Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  “Dillon,” the announcer explained, “you’re being escorted to the planet’s core, where you’ll be given access to both our Mars war god, which has already fired up its supersentience, and where you and your daughter will also be married to Mother.

  “Our hearts and prayers go with. Everyone else, battle stations, please, and to your assigned ships.”

  The room vacated in an orderly manner, preventing a stampede.

  The announcer was right. If they couldn’t hack the moon artifact in time, well enough to satisfy the new demands being placed on the Gypsy Galaxy’s flexibility and maneuverability, or if those demands somehow exceeded the moon artifact’s capacity, this galactic disruptor that an enemy was using on them might well be the just-in-time-solution they needed, providing they could capture it.

  Hailey squeezed her father’s arm. “It’s just a simulation, Dad, a video game, preparing us for just such a scenario. There’ll be more like this, taking us all, via baby steps, toward making Leon’s galactic-scale war machine more than just an abstract concept.”

  “Don’t patronize me, little girl. I can handle this.” He swallowed hard. “At least I think I can. I’ll be plugged into not one but two supersentiences. Techa, if I need a bigger set of crutches, I’m in the wrong profession.”

  She was still gripping his arm hard as she walked with him out of the coliseum. “Fair warning, Dad, though I haven’t experienced it directly, my counterpart on the Nautilus advises that being plugged into a supersentience is like communing with the mind of God.”

  “I’ll manage.” He didn’t sound the least bit convincing.

  Rose, walking by their side, kept looking up at the ceiling, raining down in chunks. “God, this is one realistic video game. You have to hand it to the designers.”

  Rex barked at her, as if trying to shout some sense into her.

  Hailey, and Dillon, judging by his expression, were secretly grateful for the dog more than ever. The day may well come when that dog’s reality-check barks could pull her out of her fool’s paradise long enough to save her life.

  ***

  Outside the planetarium, Hailey spied the general, already heading up in the space elevator, Thor and Frog doll in tow. Thor gestured to her to convey, “Hello? How could you arrive late on cue like this?”

  “Catch you, next time,” she said, speaking mindchip to mindchip.

  She heard Thor sigh. “That girl is just way too nerdy for her own good,” he mumbled, not meaning for the message to be telegraphed.

  “I gather the general is ready for some action, too,” she said to Thor.

  “Duh. Who can sit around and have big ideas all day long? Boring!” He returned to his mumbling, “My girlfriend’s a bore. Just admit, it Thor. I suppose there are worse things. She could be an A-cup. What is that, anyway?” He zoomed his eyes on her with the aid of his nano-enhancements. “A-?” Taking your morning cereal in different bra-cup-sized bowls, is so not working to allay the trauma of the thought of kissing a female. Honestly, aliens are far less scary.

  “What do you know about cup size?” Hailey asked.

  “I know enough to have had all my cereal bowl sizes changed to A, B, C, and D!” he blurted. He returned to his mumbling, “That way I can decide which I can handle groping for now.”

  “You’re not supposed to like girls for another couple of years.”

  “I don’t! This is desensitization therapy, like they use on agoraphobics! Can you imagine getting one of those things shoved in my face in battle? As it is, I’d shut down completely. Complete coma. Frog Doll will be carrying me out in his arms.”

  She suppressed a smile. What a strange note to end on.

  She was now in the space elevator, heading down, as the General and his entourage were heading up. Hailey saw the “college students” flashing, as they teleported out, like fireflies bright enough to be spotted during the day. The general was no doubt calling them to man his spaceship—whichever one he was taking out. Assuming he wasn’t heading out with a complete fleet.

  Not her problem right now.

  She and her father, once married to the supersentiences, were going to have to bleed that Galactic Disruptor alien ship of all its intel in the event it was destroyed, before someone fired the all-decisive shot, be it the bad guys, or the good guys.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  THE HAUGHT GALAXY

  PLANET BRAVAS

  Hailey and Dillon descended into the light. The Mars war god had dissolved the underworld habitat full of dinosaurs. And now it looked like it was dissolving them.

  “What the hell?” Dillon blurted.

  “I don’t think it has the time to plug us into itself more gently, Father. We’re being reduced to algorithms, digitized, so we can become one with the Mars war god.”

  “Oh, that’s going to do wonders for my sanity!”

  “Congratulations, Dad. Sarcasm is the first sign of recovery.”

  A moment later, they had lost all corporealness. “Whoa!” her father exclaimed.

  “It’s good to get a sensible reaction out of you for once, Dad. I concur. Whoa!”

  They were suddenly everywhere and nowhere. Inside the Nautilus—not just inside the Nautilus’s supersentience. Inside the heads of Theta Team and Omega Force and Alpha Unit, each of the teams acting like hive minds Mother and the Mars war gods were linked to. Hailey and Dillon were also inside the birds of prey, the Starhawks and the Peacekeepers—all flanking Mother like an armada accompanying an aircraft carrier. Mother was still spitting out her space fleet, giving “birth” to them out of her landing bays like a salmon dropping eggs—by the thousands.

  Moments later, Mother herself was flying the Nautilus into the Galactic Disruptor—unaccompanied. She had already deployed her ships throughout the Gypsy Galaxy—teleporting them to where they needed to go. Hailey could feel her inquiries being shut off and redirected from finding out how Mother had upgraded herself to be able to teleport that many craft so precisely across an entire galaxy without the help of the other Nautili. The Mars war god wanted to keep her on track, finding her questions superfluous. She got the short answer to help quiet any rebellion in her: Sonny and his Shadow Warriors. They had whisked away the tech from party or parties unknown, very possibly other members of the Leon’s still-forming TGC—possibly from the very ones who wanted no part of it.

  “Techa! How big is that thing?” Hailey heard her father say in her ear.

  “Twenty-six hundred times the size of Earth’s sun,” The Mars war god replied, as the Nautilus continued flying into the Galactic Disruptor.

  “About the size of a giant blue sun,” Dillon mumbled in Hailey’s ear. “I guess that explains how a ship as big as Mother could find her way through its channels and byways.”

  The surface of the spherical giant pulsed, like a bell being rung from the inside, and each time the bell rang the surface area of the orb increased in size, five times bigger than resting state, then seven times bigger, then nine times bigger…

  “It’s like sonar,” Dillon said. “Those are dampeners on the orb’s surface, keeping it from affecting more than the Gypsy Galaxy.”

  “It’s still taking measurements, fine tuning itself to affect just the planets and suns and other stellar bodies within the galaxy,” Hailey said.

  “And once it’s done fine tuning its broadcast…” Dillon replied.

  “Bamo!” Hailey exclaimed.

  “Yes, then the real destruction begins,” her father whispered in her ear—her proverbial ear. She had to remind herself she no longer had a body and these were just phantom sensations, as her mind continued to try and filter reality through its original matrix.

  “Techa!” Dillon exclaimed.

  “Yes, Mother has already hacked this… whatever this is,” Hailey said, referring to the Galactic Disruptor. “That’s impressive.”

  “Apparently Sonny’s Shadow Warriors made inroads into the galaxy that deployed this war machine, stealing away with the secrets
of this device before it could be deployed,” her father said, trying to keep up with the chain of logic.

  “I don’t understand why Mother would put herself at risk like this,” Dillon ruminated out loud.

  “I do. She’s already shut down the Galactic Disruptor, but she’s not stopping there. She’s responding to Leon’s directive to redeploy the Galactic Disruptor back to the galaxy it came from. We’re going to blow apart their entire galaxy.

  “Mother intends to be there to handle subsequent negotiations and their surrender personally.”

  “With who? With what? What will be left?” Dillon articulated from an agitated state.

  “She’s just going to push the suns and worlds apart enough for the Vibra Galaxy to be more amenable to Leon’s reasoning. She’s going to soften them up, Dad.”

  Her father sighed. “This Leon character plays serious hard ball.”

  “Maybe, but there’s no way he’s going to damage a galactic civilization advanced enough to procure a Galaxy Disruptor. He wants them aboard; he just wants to make a compelling argument as to why they should consider joining the fold.”

  Dillon mumbled, “I remember when a horse’s head in the bed did the trick.”

  The Galactic Disruptor beamed into the Vibra galaxy.

  And continued firing up.

  The Vibrans got the message fast.

  The Nautilus was already being hailed on countless COMMS channels from dignitaries from countless worlds across Vibra.

  She ignored them all.

  Evidently she intended to make a point.

  The device did not need to take a “sounding” of the galaxy, as it came preloaded with the exact parameters of its home galaxy.

  It just pulsed once.

  And that was all it took.

  Vibra’s planets and worlds scattered like Christmas tree baubles ripped from a tree in a cyclone.

  The vista out the portal of the Nautilus had gone completely black.

  “Holy shit!” her father exclaimed.

  Mother engaged her singularity COMMS that cut through time and space like butter, speaking to all inhabited planets and galactic bodies at once. “This is Mother. Welcome to the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping. Yes, we do function as a TGC during peacetime. But during times of war, all allied galaxies are brought into the fold for their protection. Please allow me to demonstrate.”

  “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!” Dillon was still trying to calm himself. “I was just toying with those ideas in the back of my head. I had all sorts of calculations to sort through, any number of theories to weed out.”

  “Well, now we know what the Mars war gods have been up to,” Hailey said. “The whole time Mother has been talking, she’s been buying them time.”

  The Gypsy Galaxy Grouping—as promised—now engulfed all allied galaxies. The Gypsy Galaxy itself had expanded like a puffer fish into a ball-shaped galaxy to swallow them up. Yet other planets, suns, and stellar bodies were being beamed in to fill the voids, in effect running interference for the stellar bodies they were there to protect.

  And taking advantage of their singularity-granted ability to be everywhere and nowhere at once, Dillon and Hailey took in the nature of the “protective sphere.”

  Pointed at each one of those inhabited, population-dense planets in the Vibra galaxy—now enclosed within the Gypsy Galaxy—was a Planet Eater, their outer rims—the ends through which they gobbled up planets—fired up.”

  “Ah, remind me never to get on Leon’s bad side,” Dillon mumbled.

  The words “We surrender!” came screaming over Mother’s COMMS in so many languages and dialects, were it not for Hailey’s access to “the godhead” there would have been no way to parse them all in real time.

  “Your surrender is not required,” Mother said. “And while your cooperation is preferred, you are free to back away from negotiations at any time. But please be apprised, we are scanning all your worlds with the Planet Eaters. Once digitized, we will be able to recreate any of those worlds at will. We can tweak the residents of those worlds within the AIs overseeing the planet eaters to be far more cooperative allies. But we would rather you remained with us, as you are. We are stronger by not being of one mind on things. We value what you bring to the table, even if we don’t particularly want to hear it. It remains up to you if you still wish to join us. We have no more to gain or lose either way. But, as you can see, you have much to gain.”

  Mother waited a heartbeat of human time for the humanoids on all those worlds to process what she had just said.

  “We will be withdrawing from the Vibra Galaxy now. You may resume your wargames with us at any time, continuing to probe for weaknesses in our defenses. That is an open invitation without an expiration date. The war games will continue with other galaxies still on the fence with regards to attaching themselves to the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping, and with those already wholeheartedly members of the alliance. ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’ is the Earth adage underlying this strategic positioning.”

  Hailey had wondered about all the wordiness coming from a supersentience. But she was buying time, as before, for the Planet Eaters in her employ to finish their scans.

  As to other galaxies within The Collectors’ Menagerie that had already decided to join the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping…As far as Hailey knew, no such agreements had been made. But perhaps the supersentience Solo had built to scan these civilizations, Omni, and Sonny’s Shadow Warriors had scurried off with information not yet released or made official. Or perhaps the supersentients were working with probabilistic futures, as they typically did, having already extrapolated out the outcomes of these various galaxies sussing out the Gypsy Galaxy via their war games.

  True to her word, Mother let the air out of the puffer fish, shrinking the Gypsy Galaxy back to its original size and shape.

  Hailey and Dillon could both see in their mind’s eye, courtesy of the singularity link to both Mother’s and the Mars war gods’ supersentiences the growing assembly of galaxies “allied” or attached now to the Gypsy Galaxy.

  The Vibra Galaxy looked orphaned now, no longer part of the grouping.

  That didn’t last long.

  All their leverage gone, and with nothing to lose and everything to gain…

  The Vibrans motored the galaxy into position, attaching itself to the growing TGC with the aid of its Galactic Disruptor, adjusted to another setting.

  Considering the speed at which humanoid minds worked, Hailey had no doubt their own supersentiences were conferring among one another as to the best play to make.

  Hailey found it interesting that, from The Collectors viewpoint, they were okay with these galaxies shuffling their positions within the Menagerie as part of their on-again off-again relationships—so long as everyone was focused on becoming more efficient at killing one another and no one crossing the cellular boundaries about each galaxy were simply trying to escape.

  “I still don’t understand how things could have evolved so fast,” Dillon said.

  The Mars war god, already relaxing out of crisis mode, permitted him a few picoseconds of its thinking time along one of its innumerable strands of thought running in parallel to answer his questions.

  “The Mars war gods linked with Theta Team,” Planet Bravas’s Mars war god explained, “to accelerate their mastery of the Dead Zone tech and the other artifacts found throughout the Kang Dynasty as they relate to warfare. Linked to the Mars war gods, Theta Team could more easily divine the wartime applications of those various technologies. Of course, Solo’s latest supersentiences, Materia and Omni, played their parts. The intel flowing back and forth from Theta Team and all supersentiences involved allowed Mother in turn to crank out new Theta Team members more given to the new artificial worlds and habitats being explored. This further accelerated the rate of intelligence transfer. This process continues but…” Hailey was speaking aloud in her head as if reading a book, but she realized she was just helping herself to get her mind around
the truth.

  “What about penetrating the other galaxies to the same extent, to pry open the countless Pandora’s boxes they contain?” Dillon asked.

  “Beyond what help such probes could offer with our captured Legacy Tech, Mother has held off applying Omni further. Such aggressive maneuvers, for now, would only hinder negotiations to reach agreement with allied galaxies. But Sonny and his Shadow Warriors continue to gather what we need for if and when we need to move rapidly, as we just did. Still, it is doubtful we would ever resort to such extreme measures as ensuring any possible threat from any allied galaxy is fully neutralized. Leon realizes that a certain amount of infighting is inevitable with his fledgling TGC and he welcomes it. So does Sonny. Anything less and we would be a TGE, not a TGC.”

  And with that, what patience the Mars war god had for continuing this conversation was now lost. Hailey and Dillon lost their singularity connection to the Mars war god and to Mother.

  Their bodies took form again.

  They found themselves in the space elevator, overlooking the Jurassic world, as before, heading for the surface. The shrieks of the pterodactyls buzzing the metalglass tube of the space elevator served to shock them more fully back into their bodies.

  Hailey glanced at her father and found him slashing his own arms with his fingernails, the nanites in the atmosphere charged with giving those nails the necessary razor sharpness. “Dillon!” she shrieked.

  “I need help now!” Hailey bellowed at the top of her lungs.

  They were beamed immediately to their private suite on the surface of the planet, the space elevator deemed too slow for their purposes.

  Hailey relaxed upon seeing a full complement of droids in the suite to assist with calming Dillon and providing the necessary triage work. They were already working to override Dillon’s nanites to stop them from taking orders from him. He may have been brighter than all of them put together, but he didn’t know a damn thing about nanites. And even if he did, the Mars war god would never have permitted his suicide in progress to continue. Hailey wondered why it had let things get this far in the first place. But Mars may have understood, even better than she did, the degree to which her father needed to voice his resistance to having this much control over the future—of any and all worlds. A sentiment that would just grow more true by the day as Leon’s TGC continued to power up, enough ultimately to set itself free from the grip of The Collectors, at which point Leon would move quickly to position himself as the warring arm of any and all TGCs and TGEs across the multiverse… before reaching out even further. His plans were even now being powered by access to Mother’s singularity state and that of the numerous other supersentients in her employ, as much as by his own imagination.