by Al Macy
A surprisingly tall and thin zealo flew in along with an entourage of three other celanos. Four angry birds. His red feathers stuck out haphazardly, and his breast displayed several patches of bare skin. The skin was a sickly bluish gray, with scaly patches. I tried not to look at it.
His beak was etched with intricate lettering, and some kind of vaping pen seemed permanently welded to it. The scent of peppermint that had been carried on the breeze became stronger.
He leaned forward and flared his tail. “I am Kranack, King of the Ribbon. We have been at peace for millions of years, and now, as your arrival has materialized, war is upon us.” Apparently my English lessons were broadcast throughout the solar system.
I checked behind me. No, he was indeed talking directly to me. I put up my hands. “No, no, really, we have not—”
“You have engaged us in war. We would fight you why? Look around.” He waved a ratty wing in an arc, taking in the whole of the ringworld. “We are so vulnerable. Why have you attacked us?”
I put up my hand. “Wait, sir, please. The Earthlings—Earthers—have not been attacking your ships. Another civilization, a machine intelligence, has purposefully misled you, misled all of the celanos. It is from another universe, and it is trying to destroy—”
A flash caught my eye and a high-pitched, warbling alarm filled the air.
We all stopped and turned our faces to the sky. Something rocketed toward us.
A metallic, centipede-like ship blazed toward the colony, writhing like a dragon in a Chinese parade. Each of its twenty or so segments was the size of a truck. It was on a collision course with the Ribbon, the vulnerable Ribbon I was standing on.
Raptor followed in hot pursuit, blasting out energy pulses that slammed into the bizarre spacecraft. Each hit produced a scintillating glow that traveled to the two ends of the wormlike ship. But the strikes didn’t slow it down. The enemy craft sped through the center of the Ribbon. The tail whipped in our direction, dipping into the thin atmosphere. A sonic boom echoed off the buildings and hills.
Kranack folded his wings tightly around his body and was sucked backward into a pill-shaped chamber in the wall—an escape pod. The pod disappeared downward like an elevator on steroids.
The centipede and Raptor disappeared around the edge of Phobos. My associates and I shook off our stupor and ran for the spheres. My heart pounded in my chest.
The two warring spacecraft emerged from the other side of Phobos, once again headed directly for the ring. The centipede ship passed through but ejected its rearmost segment, hurling it into the Ribbon. It struck directly across from us. As with lightning, the thunder hit us several seconds later, the sound having to travel around the ring.
Undulations in the Ribbon propagated in two directions from the site of the collision and resembled spectators in a stadium doing the wave. Particles flew off the ring in advance of the swells. No, not particles—escape pods. I compared the speed of the approaching waves with our progress toward the spheres, still fifty yards away.
We wouldn’t make it.
And there were no escape pods for us. This was going to be a bad way to die. Even in the low gravity, I felt as if I were running in a nightmare. The two waves were almost upon us, and it looked like they would meet right under our feet.
I yelled, “Get down!”
At the same time Alex screamed, “Lie down.”
I hit the deck as it rose to meet me, smashing my nose. We continued up and up. Drenast flew away from the surface. Perhaps he could have taken an escape pod but chose to help us.
The swells passed. The ground dropped back down but we kept going, catapulted into the air as if launched from a colossal trampoline. The upper limit of the atmosphere wasn’t visible, but from what Drenast had said, it was close. I pictured my body passing into space. Would my eyes pop out? How long would it take to die?
I flailed, but of course there was nothing to grasp on to. Except Guccio. I grabbed his ankle.
Drenast swooped down to us, got his talons deep into my biceps, and flew toward the surface, trying to pull Guccio and me away from the approaching air/space boundary. Alex and Martin, without their own guardian angel, continued on their upward trajectories.
Drenast slowed us down, but only slightly. We were too heavy. I yelled, “Save yourself, Drenast!”
Something drew my attention away from our impending death. The sphere. Loyal to its new owners, it flew up and sucked the three of us in through its open door.
Sphere 2 had farther to go. Alex and Martin were above us, closer to the limit of the atmosphere. Our sphere wall turned transparent, and I looked up. Good. Sphere 2 was headed back to us.
“Alex? Martin?” I held my breath.
Coughing and retching came over the comm. “We’re alive.”
Guccio and I collapsed onto our crash couches. Drenast stood on his perch, flapping his wings like mad, his claws straining to keep him anchored in place. Pent-up energy. I felt as if I were under a helicopter.
I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. “Sphere. Follow Raptor.” Sphere 2 tucked in beside us. I looked back at the Ribbon. The waves continued to travel around it. “It’s going to break.”
Sure enough, the two waves, circling in opposite directions, met once more and the ring ruptured. Heaven help them. It receded behind us.
“Sphere, magnify our view of the Ribbon.”
The gap between the ruptured ends of the ring spread open like the blooming of a flower. Buildings and hills slid from the ends, tumbling off into space.
Drenast finally ceased his wild flapping.
Turning away from the destruction, I settled into my crash couch. I put my hand on Drenast’s claw. “Thanks, friend. That’s the second time you put your life at risk to save me.”
He bobbed his head but said nothing.
We caught up with Raptor, engaged in a pitched battle with the remaining segments of the centipede ship. Raptor jinked, jived, and sent energy pulses toward the enemy, to no avail. Some kind of directed wave flowed from the centipede and rocked Raptor.
Martin’s voice came over the comm. “I got this.”
I tucked in behind and to one side of Sphere 2, acting as wingman. Raptor was accelerating away, but the enemy ship was gaining on it.
Martin cleared his throat. “Hold my beer and watch this.”
I slowed down so as to stay out of the way. Martin’s sphere dropped down and passed close over the centipede at several times its velocity. A wave of destruction raked the enemy craft from stern to bow. Martin curved around in a loop and made another pass at a right angle to the first. His strafes reduced the centipede ship to tiny bits of metal which dispersed into space like glitter blown from someone’s palm.
Martin’s voice came over the comm channel. “Consider yourself plowed.”
“Sphere 1 to Falbex. Jake here. You guys okay?”
“We are surviving.” Behind Falbex’s voice, alarms and squawking came over the comm.
“Permission to come aboard. Whoa!” That familiar vibration exploded under my sternum. The feeling I got prior to being paratransitted. The ringing assaulted my ears and colors started shifting. Then it stopped. Were the universes colliding?
I turned to Guccio and Drenast. “You guys feel that?”
Guccio nodded and Drenast bobbed his head.
“Jake, this is Falbex. Please be traveling to the cargo hold.”
The sphere walls were transparent, and I jumped when DJ1 appeared between us, slipping in so fast, it seemed like magic.
“Hello to you, Jake Corby. This is DJ1. May I please speak?”
DJ1 could talk. That was news to me, but it made sense. The probe was a product of the same galactic association that had produced the spheres. The exceedingly polite association. DJ1’s voice was vaguely machinelike but calming, like that of a psychiatrist.
I answered, “Yes, DJ1, please speak.”
“Excuse me. I have some information for you.”
“Yes, please go ahead.”
“Thank you. Your enemy is a marginally sentient artificial intelligence with limited central control.”
I nodded. “Yes, we have inferred that.”
“I have been able to hack into their system. They have detected our presence and accelerated their schedule. They have already started the collision subroutine. You may have felt the effects.”
“DJ1,” said Alex, “can you put a virus into their software?”
“Negative. I can only read and not write.”
Our group of three ships approached Raptor’s open cargo door.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“One hour and twenty minutes. The device they will use to destroy the multiverse is at the center of the dwarf planet Ceres, in the asteroid belt.”
In formation, our three ships slid into the cargo hold and hovered a few feet off the deck. We remained in our ships, talking.
Alex shook his head. “There’s no way we could get there in time.”
“Excuse me,” said DJ1. “In addition, they have erected a spherical force field around Ceres with a radius of approximately three LDs.”
I squinted. “LDs?”
Drenast made a scoffing noise. “Lunar distance. The distance from Earth to the moon.”
“Yes, thank you, Drenast.” DJ1’s voice continued to have a deep, soothing tone.
We disembarked and huddled around DJ1 as it floated a foot off the deck.
It looked a bit like a small cigarette boat and projected its voice into the air. “I was unable to penetrate the force field.”
Marbecka came over and we discussed the problem.
I proposed a crazy idea. “Let’s say Sphere 1 and I paratransit to my home universe then immediately paratransit back to this universe, but near Ceres.”
“Inside the force field.” Martin nodded.
“Exactly. Then I throw something into the planetoid like we threw Cronkite into the sea.”
“Throw me. I can explode.” DJ1’s voice was calm, even though he was volunteering to be a suicide bomb. We all turned to him.
Marbecka spun around once. “Then Elon can paratransit you away before the explosion.”
We didn’t have time to come up with anything better.
“The success probability is fucking close to zero, Jake.” Marbecka’s crest popped up. “The meaning of which is that you will likely perish.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, paced away from the others then back again. “Well, I’m going to likely perish anyway if the universes collide, right?” I looked at the two spheres and DJ1 all hovering above the deck, rock solid. Surely the combination of humans, dinobirds, and advanced technology could defeat a race of out-of-control toasters.
“The timing must be accurate to the millisecond.” Marbecka bobbed her head. “I am grokking that it will be too close.”
I crossed my arms and sighed, breathing in the chlorine smell from the two spheres. “Whatever. I’m in.” Was I being a hero, breaking my promise to Charli? No. I had no choice. Only Martin had more experience than I with the sphere, but there was no way I’d send him.
We exchanged hugs all around. I climbed into Sphere 1 and piloted it, with my thoughts, into the paratransitter.
Marbecka spent several precious minutes at the controls then flew over and tossed me a small, orange data straw, like the one I’d found on the gretzer. “Give this to Dr. Gray, and tell him to plug it in immediately.”
As soon as she cleared the device, the vibration, color shift, and weird sensations began. C’mon, hurry up!
The process reversed, and I materialized in the paratransitter on Mount Rainier. I opened the sphere’s door. A cot sat against one wall of the control room. Elon must have been here twenty-four seven .
He stood up from his chair at the monitoring station, his eyes red from lack of sleep. “Jake! What’s the status?”
I tossed him the data straw. “Plug that in, Elon. Right away.”
I looked at the door to the helipad. I could just jump out of the machine and go to my family. I could live out the end of the world with Charli in my arms. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake—a crazy nightmare. My moment of weakness passed.
Elon inserted the straw into a port on the control panel and twisted it ninety degrees. “Hey, I’ve improved the paratransitter—”
“Can you accurately paratransit me to a location that doesn’t have a corresponding paratransit device?” I held my breath.
Elon froze, staring at the displays.
“Elon?”
“Jake, I just don’t know.” He pointed to a display. “Looks like we’re about to find out. Perhaps it will work, but the accuracy—you know this will send you to the asteroid belt, right?”
“Right. There’s information in the straw that will bring you up to date. The whole plan.” I shut the sphere’s door.
The paratransitter immediately tooled up. I dropped into the crash couch. The transportation sequence proceeded, perhaps a little faster this time. Mid-sequence, I grabbed my head. The ringing in my ears was intolerable and my headache was blinding. This wasn’t right!
The paratransit steps finally resumed. When they ended my head was okay, as if the pain had never happened.
I switched the walls to transparent. I was back at Mount Rainier! I opened the door.
“No! Stay there, Jake. Close the door.” Elon didn’t even look up from the controls.
The sequence went more smoothly this time—no headache. I looked around. I was in outer space once more, surrounded by stars. One star was a bit larger than the others. That would be the sun. A moon shone to my left. From where I sat, it was about a fourth the size of our moon as seen from Earth. That would be Ceres. An intense loneliness washed over me. The last time I’d been this far from Earth, at least Cronkite was with me.
I knew less about the solar system than any of the scientists, human or celano, yet here I was. Marbecka had filled me in. About a quarter of the diameter of the moon, Ceres was the largest body in the main asteroid belt, the band of debris that lay between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
So far, so good. I’d paratransitted to Earth in my universe, then back to Ceres in the dinobird universe. Inside the force field. There’d been a glitch, but it was all good now. Except we had less time.
Several bright spots adorned the surface of Ceres. I’d seen an internet article suggesting that those were salt deposits. That theory went down the drain when something shot out from one of the spots and homed in on me.
I wondered whether we’d be able to jump out of the way. The sphere hopped to the side, the inertial damping unable to compensate. Oof! I was squished against the arms of the crash couch.
What had seemed to be a projectile flashed by the sphere. It was a writhing bundle of energy, a Gordian knot of pulsating yellow snakes. It accelerated as it went and smashed into something after it passed. Ah, the force field. Energy spread out from the point of impact, scintillating across the surface of the field. I put the pedal to the metal and the sphere and I were off, traveling away from Ceres at an angle.
Then it hit me: Perhaps we could have automated the whole thing. The sphere and DJ1 were advanced enough to follow instructions, make decisions, right? Maybe my presence wasn’t needed.
“Sphere, can you do this yourself?”
“No, Jake. You must visualize favorable outcomes for each procedure. Like mental rehearsal.”
“Use the force, Luke.”
The sphere paused. I could almost hear it going through its cultural database. “Yes. Something like that. I act on your visualizations more than your verbal thoughts. It’s an effective system. Much superior to machine intelligence alone. Just be careful what you wish for.”
If only I had more time for practicing. I looked around. Where was DJ1?
More snake balls shot out at us, and I formed a mental picture of the sphere dodging out of the way. It worked.
DJ1 slid up next to me. Ah, finall
y! Presumably it had also jumped here by first paratransitting to Mount Rainier. One of the yellow balls of energy headed right toward it. Unintentionally, I pictured it making a direct hit. Aargh! Undo! But the ball spread out around DJ1 as if the probe were protected by a bubble. The weapon’s energy dissipated.
Time to get the show on the road. I grabbed DJ1 with my tractor beam.
We angled away from Ceres, until we were right at the inner surface of the force shield. We arced around, like a motorcycle inside a globe of death at the circus.
Our velocity increased to one-tenth the speed of light. We whirled around Ceres and then angled inward. DJ1 was right behind me, in the tractor beam.
We spiraled in toward Ceres. The snake-ball weapons continued relentlessly. While evading one, another hit us a glancing blow, and the power went off. In pitch darkness, I floated away from the nonexistent crash couch. “Sphere! Sphere!”
Was this the end? Every one of my muscles clenched, and I held my breath. It might recover, but too late?
The sphere rebooted. DJ1 had dropped back, but I retractored it. I blinked. Ceres grew in size. Four snake balls approached at once. Overwhelmed, I wanted to throw my hands up and say, “DJ1, take the wheel,” but I visualized an escape and the sphere executed it.
We tucked into a sharp curve and headed directly toward the dwarf planet.
Perhaps the machine intelligence inside Ceres detected the increased threat. The frequency of yellow snake balls tripled, some coming out from the far side of the huge asteroid, curving around and streaking toward us. Visualizing a good outcome became more difficult and taxing.
I grunted as we accelerated. This was the highest g-force I’d experienced so far. Imagine if the sphere weren’t protecting me from the full effect. The sphere squeezed my legs. I didn’t pass out.
I checked the displays. We’d accelerated at one hundred g’s, and were now traveling over eight hundred kilometers per second.
Okay, now or never. I released the tractor beam. I jolted backward. DJ1 passed us, spinning like a top. Good luck, friend. It was out of my hands now.
