Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  “That’s damn considerate of him,” Leon barked.

  Cassandra was on the verge of losing her lips at the rate she was biting off smiles. Maybe Leon should count his blessings; she was not the smiling type; maybe that constituted character growth in his presence—what Leon was going for—even if it was at his expense right now.

  “Um, I do think that was sarcasm. Oh, this is so wonderful. I think I’m getting the hang of communicating with my first humanoid primitive. I’m so ecstatic right now.”

  “Keep working on those empathy emotions, Sliver,” Leon blurted, his voice box once again more of a Gatling gun with how it was dispensing words.

  “Um, ah, well, yes, of course, sir. About what we were talking about earlier?”

  Leon rested his fists on his hips and shook his head, his eyes going distant. “Very well. Let me go talk to these… what do you call them? You seem to have a word for everything.”

  “They refer to themselves as Trans Mariners, sir. We’re still digging into the reasons why. Ah, I’m guessing you’ll see for yourself come time for negotiations.”

  “Leon!” Cassandra exclaimed. “You can’t be serious.”

  Concern was hardly on Cassandra’s rolodex of available emotions, either, so, once again, perhaps this was progress, even if it was more annoying right now than helpful.

  “You heard the man,” Leon said. “They can always make another copy of me. It seems a part of me is so determined to save the multiverse from itself that I can’t wait for another copy of me to come on line to make sure nobody else gets to share the glory!”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  Leon rubbernecked in her direction, taking his eyes off of Sliver. “They can’t always make one more of you, Cassandra, too resource intensive in a time when every micro-fraction of Mother’s computing time is accounted for several times over.”

  “I’m still coming. Some humanoid species only respect strength. If you try to bargain from weakness, during an all-sensitive initial encounter, there may be no recovering from that.”

  Leon huffed, and tensed, the mountain of muscle on his shoulders rising to his neck crowding his neck further. Damn her if she wasn’t right. The Rile were just the latest such humanoids they’d run into. Finally, he gritted out a “Very well.”

  He shifted his attention back to Sliver who was looking away guiltily, embarrassed to be party to their tête-à-tête. “Let’s go, Sliver.”

  “Um, about that, sir, I can’t exactly teleport you to the Planet Eater in question. Theseus can. I’ll go get him so he can take you to where you need to go.”

  Leon wondered why they weren’t just scanned here and their digital selves beamed to where they needed to be. “Why not…?” Leon put two and two together for himself. “You haven’t exactly figured out how to digitize us yet, either?”

  “We expect to, sir, by the time Theseus gets you back there. Seems the Planet Eaters are only really designed to scan and digitize what it’s tearing apart.”

  Leon and Cassandra shared another concerned look, though she seemed to be smiling impishly underneath, perhaps over the idea that other people’s incompetence just upped the danger around her. Was she that desperate for it that she’d take it wherever she could find it? “This just gets better and better,” Leon mumbled, referring to Sliver’s latest revelation.

  “I haven’t heard you scream in a while, so I’d have to agree.” Cassandra turned to Sliver to explain. “He’s still trying to recuperate from the last time we had sex.”

  Was that an early attempt at humor? More likely, Leon thought, she’d been assessing his wincing with each movement ever since their tryst to gauge his recovery and readiness to fulfill his role as a military asset.

  Leon made a sour face as Sliver’s eyes went wide. The whole time Sliver had been hovering there a bit off the ground like a helium balloon that couldn’t quite land all the way, even if it was leaking.

  In the next moment Sliver was gone.

  And Theseus replaced him.

  And then they were all gone, Theseus, Cassandra, and Leon.

  ***

  THE CYLINDER WORLD, INIQUITOUS

  Arriving on the Planet Eater Iniquitous, Leon glared at Theseus. “Have you figured out how to get us inside yet?”

  Theseus turned to Sliver and gave him a dirty look. “You didn’t tell them?”

  “Ah, I was afraid, sir, um, hologram or not, if I did, he’d find a way to pull me apart first.”

  Theseus turned back to Leon and Cassandra. “Yes, but it is an extremely painful process.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Cassandra said.

  “You don’t want any pain killers first?” Theseus asked.

  Leon had to restrain Cassandra to keep her from taking Theseus’s head off.

  Theseus put up his hands in surrender. “If I could lower my hands, please,” he said, “I will need them to work the controls.”

  He strode to the console controlling the open end of the Planet Eater. Currently there were just stars on the other side. As to how they were standing where they were, unaffected, feeling neither the pull of deep space, nor an absence of atmosphere…Leon decided that he could live with the mystery for now. Obviously the people who designed the Planet Eater had long ago decided they couldn’t let its world destroying activities get in the way of their day-to-day routines aboard the cylinder. Which were what exactly? One more mystery that would have to wait.

  Once Theseus turned those dials, both Cassandra and Leon were sucked toward the open end of the cylinder world.

  As soon as they hit the threshold, Leon could feel them being scanned.

  Just as he could feel them being torn apart—molecule by molecule.

  When Cassandra refused the painkillers, it should really have occurred to Leon to speak up for himself.

  He just couldn’t scream loud enough to properly vent the pain he was feeling now.

  Not if he had a speaker system to the stars.

  FIFTY

  THE VIRTUAL WORLD OF THE NOW DEFUNCT AND DIGITIZED

  TRANS MARINER CIVILIZATION

  Leon and Cassandra materialized onto the world of the Trans Mariners. They’d been briefed with intel downloaded to their mindchips on the humanoid species by what little Theta Team had been able to decode from the Planet Eater’s scanners, shortly after the Planet Eater digested their world, leaving only this uploaded, digital version of them. And, of course, Leon and Cassandra, going where others feared to tread, were now digitized themselves. And like the Trans Mariners before them, it was unclear how they were going to get back out.

  From what Leon could see, the entire planet had been turned into a crypt. Bodies floated in the sky, at all levels, either in a coma or dead. And the ground beneath Leon’s and Cassandra’s feet had been hollowed out to make room for more of the dead.

  “It looks like a cemetery for a Stage One civilization that made it to the edge of their solar system or beyond,” Cassandra said. “If space were premium enough elsewhere, and this particular planet useless enough…”

  “It’s been my experience that things are seldom what they appear.” Though Leon could not think right off hand what else this place could be. A sick bay for the terminally incurable, keeping everyone in stasis, until technologies existed to restore them to life, or to health? Many alien species were represented. But they could have been humanoids bioengineered for the various habitats of a single world or just a few worlds. It was hard to judge the scale of such a civilization based on just what was here.

  “Send some of your nanites into them, Cassandra. Time to find out what we’re dealing with.”

  It was unlike her to hesitate. Especially when the order called for an aggressive act of any kind, for which she lived. “That may put us on their radar as much as it puts them on ours. You may be starting another war which you are ill-prepared to engage in.”

  “One way or another we have to know what we’re dealing with.”

  She pu
t her hand up to the nearest corpse floating by her. A greyish-blue humanoid with an exoskeleton used as body armoring, so, possibly a soldier at one time. The nanites streaming into his body and others from Cassandra’s hand would tell them what was what soon enough.

  “All of these humanoid bodies are from warrior castes from whatever worlds they represented.” She seemed to be speaking in advance of intel forwarded to her from the nanites; it was a reasonable enough conclusion to draw from what their eyes showed them.

  “Maybe this is where the legend of Valhalla comes from,” Leon suggested, “some artist or psychic channeling their initial impressions of this world.”

  Cassandra ignored him, but that was typical for her.

  “Warriors don’t just lie down and play dead, Leon.” She continued to scrutinize the various aliens about them, starting to suspect herself there was a lot more afoot here. “Unless it’s one of many moves in getting one over on an enemy.”

  She rubbernecked toward the alien she was touching that she’d released her nanites into. That intel must have been transferring at last. She looked taken by surprise. You didn’t see that look on her a lot. “This was once a Stage Three, galactic civilization, Leon. What we see here are the warrior remnants from many worlds. This place was designed by their leaders in a last ditch effort to ensure this never happened again. They were attacked from a race not entirely of the physical realm. So, even with their advanced weaponry, they had no defense.

  “And so they learned, too late, to venture into other realms, as a kind of early warning signal, should their physical universe be broached again from other dimensions.

  “Those lying here are more like shamans now, who venture into the nether regions, the spirit worlds, looking for those intent on incarnating into our realm, to escape the hell they’ve been put in.”

  “So, this is the advanced guard against such an attack,” Leon said.

  “Their purpose is to hold the line until their intel can be transferred to our realm, where those in this timeline can use it to mount some kind of defense.”

  Her eyes strayed from the alien body upon which she’d become fixated to Leon. “Something in the nature of their magic… they can’t work it from in here. We’ve got to get them out of this virtual realm, back to the physical world. We are the answer to their prayers as much as they’re the answer to ours.”

  Leon nodded. “One more offensive and defensive line against the unknown.”

  “Their own people no longer exist to protect, but they can protect us, and as warriors they’re itching to do so. They also recognize we have the capacity to one day bioprint their entire galactic civilization, restoring it to its former greatness.”

  “Not even Mother…”

  “But Solo can design a specific supersentience with just that goal,” Cassandra replied.

  “How the hell do they know about Solo?”

  “Mother has been looped in, as has Solo, who must now add them to the menagerie under our protection, and get to work on meeting this most fundamental list of demands for their cooperation. But, Leon, I suspect they already knew about Solo. As you know, his mind doesn’t exist entirely in our dimension.”

  Leon nodded. “Tell them we are happy to enter into an alliance with them, and will restore their galaxy with time.” Mumbling the last part, he said, “As soon as we can figure how to get ourselves out of this virtual realm.”

  Cassandra said, “We’ll be out of here shortly. The bioprinted copy of the young girl, Hailey, married to Mother’s supersentience, has already hacked her way into the Planet Eater cylinder world, The Iniquitous, responsible for this mess. She has transferred the necessary intel to procure our escape to Theta Team.”

  “How much longer will it take to get the Trans Mariners out of here than it will take to get us out?”

  “Not much. This Planet Eater is every bit as efficient at reassembling worlds molecule by molecule as it is at pulling them apart.”

  Leon nodded. “Once back on line, these spiritual warriors will interface well with our Epsilon Ethereals. Epsilon group will be able to pick up their early warnings from the other realms, and take up the fight on this side of the fence with any that get past the spiritual warriors of this alien Valhalla.”

  Leon and Cassandra materialized moments later into the physical realm of the Planet Eater cylinder, The Iniquitous. The end, open to the stars, was turning the other way now, not the direction used for digesting worlds, but for reassembling them.

  Leon watched the new world being birthed like a baby coming out the birth canal. The deed would be accomplished in about the same amount of time.

  “Techa be praised!” Leon exclaimed, gasped with relief, and sighed, all at once.

  FIFTY-ONE

  CASSANDRA AND LEON OF CLONE TEAM TWO

  ABOARD THE UFO

  “You want to explain to me why we’re heading toward a Kang stronghold?” Leon asked.

  “We are Clone Team Two—” Cassandra said “—assigned to making sure cutting-edge tech is properly disseminated to the right parties, and doesn’t get stuck forever in the hands of corrupt, megalomaniac oligarchs, dynastic rulers, tyrants, and…”

  Leon sighed. They had been assigned to Earth for that reason, but, to be fair, whether or not it was an unsanctioned extension of mission parameters, “The Kang fit the bill.”

  Cassandra brought the UFO in closer so they could get a better look.

  “Techa!” Leon exclaimed, pushing his face up to the portal to better see around its edges. “Zoom out this damn view!”

  “It is zoomed out to its maximum capacity,” she barked with impatience.

  He gave her a dirty look as if this was her fault, before returning his eyes to the portal. “What are those things?”

  “According to Mother, they’ve been coined The Space-Time Alchemists. We believe those ships…”

  Leon wasn’t certain which was harder to believe, what his eyes were relaying to his brain, or the corroborating information coming from his dashboard interface with the UFO’s AI. “Ships, you say? I count twelve suns enclosed with Dyson spheres and connected to one another in one of these ‘ships’ alone.”

  “Yes, well, Mother believes, as does the supersentience she gave birth to on Ajax’s Starhawk, that the reason for that much power is to bend space-time to their will. She believes they got so good at it, they absconded out of space-time altogether to escape The Collectors, when they couldn’t break free of the Menagerie.”

  “Even with technology this powerful!” Leon ran his hands through his hair, trying to ignore the countless pinprick eruptions of sweat stabbing at his forehead, erupting from out of nowhere, and his hands turned to slabs of ice.

  “Humbling, I know. But you go on telling yourself you and you alone can figure out how to break us out not only of the Kang galaxy, but out of The Collectors’ Menagerie.”

  Leon was too crushed by the truth already to be much more put out by her digs. Besides, he knew she was rooting for him. The day he stopped being her best chance to commit mass scale murder on even greater levels, she’d swear allegiance to whomever else commanded that number one spot. Her loyalty was not too unlike Sonny’s in that respect. Never mind that Leon’s best assets to date were the ones he had the most trouble with. Solo, and The nun—to name just two more—were no less troubling in their own way.

  “Shit, that didn’t take long.” Leon beheld the humanoid space warriors shadowing the UFO, clearly adapted for space. His body instantly grew in size, the muscles both tensing and swelling with an inrush of blood. “What the hell do we do now?”

  “That’s Gamma Group,” Cassandra explained. “They’re on our side.”

  Leon gulped. Even with the drop tick in tension at the revelation, he still couldn’t get his body to deflate back to baseline. “A good thing.”

  “You just say that because they could pull this ship apart with their bare hands and floss with the shrapnel.”

  “How did I come to be
trapped in a cage where the lions get bigger and meaner and I and my whip and chair just get smaller and more comical looking by the second?”

  “Eyes on the prize, Leon. There’s a Kang queen aboard that Space-Time Alchemist ship that’s lighting up gradually. And Mother tells me the queen’s surrounded with no shortage of her Tesla Types. It’s just possible they have the mind power they need to finish firing up that bird.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “You forget that when it comes to playing David and Goliath games, the one version they excel at is figuring out technology more advanced than theirs that they can steal and make use of. And it’s our job to steal it away from them.”

  Leon sighed, realizing she was right. “But not before they figure it out so we know what the hell to do with it. We didn’t exactly bring Natty along.”

  So far, from what Leon could tell, the Kang had only fired up a small portion of one of those Dyson spheres, which meant they were a long way from achieving success. Leon had to time this just right. He couldn’t afford to attack first. He actually needed the Kang to succeed at their mission. But he didn’t need for them to succeed so well that they had a chance to use that Space-Time Alchemist ship against the Gypsy Galaxy. It could well devour the entire galaxy—to say nothing of the stolen Dead Zone artificial habitats that gave that galaxy much of its life.

  Leon shook his head slowly. “Who leaves tech like this just laying around where it can be put to all kinds of bad use?”

  “My guess is they never expected the cavemen that the Kang were relative to them to be able to figure out how to turn on the lights far less fire up these ships.”

  “Just how long have these Space-Time Alchemists’ ships been lying around out here?”

  “According to Darwin, the supersentience on Ajax’s Starhawk, best guess, over a hundred thousand years.”

  Cassandra, as if reading his mind, said, “Yes, The Collectors have evidently been at this awhile. Who knows how much longer the other galaxies trapped in their Menagerie have had to evolve, as well, and still, no one’s gotten free.” She smiled at him sadistically as if she enjoyed sticking the knife in him. But that was probably just her way of showing respect. She still thought he had a shot at getting them all the hell out of here.