by Grant Fausey
“You okay?” asked Relix, nonchalantly. “You look a little distraught.” The old woman glanced back at the Trods. There was something unique about them. Important to her mission, but why was it a secret? She wondered if they were meant to torment her, or if they had truly come from some distant future to help her? She didn’t remember crossing paths with either of them before, or in her youth … so why now?
“I’m trying to unravel a puzzle,” she told the Trod. Relix glared at her for the longest time, cocked his head and smiled.
“You’ve discovered something?” There was something odd about his intent. Krydal could see the wheels turning in his head so-to-speak, so she knelt down face to face with the little biped.
“Not exactly––” she concluded. “But I think it exists.”
Tee turned up an eyebrow. Something about the old woman’s voice intrigued him. She was researching the impossible, being investigative and that embracing the improbable. It was definitely something out of the ordinary. “Have either of you ever seen a splinter in the barrier?” asked the old woman. “Maybe a little crack just big enough for something to be passed through?”
Tee looked curiously at Relix. The old woman had either regained a spark of confidence, or was on the verge of mental collapse.
“No … not really.” Tee shook his head repetitiously.
“I have,” said Relix. “But it’s gone now.”
“Where?” questioned the old woman, staring him straight in the eye. If the boundary was breached and capable of repairing itself, then maybe it was something that occurred naturally, or at specific intervals; maybe even continuously. There was every possibility that Indigo had found a natural break in the boundary and took advantage of it: A place where he could pass information from the past to his temporal counterpart in the future and visa versa. It was an invaluable tool. Crimson didn’t remember any such place in his répétiteur! However, the bounty hunter was very proficient at his job.
Crimson wondered if she had been so blinded by grief that she simply overlooked the one shred of evidence in her defense? Had the Trods actually discovered something she had overlooked in her misery?
Tee smiled, taking her by the hand. Relix followed close behind, covering his face in order to protect his bloodshot eyes from the blustery wind.
“Is that what you were trying to tell me earlier?” asked Crimson.
The old Trod’s eyes practically popped out of his head. A consequential: “Yes.”
The old woman took notice. She had no choice but to act quickly; otherwise, the ITOL would discover her presence and track her to her doom. Shedding her exoskeleton armor seemed the best advantage. She took a moment and pressed the release mechanism, reducing herself to a wet rat, in desperate need of replacement clothing. Her garments were weathered and tattered, and not very pleasing to the eye. She looked more like a street urchin, then a warrior of the corporate elite. But then the world would reset itself, if she managed to find the breech and cross the timeline. The futures would blend into a single coherent universe, a solitary prospective on a world without the Industrials, where all the races of the universe could live in harmony, commune with one another in perfect commerce. Such were the dreams of an evangelist. Especially, in the face of chaos, for within the anarchy of order, resided the worst of the Industrial’s nightmares: The master-builder, Rallumn.
SIX: Yellow Brick Road
• • •
The dawn came quickly. The old woman bundled up in a survival blanket. There was no longer any use for her armor. Where she was going her exoskeleton would be in the way. There was no choice but to leave it behind. Relix was right, if she was going to squeeze through an opening the size of matter; there was every possibility she would find the aperture too small to fit through. Still, she trudged forward; power surges all around her, commonplace within the convergence. Great bolts of lightening crisscrossed the threshold in thunderous waves of crackling superheated air. But on occasion, there was the occurrence of a time-quake; a ripple in the boundary that resulted in one temporal zone colliding with another like the tectonic plates of a great world mass. If she was in the right place at the right time, there was every chance of finding an opening large enough for her to pass through.
“I’m ready,” announced Krydal. There wasn’t much point in saying goodbye. There was every probability she wasn’t really going anywhere. It was all just another whimsical folly on her part. As far as Relix was concerned, the idea of an invisible boundary having visible cracks was ludicrous. The prospect of finding a continuous rupture in the space-time continuum was absurd. Nevertheless, he liked the idea of waving goodbye. It was more likely the old woman would take refuge and put off her departure until a more suitable time. The weather was turning bad. But she didn’t run and hide; instead, she pushed on through the brewing storm. Tee followed her for a short way then ducked under a stone protrusion at the first sign of lightning. The alcove was cluttered with debris, mostly broken stone and a couple of wheelbarrow loads of rubble, but it gave the Trod adequate protection from the rain. The constant gale-force wind, however, was a different story.
The temperature was dropping rapidly. Krydal felt the blunt end of the cooling trend, which left a dusting of frost on the buttresses, next to where she slept nestled in a makeshift heater-blanket arrangement. The cradle looked rather like a butterfly cocoon than a military issue shelter. She remembered being toasty warm until she felt the chilly morning air creep its way into her bones. Tee shivered, covered in a thin blanket of white and the morning sunlight was just beginning to warm his scaly hide. Behind him, the dawn of a new day gave the structure the illusion of icy red rock. It was actually a facade for something more sinister and secretive, if not more seductive. The work of madmen lay hidden in a secret laboratory, which was dredged deep into the core of the planet size moon. Sodin was artificial: A construct of enormous proportions, orbited by what was left of an orb of gray dust with craters the size of an ocean basin. What lied below the thin layer of fog was kept obscured by the morning vapor.
Neither Crimson, nor Krydal could wait; weather patterns changed quickly: One minute it was pouring rain, the next, it was sunny and clear. Wave fronts merged to strike one another in all three time zones, producing massive thunderstorms with unparalleled lightning while dropping a meter of snow on the rest of the world. The effect was beautiful, but dangerous. Crimson didn’t know when the next tornado blizzard would appear, but she knew she could count on the temperature dropping drastically, while being horrified in a blood bath of flying shards of broken ice. Weather conditions on Sodin were treacherous and unpredictably violent like the great battles that took place in the Triad. Crimson had survived the devastating campaign against the Acreens eons ago. But couldn’t remember how many lives had past, only that she existed at the time of the great exodus. The Industrials had manufactured a new universe, an artificially created realm in which to experiment and manipulate time and space. It was a place to expand their commercial influence, develop new technologies and reverse engineer the genetic composition of living light. Above all else, it was a mishmash of statistics, and old memories painted by a tapestry of her host’s existences, blending both their memories to create a new landscape from which to chronicle their survival.
Crimson was one such experiment, a being born of genetic manipulation and living light. Krydal’s life, however, was a blank slate, a fact that bothered the symbiont. There was every possibility she was just as much a creation as she was experimentation. The old woman’s memories haunted her in nightmares; a secret locked up inside her head that even Crimson couldn’t deliberate. The effect was devastating to both the symbiont and host, limiting her ability to decipher the reality of her companion’s past life experiences. Crimson believed her host was a prototype human being, living simultaneously on two planes of existence. Her connection to the hybrid allowed her to recall previous incarnations, offering the assassin the opportunity to study the longevity of her comp
anion’s life cycle. It seemed the master-builders influence went far beyond the green world of Myatek. The industrials devoured thousands of planets, chopping them to pieces in a feeding frenzy that lasted more than a millennium. One universe consumed the other, almost harmoniously.
Brakka groaned, nervously. The gentle beast sensed the forthcoming event, and lumbered forth, lowering its head coming face-to-face with Crimson Krydal Starr, a giant with fangs and teeth. The old woman rubbed the beast’s nose, placing her head along side the machine’s forehead. A tear dripped from the Shadowrider’s eye, slipping along the curved path of its scaly hide until it reached the old woman’s hand, where she silently conferred her love for the machine, rubbing her palm across the beast’s brow before stepping away. “You have to take care of the Trods!” She told the machine. “Don’t let anything happen to them. They’re the only ones who know the truth of who we are and were we come from.”
Defiant as it was, the great machine shook its head in disagreement, but the old woman smiled toying with the beast, as if she could see the future through the dragon’s eyes. Whatever the Trods were up too it was their secret. They never spoke of it. Crimson surmised her two traveling companions were on some kind of historical survey. Their biomechanically engineered bodies stood apart from other life forms. Tee was no more than tabletop high. His counterpart, the shorter of the two, was no larger than a mid-sized dog. But neither one seemed to be blessed with real intelligence. It was like they had forgotten everything learned during the spark of creation. Perhaps their mission required them both to make new memories. It was common practice with artificial life forms; especially those who interfaced with people on a new world.
Crimson wondered if that was why the Trods had suddenly shown up on Sodin. Was it the reason they persisted? Had Sodin somehow become a new world? “You two will be okay,” said the old woman, politely tapping her fingers atop Tee’s head. There was no point in upsetting the situation anymore than it already was. “I’ll rejoin you as soon as I can … I promise.”
Tee reached up and gave the crazed old woman a hug, which seemed to make all the difference to the symbiont. Their lives where still intertwined. The old woman chuckled. Relix latched onto her leg with one of his stubby hand feet and steadied himself with the other. “Don’t go,” he pleaded. There was a whimper in his voice, but Krydal kept moving. There was no time to be soft. If she hesitated, she’d never leave. It didn’t matter how she felt, or what she believed, she had to reach the juncture where the old ground transport’s communications array pierced the landing platform. It was there that fate was beckoning her.
The vehicle’s journey ended abruptly. Half the transport lay weathered, as if it was centuries old; the other side of the wreckage looked practically brand new. Except for a few dents and broken pylons, the components were still in pretty good shape. Even the antigravity drive looked intact. At least, from a salvage point, if and when the old woman made it to the other side, she could pull the antigrav ring. Maybe, use it as a lifeboat to make her way to the extraction point. It would sure make traveling easier, considering the condition of the transport. A crack in time was likely close in proximity. All she had to do was find it.
SEVEN: Reflections in the Past
• • •
Crimson watched the sunset through tired eyes, remembering a glimpse of her past: There was a bird on a branch, the branch blowing in the wind, the sound of a cheering congregation in the background. It was hard to decipher whether the crowd was screaming or joyful, in applause. She was too close to the phenomenon to tell the difference. One universe was spilling into the other, making it possible to smell the fragrance of her former life, as well as the stench of plasma generators grinding the aroma of rubble rats on an open pit barbeque into the air. The nasty little scavengers came in the night; chewed their way through everything, even the boundary as far as Crimson could tell. It was hard to see them in the dim light of a crackling fire. But she could hear them scurrying across the platform. The old Kalamarian fortress made the perfect breeding ground for the vicious little critters. Thousands upon thousands of the diminutive terrors inhabited the lower storerooms. Even the catacombs and laboratory were infested with the predators. She was amazed she had survived for as long as she had. One wrong turn, and … POW! She would be up to her armpits in rodents.
Predator-for-predator, however, the rubble rat wasn’t as aggressive as its extinct cousins. The general rat population on Sodin had matured into something a little more aggressive than scavengers, inherent memory giving way to a gene pool with a greater aptitude for intuition and survivability. Krydal was prepared to scorch the little bastards at the first sign of trouble: Anything to keep her furry companions at arms length. They were just as afraid of her as she was of them. Yet, the smallest of the predators had razor sharp teeth and a tail that could sweep an individual from their feet, even if they were in retreat. Add their furious appetite, even an old person like Krydal looked like a four course meal. Exposed skin attracted them; especially, around the neck and feet.
The old woman snapped a fire stick, protecting herself from the latest scavenger roaming her way. She lit the debris around her with a flux of white-hot light that immediately erupted into flames, bursting the stone fragments of a toppled wall into radiant heat. Crimson welcomed the warmth and went about the business of a morning meal, preparing a terra-root pancake for breakfast. The old warrior smashed the pulp into more manageable material, adding water to the concoction as she mixed the contents into a paste. Ritual was important to both host and symbiont. Satisfaction guaranteed. But it wasn’t until late morning when Crimson caught the flicker of an unexpected light on the horizon that set the day’s activities in motion. The object was as bright as any star, larger than a tanker, but smaller than a freighter. Crimson surmised it to be a commercial transport, which had slipped into orbit rather abruptly, sending a crackle of energy along the far side of the boundary. There was no way to tell which side of the barrier it was on. A surge of electrical discharges from its engines lit up the platform just off the cobblestone walkway, where the wreckage of the ground hauler pierced the deck plates. The vessel was definitely in a parking orbit around Myatek and it wouldn’t take long for the vehicle’s lander to reach the surface. The prospect of meeting new people at this moment in her life was less appealing than the probability of rewriting history. The new arrivals had every possibility of being hostile––a theory she would test quickly out of necessity once the lander was on the ground.
“Gotcha,” said the old woman in a rush. The ground rumbled beneath her feet, rolling with the artificial thunder of the vehicle’s massive outboard engines. Krydal scrambled across the platform, pulling her makeshift bed from where she slept. She scooped up a small notebook with tattered edges from atop the bundle, placed it along side an odd looking handheld scanner, and rolled the device up in the garments. For all intents and purposes, she was ready for anything. If only she hadn’t checked her combat armor at the door, her discarded flight suit would hide her existence from the visitors. Nevertheless, there was a flutter in the air right in front of her, as if it had always been there. The old woman cocked her head, sporting a toothless grin and dove for an iridescent glow that was only visible from one angle. The ripple was like a wave over an ocean: observable for only an instant. But it was there; found purely by accident: A visible crack in an invisible boundary–– “A direct line” to the alternate universe on the other side of the barrier.
The old woman moved quickly to where the ground transport’s antenna array pierced the barrier. If only she could reach the other side before it closed on her, everything would change. But there were newcomers, her mission to protect the time line. She was duty bound to guard the future. Obligation came before anything else. Her return to the past would alter the course of history, rectify her beginnings; perhaps, change the path traveled by the novice. She would deal with them on a personal basis later. For now, she had no choice but to scram
ble through the turbulence like a dog on a trampoline, pouncing back and forth as she tried to master the effects of the temporal distortion. She was on all fours and terrified; the seams swelling shut like a wound in a membrane.
The symbiont quickened her host’s pace, driving forward with each shuffle of the membrane; the opening dissolving right before her eyes. It was all she could do to maintain her step. Krydal tired quickly, but this time it was a matter of life and death. If the corridor collapsed on her, she would be swept away like sand blown into the wind. The path ahead of her narrowed growing smaller with each stride of her legs; the membrane corridor closing like a wound healing itself: Almost gelatinous. Small sparks snapped with static electricity, bouncing back and forth across the width of the opening. Krydal pushed her belongings ahead of her, pressing against the bundle, her body only meters away from the other side of the portal. A thousand images flooded her mind, memories of the darkness that moved between universes, devouring everything.
“It’s going to close …” she screamed, forcing her knees to carry her faster, while trying to keep a grip on her psyche, so she wouldn’t completely lose control. Krydal’s heart went into spasms, fear crushing her mind in waves of terror. The boundary was collapsing upon her along with the portal, sending a shockwave through her host’s old body. The old woman rolled with the pulses of energy trying to expel her, but it was too late; the shadows on the far side of the portal engulfed her, consuming her in darkness, convulsing in spasms like a baby being thrust from its mother’s womb. Krydal gasped for air, her lungs dry and panting. Her arms withered from the constant pushing, the expulsion. The end was near, the small rip in the past blending membrane coursing its energy back into the temporal convergence. The old woman’s hands pressed their way to the end of the portal and squeezed forcing the edge to open, only to have her body fall limp from exhaustion. No matter how she tried, she had to succumb to the waves of distortion. But alas, as she took her last breath of air, she emerged into the brilliance of the past, pushing herself free of the vortex.
