Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  Leon took a beat to process what he’d just been told. Techa, they now had a supersentience dedicated to materials science, building atom by atom and molecule by molecule new materials that would make new warbirds so much lighter, more maneuverable, more impervious to more forms of attack. His mind started to reel, but he pulled himself in. For right now, it was all digression, costly digression. Solo was right; they needed to get out while the getting was good.

  He took a deep breath to consider his next move.

  Leon let out the trapped air in his lungs. “We any closer to firing up the The Space-Time Alchemy ships?”

  “That would definitely do it, but no.”

  “Any other thoughts on how we might best get The Collectors’ attention?” Leon asked.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of summoning all the Nautili from all the timelines in which we’ve found her—regardless of their current predicaments. Leon, there are millions. Mother just didn’t have time to find more with everything else she had to juggle. But that should be enough if we get them to pulse their shields in sync in the brief time that they are in our timeline.

  “Since putting them at risk in their own timelines indirectly weakens us as well, the various synced Nautili will have less than a picosecond to send out that pulse. Still an eternity for that many supersentiences parallel-arrayed. But not too long to keep them from getting back to their own timelines to keep the entire house of cards that are all these parallel universes in this multiverse from caving in.

  “All that awaits now is your go order.”

  Leon’s sigh sounded more like the roar of a wounded lion. “You’re convinced a display of that much power will be something they cannot ignore?”

  “That shield pulse will also carry more coded, embedded intelligence than can possibly be explained by a million years of Kang evolution. And it will be a unique signature that cannot be explained by any more advanced tech they may have gotten their hands on, like the STAs, or the Peacekeepers, for that matter—technologies of which The Collectors must already be aware. The Collectors will know that it comes from somewhere outside their Menagerie. So yes, I doubt they’ll be able to resist coming to investigate.”

  Solo paused.

  Leon knew that couldn’t be good.

  “Just one thing, Leon. The fact that parallel-arrayed Nautili could come and go as they pleased from The Collectors domain…You can bet once they’ve figured out how we did that, that door will be closed for good. No amount of Nautili from this moment on will ever free us from The Collectors’ grip.”

  Another pregnant pause.

  “I don’t mean to step on your toes,” Solo said, “but you sure you don’t want to get out while the getting is good—away from The Collectors, I mean?”

  “No, we’re not leaving countless trapped galactic civilizations in their grip. Think of the goodwill we will have earned from liberating them. That could go a long way with recruiting the help of TGCs and TGEs, if need be. For that matter, we may be able to form our own TGC through our newfound allies that might stand up to them if they prove to be every bit as aggressive as the Kang—only far more evolved still, and far more powerful.”

  Leon paused to catch his breath. And then he continued, “No, we sure as hell aren’t leaving without freeing all of the prisoners.”

  “A noble thought, but for all we know, The Collectors aren’t an evil empire ensnaring more primitive galactic civilizations. They may be no more than the jailors of the cosmic bad boys who need to be bottled up and caged, lest they be free to raise havoc in the cosmos. And they may be working with the collaboration and permission of the other TGCs and TGEs, serving in that capacity for them.”

  Shit! Solo was right. How had Leon not even considered this?

  “We’ll continue to assume the best, but plan for the worst, Solo. I won’t have more souls on my conscience than I can count because I refused to give them the benefit of the doubt. We tour this museum The Collectors have put together, and if you’re right, then we let The Collectors have what is rightfully theirs, and we get the hell out.”

  Solo paused again to consider his response.

  Once more, Leon didn’t care for the implications.

  “Leon, you forget I can read your mind. You’re playing Nietzsche’s game, taking his advice of going beyond good and evil. The fact is you don’t care how vicious those other galactic civilizations are. They’re just assets to you that you can deploy how you want, release them like the hounds of hell to secure peace at any level of the multiverse of multiverses; so long as you know what they can do. And you’re determined to know what they can do. Just like you’re determined to rein them in once their mission is complete.”

  “And while I can’t read your mind, Solo, I’m well aware of at least some of the things it can do. If you’re hinting that this Menagerie of worlds is indeed a cosmic-scale prison serving this and however many other universes, then I’ve got to assume that’s indeed what it is.”

  Solo sighed. “I don’t know, Leon. It’s just a feeling. The chi, or life force, coursing through this sector of the universe is tainted.”

  “Let’s say you’re right. Who’s to say some of these galactic civilizations haven’t evolved out of the cosmic lowlifes they once were? Who’s to say they aren’t still being held here owing to corrupt politics and the all-too corruptible Collectors? Imagine the concessions they’re getting from these other TGCs and TGEs for taking care of their headaches for them. Maybe those headaches extend to culling the competition, imprisoning galactic federations unfairly before they threatened one or another TGC’s or TGE’s grip on things?”

  Solo groaned. “I can’t deny your logic, and if anything, the complex, multilayered feel of the chi flowing through The Collectors’ domain, may well support it. But it may support other conclusions, Leon.”

  “I’ve never been one to dismiss your warnings, Solo, or take anything you say lightly. That being said, the go order is given. Summon those bastards that call themselves The Collectors for a sit down. According to that sixth sense of yours, they’re virtually knocking on our door anyway.”

  “Yes, but I thought so long as we could time their arrival on our terms…” Solo let out a power breath, resigned to Leon’s orders.

  The shields were dropping on the viewports of all Nautili throughout the fleet, and any of her daughter vessels still deployed.

  Leon assumed it was in preparation for the pulse.

  Solo had said it would carry a daunting display of intelligence, maybe more than enough to fry the minds of mere humanoids, enhanced or not.

  The flash came and went without Leon’s primate mind being able to process it, even staring at the telemetry screens relaying what the viewports could no longer relay.

  The only sign that the pulse had occurred was troubling indeed.

  A hologram materializing on the telemetry screens showed what looked like the hand of God reaching down and picking up the entire Milky Way spiral galaxy as if it were a long-playing vinyl disc and setting it down in its own place inside the Menagerie, free from further Kang involvement.

  The blinds covering the ports were receding back into the hull.

  The Gypsy Galaxy was no longer a colossal fireworks display performed in homage to the gods.

  They didn’t get too long to enjoy the moment.

  Two figures were beaming onto the Nautilus.

  Leon guessed it was The Collectors.

  SIXTY

  ABOARD THE BRIDGE OF THE NAUTILUS

  The two figures beaming onto the command bridge of the Nautilus resembled the ones Patent had described encountering beaming into the cave with the artifact on Earth’s moon.

  Tall. Lanky. Robed. Monk-like.

  They towered over the humanoids in the chamber by a couple of feet.

  The large, almond-shaped, upward sloping, glistening obsidian-black eyes had no eyelids; they looked more like crystal balls specializing in seeing into the darker reaches of the soul. Which
would definitely suit their functions as jailors, Leon thought.

  The membranes on their cheeks, breathing in and out like gills, just like the smaller ones on their temples, their dimpled chins, and recessed into their very skeletal, deeply faceted faces seemed likewise evolved to smell treachery, and to detect far more than just smell; perhaps whatever other wavelengths of EMF radiation their eyes could not process. Perhaps they were the ultimate lie detectors.

  They bowed to Leon, without taking their hands out of the pockets of their robes. Concealed weapons? Or just a mock display of humility?

  They didn’t even bother to address anyone else in the room, knowing who was in charge.

  Their reconfigurable oral cavities and larynxes morphed to accommodate human speech. “We’re glad to finally meet you,” said the female looking one. But it was hard to sex them. And Leon had been practicing just that skill, considering how many Theta Team operatives aboard the Nautilus were equally hard to sex that he didn’t want to run afoul of.

  The other one chimed in like an echo, like they were thinking in stereo, their minds synced. “You humans and your humanoid spawn will make a delightful addition to the Menagerie.”

  “We apologize for not detecting you earlier,” the possibly-female one said. “We seek to preserve life, not destroy it.”

  “We are hollowed out by the loss of life we could not prevent from the collision of so many suns and worlds,” the other one finished for her.

  “Yet you don’t really intervene with the evolution of any of the galaxies in your collection?” Leon asked.

  “That’s correct,” the female replied.

  “And the ones that manage to send ships and emissaries across your barrier field…” Leon continued, “what confrontations erupt from that, you also stay out of.”

  “We would not permit one civilization to entirely destroy another or to entirely subjugate another, of course,” the male Collector replied, “but we do not mean to stymy the evolution of all parties within the Menagerie, whether it comes about through warfare or any other means.”

  “Of course, not,” Leon thought. “They probably want the same thing as you do, to know what their assets can do for them. Letting these civilizations evolve well away from the prying eyes of the TGCs and TGEs you serve, also gives you an ace up your sleeves, should relations turn ugly with those TGCs and TGEs. You can turn the tables on them, demand certain restitutions for jail upkeep, or have those very same TGCs and TGEs risk far more dire consequences, facing off against galactic civilizations whose technologies they no longer fully understand, and so can no longer fully neutralize. Hell, the more the prisoners evolve via their conflicts with one another, the better it is for you, The Collectors.”

  The two collectors regarded one another briefly before returning their eyes to him.

  “You are correct, of course,” the female said, indicating they had been reading his mind.

  “Enjoy your stay with us,” the other one said.

  They both bowed to him and dematerialized.

  “Mother, please tell me you were bleeding them dry for whatever was inside their heads with your atmospheric nanites and scanners?” Leon uttered the instant the mirage—what was left of their presence—had faded into oblivion.

  “Yes, of course, and they were pleased to return the favor. Their scan of me was complete. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I’m afraid it is as many of you feared. We have no technology at our disposal, even with the found legacy tech, that they find the least bit threatening. Or they would have taken it from us.”

  “But if they mean for us to evolve weapons they can use against the TGCs and TGEs…” Leon blurted defensively.

  “I’m afraid The Collectors register slices of time in billions of years. And the TGCs and TGEs they serve span the multiverse of multiverses, not just this one. They think of you more like viral or bacterial plagues they can release one day that might do the trick for them. Our very advantage lying in just how innocuous of a threat we are.”

  No wonder no one has ever gotten out of here, Leon thought, refusing to verbalize as much. His knees had nearly buckled on him twice. He’d opted to turn to stone instead, making himself as rigid and as unreadable before his people as he could. He fought to think straight, even as he could feel the neurons in his mind snapping under the pressure. “But, how could they work on such a scale and yet occupy such a small sector of our universe?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Leon.” For what it was worth, Mother did sound sorry, as opposed to patronizing. “But we are no longer in our universe. We are no longer even in our multiverse. And the multiverse we are in is a prison.”

  Crumley gripped his arm hard. He must have sensed that Leon was ready to fall under the gravity of the news.

  The news which Mother was not finished delivering.

  “The other galaxies Solo, Cassandra, and the nun sensed when they were connected to the All, processing as much of it as their minds would allow… Those are just the other prisoners of this multiverse. The room to expand the Menagerie in each universe within the multiverse is great, in anticipation of future inductees.”

  “And the legacy tech, from the civilizations long gone…Those escapees…”

  “Not escapees, Leon. Merely moved to other floors in the prison. You may think of The Collectors’ multiverse as a giant prison with each universe making up a different floor in that prison.”

  Again Leon could tell Mother wasn’t trying to be condescending, just give him something he could wrap his mind around.

  His mind, nearly fried, still managed to “misfire” on its own, explaining why questions were percolating to the surface he hadn’t thought to ask. “And the Ethereals? You’re saying, not even they have escaped the multiverse prison of The Collectors?”

  “I’m afraid not, Leon. There is a universe set aside just to handle civilizations that have chosen to evolve into forms of pure energy, leaving their physical bodies behind.”

  “And the other Nautili?”

  “Safe. They got out in time, before The Collectors were aware of any of the Nautili. They had never received a mandate to imprison any of them. And they don’t have a mandate to imprison you either. But as you humans learned long ago, this kind of concentrated power seldom fails to corrupt.”

  Leon told himself he could take solace in that.

  Even if it was a fool’s paradise he was looking to escape to in his head. After all, all the other Nautili, even parallel arrayed… They were up against too much mind power. And they had their own problems. Chief among them now, staying under the radar of The Collectors and any TGCs and TGEs that might be quick to include them in their mandate for who to imprison.

  Leon felt he already saw an out. There was no way those TGCs and TGEs working with The Collectors were doing any of this on anything but the down low. Somewhere out there were parties more evolved still, or, at least, as evolved, who would not stand for this. He wouldn’t. You don’t imprison people then turn your back on them, certainly not entire galactic federations. They would function like the Id Freud had postulated at the back of the mind where all the dark secrets are buried. Over time that would become a Pandora’s Box no one dared open.

  More advanced civilizations should simply have known better. Would have known better.

  If The Collectors—or some as yet unidentified party—had recalibrated the artifact on Earth’s moon—pulled off a far deeper level hack than anyone else had managed to do, in order to attune it to all the darkness out there, they might have unwittingly done him a favor. If he wanted to get the Gypsy Galaxy to serve as the cleanup crew for the multiverse of multiverses, they had dialed him into the very people he might have spent eons trying to track down.

  This is a win, Leon. The biggest win of your life. In a long line of recent big wins. It’s all a matter of perspective.

  Maybe so, but some part of his mind wouldn’t be sold.

  He’d lost his legs completely.

 
He heard Crumley shout out for help. “Cassandra!”

  Crumley could just have thrown him over his shoulders. He must have wanted to save him the indignity.

  Though Leon wasn’t sure how much more dignity lay in Cassandra carrying him out in her arms before the rest of Omega Force.

  Crumley regarded the expression on Cassandra’s face, snapping at her defensively. “Cassandra! Why are you smiling?”

  “I read his mind before he collapsed. He already has an angle to work. A key to everything.”

  Solo, up until now, pensive, serious, looking as stymied as all the rest, spoke up. “Forward that intel to me, Cassandra. I’m guessing there is no amount of small details to be ironed out.”

  “The artifact on Earth’s moon is the key. And don’t you or Mother or Skyhawk or Hailey dare try to hack it. It’s doing just what it needs to—for now.”

  Solo’s eyes went wide, the other shoe dropping for him. He nodded. And he smiled. “Leon was always good at turning negatives into positives.”

  He exited the chamber behind Cassandra.

  The rest of Omega Force eyed one another.

  “Never a good sign when your fearless leader collapses right in front of you,” Ajax said. “He didn’t even have the decency to do it in private.”

  Crumley sighed. “Even flat on his back, he’s still fighting. And there you are, standing tall, waving a flag of truce.”

  Crumley headed toward the sliding doors.

  “Yeah, well, someone has to be the pragmatist around here.” Ajax’s words, delivered in an elevated voice, stabbed at Crumley’s back. “And just how many millions of years, you think, before this road to freedom is travelled? I’ll tell you. Long enough for Odysseus to commit suicide at the prospect of returning home from that voyage!”

  Crumley caught Ajax’s final words as the doors closed behind him, stopping him from turning around and punching him to a pulp. Mother, obviously sensing what he had on his mind, refused to open the doors for him.