. They’re still around, underground. We leave them alone and, for the most part, they leave us alone.” They skirted the disabled Caldurian ship situated in the middle of the second cavern and ascended the rock-carved stairs where the area dimension slightly narrowed. Ricket was slow to bring up the rear, stopping periodically to inspect this or that—usually a rock, or something else he found interesting.
They followed a dirt pathway that snaked between immense boulders. Only the light generated from their helmets illuminated their way and faintly silhouetted Granger’s footfalls up ahead. Jason wondered how Granger could navigate through the darkness, moving over the rough terrain with more agility than seemed possible. They walked in silence for twenty minutes before the path veered off to the right, though Granger abruptly turned left and climbed down onto a rocky plateau of sorts. They were within another cavern, one much smaller than the others. Above their heads was nothing but vast open space—space that was swallowed up by utter, and complete, darkness.
Granger waited for the others to catch up before moving on. He took three quick steps and stopped inches from a solid rock wall. He placed a hand on a rocky protrusion about the size of a softball and slid it sideways to expose a familiar-looking virtual keypad. Ricket wedged himself in front of Jason’s and Perkins’ legs to get a better look at what the Caldurian was doing. Granger’s long fingers flew over the keys until there were two audible beeps. A glowing green frame, approximately ten feet wide and just as high, outlined a now visible portal window—similar to the portals found within The Lilly’s Zoo, or the ones on the planet Halimar. Jason took in a rapid breath. What they saw through the portal window was so unexpected that no one spoke for several moments.
“Where is this?” Jason asked.
Granger smiled. “At the center of a distant aster
oid.” He gestured for the three of them to follow as he stepped into the portal. Only Perkins hesitated, first looking toward Jason and Ricket, then quickly glancing back, as if contemplating whether or not he should return to the ship.
“You’ll be fine,” Jason said to Perkins, somewhat irritated by his nervousness.
They crossed over through the somewhat illumined portal. It was the sheer immensity of space that struck Jason first. The plateau they stood upon was high above a cavern of immense dimensions. Jason calculated it to be twenty to thirty miles in circumference. On first impression, it reminded him of Grand Central Station in New York City, but on a much grander scale. Massive portal windows, hundreds of them, filled the walls across, below, to their sides, and even above them. Space vessels slowly moved from one portal to another. In the vacuum of space their powerful drives had an eerie soundlessness.
Jason spoke first. “These ships. They’re moving throughout the universe?”
It was Ricket who answered. “Not the universe, Captain. The multiverse.”
Granger smiled down at Ricket and nodded. “Continue, Ricket.”
“We’ve discussed this before, Captain. But seeing it manifested like this is something else entirely … There are infinite layers or membranes of separate universes that exist and coexist in time and space simultaneously.”
Granger added, “Where we are standing is actually located in a multiverse membrane that depicts events in six dimensions, versus your three dimensions. What you’re looking at is a multiverse way station.”
“So, you’re saying this isn’t actually the sixth dimension?”
Granger answered, “No, this is only a three dimensional representation of the sixth dimension. The sixth dimension takes place strictly in the realm of math, not physicality.”
Ricket nodded approvingly. “I take it those ships are Caldurian vessels moving between multiverse layers?”
“That is correct.”
Jason’s brow furrowed. “Wait. There must be thousands of ships here. From what I understood, the Caldurians were all but destroyed hundreds of years ago by the Craing.” Granger smiled at this comment. Gesturing at what stood before them, he continued. “Does this look like an extinct civilization?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Jason replied. “But why—”
“For millennia, Caldurians have been plagued by other civilizations that desired their technology as well as their advances in the natural sciences. More and more resources were needed for defensive purposes to the point where our actions became no different than those of our aggressors. Then the breakthroughs started happening more frequently and, with those breakthroughs, the ability to travel the multiverse.”
A behemoth-sized ship was slowly making its way across the void below, crossing over to an adjacent portal on the far side. Jason shook his head: “That ship there … it’s massive.”
“One of our newer vessels. We call it the Minian.”
Easily as big as a Craing Dreadnaught, it had similar visual characteristics to The Lilly.
“So, I understand that you have progressed. Your civilization has risen above fighting petty turf wars and you live in different realms, perhaps more peaceful ones. What about you personally? Some sort of Caldurian emissary?” Jason asked, ready now to cut to the chase.
“Yes, that would be a good analogy. This membrane, this particular slice of the multiverse, is our home. We care what happens here. We care how societies will eventually migrate into the multiverse themselves. We’ve been watching you closely, Jason.”
“Really? How have you been watching me? I haven’t exactly been sitting around idly on Earth.”
Granger seemed to be contemplating how much he wanted to say, then continued, “Your ship, The Lilly, has tremendous capabilities, developed well after our society had made inroads into the physics of multiverse travel. The DeckPorts, the phase-shift capabilities, and the phase-synthesizer unit, which, by the way, is being far underutilized, all deal with facets of the multiverse. You’re protective of the technology. You keep it at arm’s length, even from your own government, realizing it could cause an imbalance of power on your planet, as well as in space.”
“And how do you know these things?” Jason asked, feeling uncomfortable that this stranger knew so much about him and The Lilly.
“Because I’ve walked beside you numerous times. Often as one of your less familiar crewmembers. I appear from any one of your DeckPorts, or the habitats, from an alternative multiverse location. I have an unlimited selection of whom, or what, I can represent myself to be.”
“Seriously? Why the hell would you bother? You must have more important things to do than spy on what must seem to you to be a primitive race of people.”
“How your society develops toward working with the multiverse will affect us all. We think of it more as an investment than as spying. With that said, I apologize for the subterfuge.”
“So, what do you want from me? Again, what’s this really all about?”
“You have a problem. You’re all going to die very shortly. Soon, the weaker of your crewmembers will find the pain unbearable. Some will resort to suicide. Some will lash out, perhaps even killing others.”
“You’ve already made it clear you cannot repair the nano-devices in our heads. So what are you getting at?”
“There are two primary factions of Caldurians. Those like myself who have embraced life living among the multiverses, and those who have set limits as to how far they will venture in that regard.”
Ricket had started to pace as he listened, then interrupted. “You die.”
Granger paused and assessed the small cyborg. “Yes, we’ve chosen to die. Many times.”
Now Jason was totally lost. “What do you mean, chosen to die?”
Ricket responded. “When you travel between DeckPorts, or phase-shift from one location to another, your physicality, the you part of the equation, for the most part, stays intact. What Granger and his faction of Caldurians routinely do is leave one existence for a nearly identical but completely new one as needed.”
“So how does that work?”
“You move through a portal,” Granger replied, “much like those vessels are doing now, and you walk out through another one feeling and looking as if nothing has changed.”
“And the thousands of people we found dead within the Crystal City?”
“That faction of our people, typically referred to as the originals, were not comfortable with the prospect of phase-shifting out of their original bodies.”
“And your people?” Jason asked.
“We’re referred to as progressives. For hundreds of years we’ve been perfecting the process. By utilizing interface constructs such as this, that speak to the multiverse via the sixth dimension, changing form has become a routine occurrence.”
Granger paused again, then spoke in a softer, more gentle voice. “Right now, somewhere within the multiverse, there is another Mollie. She’s lived an identical life in every way. She is exactly the same person with one exception. This other Mollie’s nano-devices are not defective. This other Mollie is not curled up in bed next to her mother, writhing in pain.”
“So let me try to understand. You’re offering us this process. But the downside is we have to voluntarily die in order to carry on as a new person in another body?”
“Both you and your counterpart walk into a portal at the same time. One person emerges.”
Jason, Perkins, and Ricket all took in this last bit of information, but it was Perkins who spoke up first.
“I understand why our Mollie would want to walk into the portal, but what about that other Mollie? If she does not have the defective nano-devices, why would she even—”
“The other Mollie has another, completely different reason to want to go through with the process. She too will leave that issue behind. The two Mollies come through as identically merged, with the sole exception that each has left behind an undesirable condition, or aspect of
herself,” Granger answered.
“There’s something you’re not telling us. What’s the downside? If there’s a faction of your society that opposes this technology but accepts all the other technological advances, there has to be a reason,” Jason said skeptically.
“In the beginning, before the process had been perfected, there were anomalies. Very rarely, but with any new technological breakthrough there’s a learning curve. That should be expected. The originals were not comfortable with the early results. They broke away, choosing to take a different path.”
“Could I use this process to revert back to looking human again?” Perkins asked.
“Yes, possibly, but you have other options at your disposal,” Granger replied.
Jason watched the Caldurian. What Granger was saying made sense, but there was something else … Jason just didn’t know if he should trust him.
Scrapyard Ship 3 Space Vengeance Page 2
