Unfathomable Chance

by K T Munson

  “We beg you,” the old woman said as green tears slipped down her cheeks.

  Diana swallowed before she said to the Dracoon, “Let’s go.”

  Her eyes fell on Adom for a moment, and she saw the worry on his face. Keeping her face carefully neutral she turned away from them. Many cried out, begging her to come back and take her place, but she ignored them all. She had to find out why the bracelet had chosen her because the more she thought about it, the less she believed it had actually chosen her to rule. Whater the reason, she was pretty sure all of this had something to do with the Dracoon walking beside her.

  Chapter 15

  “You are not what I expected you to be,” the Dracoon said when they were out of earshot.

  Diana gave him a sideways glance. “I believe everyone has been thinking that, but you are the first to state it.”

  The man had a face that could be cut from stone, and his black hair looked like silk. His pointy ears were the only thing that reminded her he wasn’t even the same species. He gave her a smirk when he caught her staring at his face, and she pursed her lips in defiance.

  “I didn’t say that was a bad thing, Diana,” he said, and she felt her heart jump when he said her name.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said, pausing to look up at him, “but I know what you want.”

  “Dimar,” he said, leaning forward. “And what is it that I want?”

  “What everyone wants from me,” Diana answered vaguely as his wonderful scent reached her, but she stubbornly stood her ground.

  “What if I was to tell you different?” he muttered, his voice so deep it vibrated through her.

  “I wouldn’t believe you,” she said as he inched closer.

  His lips pulled back in a smug smile. “You’re smarter than you look.”

  Diana sucked in a surprised breath and pushed around him. “You don’t even seem real. You are straight out of a fantasy book, a freaking dark elf.”

  Dimar chuckled behind her, following as she struted off. Marching out of the alleyway and into the open courtyard, she scanned left and right but didn’t recognize anything she’d seen upon her arrival on this planet. The urge to stomp her feet and throw her hands up in the air in exasperation was strong. She was constantly lost, and she had never felt smaller and more insignificant in her life than she did now; a speck of dust amongst the vastness of the universe.

  Instead she vascelated at the entrance to the alley, gazing out over the variety of aliens, caught in indecision and wonder. A short round one sauntered by with strange blue skin and one large eye. Another stood taller than Dimar, who was well over six feet, and yet another had two heads. It was like being at the freak show at the circus. Yet here, she knew that she was the freak instead.

  “Why the long face?” he asked, coming to stand next to her.

  “That is a very Earth-like reference,” Diana pointed out.

  “I studied your cultures and watched your customs to make communicating with you easier,” he said as though it were nothing much.

  “Tomorrow morning I should be walking down the aisle, getting my diploma, and celebrating with my family,” Diana said with a heavyhearted sigh. “Instead I am here.”

  “I can return you to Earth before tomorrow,” Dimar declared.

  “How?” she asked, turning to look at him.

  “Temporal rift,” he said simply.

  “That doesn’t sound safe,” she said, wishing she had paid more attention to physics or at least Star Trek.

  “As long as you don’t cross your own timeline, it will give us the time we need to arrive back at your planet.” Dimar held out his hand. “Will you come with me?”

  Being able to see her family again was a very tempting offer. She began to raise her arm and saw herself walking down the aisle in light blue while her family took pictures and cheered, but she hesitated. She was no longer that ignorant girl who believed she was alone in space; she was now going to be in charge of the entire universe. Correction, multiverse—as if one of them wasn’t bad enough.

  “Bearer!” someone called. It started her out of her thoughts and she jerked her hand away.

  Maura pushed her way through the crowd and came running over to Diana with her hand on her hip. For a moment Diana didn’t understand. When it all came flooding back, she threw her arms up, putting herself between Maura and Dimar.

  “Maura, stop,” she said.

  Maura pulled the stick from her belt, and the energy sword came to life. “He is a Dracoon,” Maura said as Grim growled.

  “He is the Dracoon,” Diana confirmed. “He is here to help.” She spared him a glance. “I think.”

  Maura bared her teeth. “They cannot be trusted.”

  “He can,” Diana said before her brain knew what she was doing, “or the bracelet wouldn’t have sent me to him once before and then brought him here. I don’t like it, but the one thing I understand about this bracelet is its desire to protect me.”

  Maura straightened at that and gave Dimar a narrow look. Diana put her arms down and glanced over her shoulder. Dimar’s face was surprisingly serious, and his normal expression of playfulness had disappeared momentarily. His eyes met hers, and she could see there was more there than met the eye. He wasn’t just a mischievous cad; he had a serious side as well, which meant perhaps the bracelet was on to something.

  “Diana,” Kal Zed said, padding up to them, “it is time to go.”

  Diana glanced back at him and suddenly made up her mind. “I am going back to Earth with Dimar; there is something I have to do.”

  “You’re leaving?” Maura said harshly and jutted her chin out. “With him?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “Just for a day. I’ll meet you at Epselon Five when I’m done.”

  Maura was about to argue when Kal Zed piped up, “Go and find what you are looking for.”

  Diana nodded at Kal Zed before saying to Maura and Grim, “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Be careful,” Maura managed as Grim made a sad sound.

  Diana felt tears rising at abandoning Kal Zed. Covering them she turned and followed Dimar. She didn’t look back, afraid that she would change her mind. Everything was becoming clearer now; all the pieces were falling into place. Dimar had been the last piece of the puzzle and she was going to confirm her suspicions.

  Chapter 16

  “This is smaller than I thought it would be,” Diana said, scrutinizing the little spaceship.

  It reminded her of a teardrop, one they entered from the back. It seemed to be made of a reflective surface that showed the world around her. Her face was distorted on its surface as the entrance opened.

  “I thought it best to come alone,” Dimar informed her as they walked in.

  “We’ll be alone?” she squeaked before she could stop herself.

  “Regretting your decision?” he asked with a smug smile.

  “Not yet.” Diana frowned as they entered the ship.

  A strange-looking creature was busy at work at some sort of food station. It had a strange metallic brown skin that didn’t seem quite right, yet it was of a build similar to most Dracoons. Diana paused as the door closed behind her.

  “Is food prepared?” Dimar asked as he slipped past Diana.

  “Nearly ready,” the small, angular man chimed, not pausing in its work.

  “I’ll get us moving,” Dimar said before disappearing up a set of stairs and into the next room.

  Diana felt a little uncomfortable, so she sat down across from the busy man. “What species are you?”

  “I am an android,” he responded, setting a plate in front of her.

  “You’re a robot!” Diana yelled, nearly falling out of the stool. He was so lifelike.

  “I am of a higher caliber then your puny brain could ever quantify,” it answered solemnly, seeming insulted.

  “No reason to get rude,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Apparently I got stuck with a snarky robot.”

 
“Highly intelligent android, actually,” it retorted sharply.

  “Is he being prissy again?” another android asked, stepping out of the cockpit.

  She barely managed to keep the smile off her face. “Highly prissy,” she confirmed.

  “I’m Rocky,” he said, holding out his hand. “The Loooove Machine.”

  “Seriously?” She shook his hand. “And that isn’t more demeaning than robot?”

  “We don’t know how to lie,” Rocky explained. “And robots were the model before us. It would be like us calling you an ape.”

  “That is still a point of contention among my people,” she responded, “but point taken.”

  “When Dimar said we were having a guest, he did not say she was so lovely,” Rocky said charmingly.

  Diana couldn’t help but laugh. It was the first time she had felt it come so freely since this wild adventure began.

  The android pointed at her forgotten plate. “Sit down and eat.”

  “It’s a salad,” Diana said, sitting down and inspecting it. “A normal, leafy salad.”

  “Dimar had us look into Earth’s popular foods so that you would be comfortable,” Rocky informed her as a new woman suddenly jumped down from the second level where Dimar had gone.

  “We’re all set and on our way to the rift,” she said, her blond hair bouncing. Her skin was the same as that of the other two robots. Correction, androids. “I’m going to recharge.”

  The female android strode over and stepped onto a station that lit up when she accessed it. Her hair color changed to the lavender, starting from the roots and working its way down. She was wearing a strange suit and had a flawless figure.

  “She is like a walking Barbie doll,” Diana muttered before turning back to her salad.

  “Roddy you’re up front, and Rocky back into your cube,” Dimar said, coming to stand across from her.

  “Right away,” Rocky said and went back into his sleeping area to her right. It resembled a stasis pod right out of a sci-fi movie. He lay down, and the pod closed before lights came on. He stopped moving, so she assumed it was the android equivalent of sleep.

  “Do I look like a pilot?” Roddy muttered, unamused, as he made his way up the set of stairs to a second level. “I have the capacity to alter the universe, but instead I am your pilot. Joy be to me.”

  “Quite an assortment of androids you have here,” Diana said to Dimar, trying not to smile.

  “I made them to be that way,” he informed her, sitting across from her.

  “You made them?” Diana said, startled. The lettuce fell off her fork.

  “I am more than just pheromones,” he countered, giving her that same playful smile.

  Diana waved a hand in front of her face as though she could ward them away. “Enough of that. It’s time we discussed your mother.”

  His head jerked back at her words and he demanded, “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t, not for sure,” Diana said. “But now I do.”

  She’d had her suspicions earlier. According to Kal Zed, the last empress had killed herself suddenly by throwing herself into space. The bracelet had hidden for ten years after her death, and the moment it had gone active it had kept bringing Dimar and her together. Why? He must have something the bracelet wanted, or it believed he knew something of importance. She had connected the rest of the dots and made a guess.

  “Impressive,” he muttered, clearly unnerved.

  She shook her wrist with the bracelet on it. “I am more than just the Bearer of the Cosmos.”

  “What else do you see?” Dimar asked curiously.

  “I have misjudged you,” Diana said, observing his face as she set the fork down and leaned forward. “You aren’t interested in me. Something else is driving you. It has to do with the last empress and her death. You aren’t the one who sent those men after me, but you wanted me to think that you were.” He leaned back in the chair. “And,” she added, “I just shocked you.”

  “What strange abilities you humans have. I did not read about this when I studied Earth,” he admitted, sounding astonished. “You are right. My brother Jimil was who came after you and Empress Katali was my mother.”

  “I learned how to read people,” Diana said with a laugh, “That is what I was going to do for a job. While I try to figure out exactly what this blasted thing wants me to get from you, I am going home to do something normal for a change.”

  He smiled softly and said, “You should laugh more. It suits you.”

  Diana felt a blush rise to her cheeks. “It has been a stressful couple of days.”

  “I should warn you, there will be members of both genders from every planet searching for you on Earth,” Dimar he said, clearing his throat. “Normal will be difficult.”

  She sighed heavily. “What am I going to do?”

  “I’ll keep you hidden as long as I can.”

  “In return for what?” Diana asked, leaning back in her chair.

  “Your help,” he admitted. “My mother had years left, and yet she leapt from that balcony? Something happened to her, but I can’t prove it.”

  “What can I do?”

  He gestured towards the bracelet. “It knows what happened.”

  “Well, it isn’t telling me.” She held it up and shook it. “It has been stubbornly silent.”

  “You couldn’t understand it in this realm,” he said, leaning forward. “Your head would literally explode.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.” Diana grimanced. “And you want me to talk to it? That’s a good plan.”

  “You can talk to it in its home,” he clarified.

  A flash of her dream played behind her eyes. Trees, all of them dancing to their own rhythm and no two perfectly alike. She felt her blood slow as she seemed to remember, her mind reaching into the darkness and trying to pull an old memory forward.

  “Bearer?” he said, and then put a hand on her arm. “Diana?”

  Gasping, she suddenly focused on him. “Forget doing something normal. I know where we need to go.”

  Chapter 17

  Diana gazed out the window and across the expanse of space. The cosmos reached out beyond her like a blanket of eternity. A man once said that testing the edge of something was as simple as firing an arrow and seeing if it went on forever or hit something. After climbing to the top of a known edge and firing another arrow to it, would further test the limits of space. Repeating the process of climbing a known edge and firing an arrow over and over until a true boundary was reached or it continued on forever.

  Sitting there now as they approached the edge of this known universe where the wormhole was, she wished she had an arrow. The darkness that lay beyond seemed void of light, or the light was so faint that she could not see with her feeble eyesight. Something about looking into the abyss made her heart clench in fear.

  “You should have warned me,” Diana said, glancing over at Dimar.

  “Would you have agreed?” he asked as though he was not ashamed.

  “No,” Diana informed him, “and I do not agree now.”

  “If you don’t order the guards to move aside, we won’t be able to use the temporal rift,” Dimar reminded her.

  “You’ve made that perfectly clear.” She huffed angrily.

  Upon arriving at this edge of space, Dimar had informed her that it was a heavily guarded and regulated rift. All discovered temporal rifts, he explained, were under watch. The only way through was for Diana to use the power of the cosmos and force compliance. “Irritated” did not fully cover what she felt towards Dimar at the moment. To make matters worse, he did not seem to understand why she was so angry.

  Despite this, she wanted to be back in her planet. The good old Milky Way Galaxy was huge. She had crossed from part of the galaxy to the next without days going by—or so her phone had told her. Compared to Earthlings, the rest of space’s inhabitants had come a lot further. Sitting there she tried to grasp the universe’s size, but it was as though she wa
s an ant on an anthill and Earth was the universe around her. Although she could possibly know the size of space that lay beyond her, she could not grasp its enormity.

  “What are you going to do?” Dimar asked.

  “Continue to be angry with you.” She sighed. “And ask the guards politely to move.”

  “They are unlikely to comply, as you have not taken your place,” Dimar warned her. “You are only the Bearer and not the Empress.”

  “Leave that to me,” Diana replied with a frown before saying over her shoulder, “Ruby, could you please take us in as though we have no intention of stopping?”

  Ruby, whose hair was currently the color of a cherry lollypop, nodded. The ship started towards the rift as though it was going to enter it without complication.

  When they were nearly to the rift, a larger ship cut them off. “Halt in accordance with the United Planetary Order,” a high pitched voice commanded through the speakers. “Identify yourself.”

  Diana stepped forward and said, “As Bearer of the Cosmos I am granted access to this rift in order to return to my home planet.”

  There was a click from the other ship. Then after a pause a blue man with a strangely oblong face and almost reflective black eyes appeared on the screen in front of her. He had a pensive expression on his face. Diana was beginning to wonder how she was capable of seeing expressions so easily in species that should theoretically have completely different expressions. Cultures meant that some of the body language would have been strange to her. She eyed the bracelet, thinking, I’m on to you.

  “Access can only be given to the residing Empress,” he informed her.

  “Well, that complicates things because I cannot return to my home planet in time to receive important information regarding the Heart of the Cosmos,” Diana explained vaguely before holding up her wrist. “It showed me this path; do not make me use it.”

  The blue man’s face seemed to fill with terror. It was as though every word she spoke dropped fear into his well and she had filled him to the brim. The strange black of his eyes seemed to grow even deeper. Fear was something common, it seemed, to all species.