by Kord Stone
Jason’s jaw dropped as he watched the wall seem to dissolve and an archway appeared allowing them access to more weapons than he had ever seen in one place. The room seemed to defy the laws of physics. He knew the ship wasn’t nearly large enough to have a room in that direction, but there they were.
She placed her hand on the wall again and said, “Armor” and another passage opened in the same location, but this time there was a huge supply of clothing and armor that looked like movie props.
Jason just stared and said, “What the—”
Alise let out a laugh. “The items in these rooms are stored in a dematerialized state until you call for them. It saves on space and makes it so the ship isn’t cluttered. The room you are looking into is not really that large, it is an optical illusion. For the most part we only bring up the display and summon the items we need.”
Alise motioned to him and said, “Shall we proceed?”
“Lead on,” he said and they headed down the corridor to the final room. They entered and he immediately noticed a difference. Where the voice was once speaking in an unknown language, now he could understand every word of the repeating message. “Time displacement protocol engaged… One hundred twenty hours until automatic disengage.”
Alise’s gaze settled on the console. “This is the control room, and here is the mission control console. All ship functions aside from medical can be controlled from this location.”
She touched the console and said, “Computer, cancel automated countdown warning.” And the sounds in the ship were reduced to a slight hum.
Jason sighed and cheerfully whispered, “Peace and quiet.”
Alise just gave him a smirk and said, “It could have been a lot sooner if you were not so stubborn about attaching my disk.”
“With my history, do you blame me?”
She seemed to examine him thoroughly, then nodded gravely. “Point taken.”
He looked at the console, and this time he noted another difference. He could understand what was on the display. Well, most of it at least. He exclaimed, “I can read some of this now. It all looked like gibberish to me before.”
Alise smiled. “That is because of the bonding. The rest of it will come with time.”
He smirked at Alise and said, “Speaking of time, I told you the tour wouldn’t take long.”
She grinned wickedly back at him and said, “Who said we were finished?”
Chapter Six
Jason followed as Alise approached the inner wall of the control room, raised her hand, pressed it to the smooth metal surface and said, “Entry.” Immediately an archway appeared to the left of her hand.
He stared in stunned disbelief and said, “It is a good thing I didn’t know about that before the bonding or I would have been out of here before the door was fully open and we would never have met.”
Alise smiled back at him. “It would not have done you any good. It will only open with a bonded commander. Besides I would have hunted you down like the dirty dog you are.” Then she laughed quietly as she eyed him up and down.
Acting shocked and hurt and knowing full well that he must be as ripe as one of his nephew’s diapers, he replied, “Are you saying I stink?”
“Honestly? Yes, but we can deal with that in a moment.” She let out a throaty chuckle, and he followed her in.
Jason just shook his head with a smile. “This has been the most fun bantering I’ve had in a long time! Typically nobody gets my humor, and they always think I’m just being rude. My brothers were the only ones who ever got it.” His cheerfulness faded a little at reminding himself about his brothers.
“From an outside perspective I could see the misunderstanding, but being bonded with you makes this form of conversation more interesting.”
Jason asked, “If the controls only work with a bonded commander, then how was I able to activate that blue button?”
Alise chuckled, “when you pressed the button, Elgon had just pressed the binding disk into your hand. It was in contact with your skin at the time and allowed you to activate it. One of my concerns was that if you were still holding the disk and managed to open the exit, you could have escaped, and if my disk left the ship with me in it, there would have been nobody left to control it. Luckily you put it down before looking for the exit.”
He followed Alise farther into the next room and he heard a slight laughter echo in his head.
The room turned out to be another corridor with a wall directly in front of them and two narrower halls on either side running at a right angle.
“Right in front of us is the engine room. Some people might refer to it as engineering, but it really is not that big.”
She pressed her hand on the wall in front of them saying, “Entry.”
The wall dissolved to allow them access. They went in. The room was around fourteen feet square with narrower forty-five degree corners and what he saw in the room surprised him. Positioned in the center of the room about five feet from the walls was the engine she spoke of, and it was nothing more than a box about four feet squared that extended from the floor to the ceiling. Lights flickered here and there, but not a sound was emanating from it.
“It is very quiet for an engine,” he remarked, somewhat in awe.
Alise placed her hand on it. “It usually is. This is an engine of sorts, though it would probably be more acurately referred to as a generator. This ship runs on an ion-dark-matter reaction. When used correctly it will power our vessel, propel us through space or as you found out by pressing the little blue button…alter the fabric of time. One of our last missions had to deal with this technology. It actually destroyed their solar system and caused a chain reaction felt in neighboring galaxies.”
“Crap! What idiots did that?” Jason asked.
Alise let out a loud snort. “Idiots? Yes, I guess you have the right to call them that. The idiots were here on Earth.”
He just looked at her dumbfounded. “Earth?”
“Yes.” Alise looked appraisingly at him, then paused as if gathering her thoughts. “I think now would be a good time to fill you in on what we do here. Life forms throughout the universe have always had a natural drive for knowledge and to reach out and explore. It was found a very long time ago that some species do not wish to take the time to learn properly. Always in a rush for advancement, sometimes to the detriment of themselves and others.
In their zeal for advancement, they either overlook or ignore safety altogether. When that happens it usually causes destruction, and depending on the extent we will intervene, as was the case with Earth. Your scientists at the Hadron Collider overlooked a safety precaution and the resulting collision caused a chain reaction. It was more than a minor planetary incident, so we intervened and prevented the incident.”
Jason was stunned. “How did you accomplish that?”
“Elgon and I arrived about three hundred years after the event and found this solar system had been scorched by a thermionic chain reaction, and the galaxy’s movement was altered, putting it on an eventual collision course with the Andromeda galaxy. We did a systematic analysis and discovered the reaction had originated on Earth. It was not much of a surprise since it was the only inhabited planet. We tracked the blast backward until we located the point and time of origination, and we discovered a safety monitor switch had been left off. We knew something was amiss because we had passed that point in time several times before and the solar system was fine.
We went back to a time well before that incident. Elgon donned his displacement suit and caused a minor equipment failure at the Hadron Collider that resulted in the equipment being re-evaluated. During the evaluation, they came to the conclusion the safeties should never be allowed to be disengaged. It did not hurt that he also got into their computer systems and sent messages to all of the developers about safety problems. Those rattled around until nobody really knew where they had originated, but at least that is a problem that should not happen again.”
“Well, that sou
nds easy enough.”
“Yes that one was. It was an accident or at least we thought it was. The last three thousand linear years have had us all over the universe restoring timelines. There has been a serious increase in events and we have even seen an increased number of attacks on our ship as well. Because of those attacks, we changed our protocol and we try to stay out of real time and phase as much as possible. Like I said, there has been a serious increase in events and now it is your job and mine to sort them out.
Some races out there try to profit from the destruction others bring upon themselves. For the most part we allow it to happen. It is a kind of scavenging or mining. Unless the disaster is perpetrated by another race or it has effects beyond the world that caused it, we allow it to proceed. We have a rather large list of events to rectify and a lot of incidents to look into when we have the time. Which lately we have not had. Our most pressing concern is going to be dealing with the event that killed Elgon, but you will need training first. Then we will look into why we could not find your family in the future.”
Jason was a little shocked at hearing that and asked, “So, that is why you saved Earth because it affected another galaxy as well?” Jason asked.
She looked appraisingly at him before saying, “For the most part yes, but you were the main reason.”
“Me? Why me?”
“We knew Elgon’s time was running short and after the modifications we made to the ship there was only you… Well, one of your direct family. Actually there were two others, your uncle and cousin who were still alive. Your uncle was not even considered because he was in worse shape than your father and brother combined along with being married, and your cousin Jeff is married to two women, not to mention he is in that maximum security prison—”
“He’s where?”
Alise looked hard at him. “Oh, you did not know. Jeff has been incarcerated, and most likely will never be released. Calling it a maximum security prison is wrong though. He is actually in a place called ADX Florence, in Florence, Colorado. That prison is in fact considered a Supermax prison by your people.”
Jason’s heart felt as though it had fallen out of his chest.
She seemed to peer deep into his mind and exclaimed, “Something is not right. The odds of all of this happening within this bloodline at the same time are astronomical!”
“What now?”
She stared right into his eyes and said, “I saw Jeff throughout the years in your mind, and the circumstances of his conviction are not consistent with his personality traits. He was originally convicted of possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to one year in a minimum-security ‘country club’ prison, as you would call it. That is within the bounds of his profile. On his way to that prison, an incident occurred that left everyone except him dead. Jeff was found guilty of murdering the guards and fellow prisoners on that transport in a failed escape attempt. That earned him a one-way passage to ADX.”
She seemed to ponder it a second. “With his personality traits that is almost impossible. He is what you always referred to as an ‘odd duck’ and would have enjoyed the minimum-security prison, thinking of it as a vacation and would not have had a reason to kill anyone. None of this is adding up.”
He couldn’t manage to say anything, and just returned her gaze.
“I wonder if this could be related to your brothers’ murders,” she said. “They were not within the bounds of your profile either, and as I told you before, in the original timeline they were all still alive. I am beginning to think someone is trying to eliminate your family line. Who would want you all dead that much and have the resources to accomplish it?”
He was about to ask her what the hell she was going on about when she suddenly said, “We are going to have to complete this tour at another time. I need to look into a few things, and when I know more I will tell you.”
She turned and exited the room. “Come with me.”
They stepped out of the engine room and took a couple more steps then she said, “Stand here a moment please.”
Jason did as she asked and heard her say, “Ascend level three.” A moment later he felt as if his intestines were floating inside his body, and his feet left the floor. He moved toward the ceiling, which dissolved above him. He passed through and looked down just in time to see the floor reappear below him, but he was still going up.
He heard Alise say in his mind, When you get to the bedroom, there is a bathroom and a wardrobe on the far right wall. Place your hand on the wall and state which one you desire, as I demonstrated before. There is also a bed if you wish to rest a bit. I will be back with you in a moment.
Jason passed through another ceiling and with what felt like a small hop he was back on the solid floor again. At that moment, he was quite happy he hadn’t eaten anything because he knew he would have made one hell of a mess.
Then Alise’s words sank in. Rest a bit? After what I just experienced, I don’t think I’ll be able to rest for a month. She could have at least warned me that was going to happen.
He heard a slight giggle in the back of his mind. Whoops. Sorry.
Whoops, my ass! You did that on purpose as a thrill ride of sorts didn’t you?
With a little chuckle, he heard her reply in a singsong voice, G u i l t y.
Chapter Seven
Jason peered around. He had arrived on the third level in the corner of a rectangular room, it was about twenty feet deep and fourteen feet wide, and twelve feet in front of him was a narrow bed and nightstand, and twelve feet to his right was the wall Alise had spoken of. Aside from the bed and nightstand, the room was empty. This is sterile enough to be used as a surgical suite! Elgon must have been a minimalist neat freak.
Alise spoke up in his mind. Honestly he was a bit of a hoarder! You could barely walk around in that room and the second level was nearly impossible to traverse. Upon his impending death I transferred all of his belongings into…well the best way to say it is void storage. It is here but not. In a term you would be familiar with, it would be kind of like backing up your computer and performing a factory reset. The ship is returned to the condition it began in.
Are all eleven prior commanders’ possessions in this void storage or just the last one?
I never really thought about that. I guess it could all be stored in there. I really do not know how big it is or where it is located, I think it is more of a virtual location as well.
He replied in mind to her, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you from what you were doing. Should I just shut up and leave you alone?
She replied in a harsh tone, Yes, you bug me. This was followed by a laugh. I am just messing with you. I have the capability of doing many millions of tasks at one time. This conversation is not affecting my efficiency at all.
He went to the bed and lay down for a bit. A thought went through his mind. Would you mind if I asked a personal question?
She let out a snort. Seeing as how we are bonded, and when the link is complete you will be able to access everything about me…go ahead.
How long have you been on this ship?
With an exaggerated gasp, she snapped, Well I never! Has nobody ever told you it is not polite to ask a girl her age? This was followed by what sounded like a roar of laughter coming from her. When she regained herself she added, The computer data shows that I came online nearly three million linear years ago, but host data and mission logs only go back as far as three hundred and ninety-three thousand linear years. It appears as though the files prior to the Lantins were deleted. This was most likely to improve computer functions or to keep sensitive information safe.
She paused a moment as if in thought then continued. I do know from the memories of my first host, Andel, that the Lantins had been appointed by the last remaining Imortum to take over the running of this ship and the four other ships.
Their race was where your term immortal originated, due to their longevity from the use of chlorophyll more than likely. The Lanti
ns did not know about the chlorophyll at the time though. Back then the Lantins were space-faring. They had to abandon Lanna—I mean Mars—and had barely made it to their new planet Anukan. Andel told me the Imortum were impressed by the Lantins’ perseverance and decided to assist them.
The Imortum helped them along the scientific path with mild suggestions that led them to discover the chlorophyll solution. Once they had accomplished the feat, the Imortum trained many Lantins, and after selecting and training the best candidates they handed over the reins of these ships to the Lantins. Andel believed the Imortum were eager to finally be free of the task because there were only the six of them left from their whole race.
Jason lay there contemplating the new information. This is the oddest feeling I’m having. Growing up, I always felt history seemed manufactured, and quite honestly it bored the crap out of me. But everything you have told me just seems to click. As if I already knew but just forgot.
That could be the bonding, or maybe you are just a little more in touch with the universal ether. Come to think of it the bonding process is usually further along than this by now.
She was silent for a while and he was just about to ask what was up, when he felt as if his brain were being tickled. A moment later he got an untouchable itch behind his right eye. What are you doing? I felt that.
Alise laughed. That is a good sign. I was beginning to think this was a one-way connection. I just performed a diagnostic of my neural network, and part of that is to send impulses out to test connectivity. The bonding process is just encountering a barrier. It should not take too much longer. It usually takes between four and twelve hours for the bond to allow full access, and you were unconscious for nearly six hours.
By the way, how did I get onto the medical table?
I put you there. I am a big strong girl you know! Alise laughed. Actually, I used the medical unit to move you, like I did with Elgon. I can materialize on the ship at any location, but your body being real, it needed to be transported. And the only way to do that within this ship is with the medical unit.
